Our blog tracks Jose Arguelles' Dreamspell Calendar. "As chaos and confusion rise, galactic consciousness based on the Law of Time serves as planetary medicine, lifting us into the awareness that we exist within a higher, more expanded realm of existence than the world of third-dimensional form and appearance. Daily practice will elevate consciousness and increase experiences of synchronicity." (Arguelles)
Pretty Shield (1856–1944) was a medicine woman of the Crow Nation. Her biography, perhaps the first record of female Native American life, was written by Frank B. Linderman, who interviewed her using an interpreter and sign language.
Biography
Born in 1856 to Kills-in-the-Night and Crazy Sister-in-Law, Pretty Shield was the fourth of eleven children. Her name was given to her by her grandfather when she was four days old and it was considered a name of honor, commemorating her grandfather's handsome war shield.
Pretty Shield had a happy childhood, and later described games played by Crow children. They kicked balls stuffed with antelope hair and slid down snowy hillsides on sleds made of buffalo ribs. When she was seven, she was attacked by a mad buffalo bull. In trying to escape she fell and drove a stick into her forehead and against one eye, leaving a permanent scar. When she was fourteen, Pretty Shield and a group of her friends were treed by a grizzly bear and her cubs. She remembered looking down into the eyes of the grizzly for the rest of her life.
“The happiest days of my life were spent following the buffalo herds over our beautiful country. My mother and father and Goes Ahead, my man, were all kind, and we were so happy. Then when my children came I believed I had everything that was good on this world. There were always so many, many buffalo, plenty of good fat meat for everybody.”
At sixteen Pretty Shield became the second wife of Goes Ahead, whose first wife was Pretty Shield's older sister. She gave birth to four girls and three boys, but one girl and one boy died as infants. While grieving over their deaths, she had the vision that led her to become a healer. Like other Crow women, Pretty Shield cut her hair short and slashed her arms, legs, and face to show her suffering, then wandered without food or water until her grief became less intense. She wandered upon a woman who led her to an anthill. She told her to rake its edges and then ask for anything she wanted. Pretty Shield asked for "good luck and a good life." After that the ants, "busy, powerful little people," were her medicine.
As a medicine woman, Pretty Shield treated tribal illnesses with medicinal plants and often acted as a counselor. As was customary, she did not charge a fee but was paid in gifts, including tobacco, elks' teeth, buffalo robes, and food.
Pretty Shield's Crow clan, the Sore Lips, had inhabited southeastern Montana for generations. The Crow were regularly at war with the Sioux, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Blackfoot tribes. The Crows' bravery is evident in their survival despite being drastically outnumbered by the Native tribes they warred against.
After the death of Goes Ahead, Pretty Shield raised her daughters and nine grandchildren on her own. Talking to Linderman, Pretty Shield expressed a sadness over the disappearing Crow culture. She believed her people would follow the buffalo herds on the plains forever, as they had done for centuries.
“The whole country there smelled of rotting meat. Even the flowers could not put down the bad smell. Our hearts were like stones. And yet nobody believed, even then, that the white man could kill all the buffalo. Since the beginning of things there had always been so many! Even the Lakota, bad as their hearts were for us, would not do such a thing as this; nor the Cheyenne, nor the Arapahoe, nor the Pecunnie; and yet the white man did this, even when he did not want the meat.”
Film
Native Spirit and the Sun Dance Way, 2007 DVD documentary, World Wisdom*
The famous Sedgeford portrait of Pocahontas and her son, Thomas Rolfe.
Pocahontas (born Matoaka, known as Amonute, c. 1596 – March 1617) was a Native American woman notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribal nations in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of Virginia. In a well-known historical anecdote, she saved the life of a captive of the Native Americans, the Englishman John Smith, in 1607 by placing her head upon his own when her father raised his war club to execute him. A large number of historians doubt the veracity of this story.
Pocahontas was captured and held for ransom by the English during Anglo-Indian hostilities in 1613. During her captivity, she converted to Christianity and took the name Rebecca. When the opportunity arose for her to return to her people, she chose to remain with the English. In April 1614, at the age of 17, she married tobacco planter John Rolfe, and in January 1615, bore their son, Thomas Rolfe.
In 1616, the Rolfes travelled to London. Pocahontas was presented to English society as an example of the "civilized savage" in hopes of stimulating investment in the Jamestown settlement. She became something of a celebrity, was elegantly feted, and attended a masque at Whitehall Palace. In 1617, the Rolfes set sail for Virginia, but Pocahontas died at Gravesend of unknown causes, aged around 20-21. She was buried in St George's Church, Gravesend in England, but the exact location of her grave is unknown, as the church has been rebuilt.
Numerous places, landmarks, and products in the United States have been named after Pocahontas. Her story has been romanticized over the years, and she is a subject of art, literature, and film. Many famous people have claimed to be among her descendants through her son Thomas, including members of the First Families of Virginia, First Lady Edith Wilson, American Western actor Glenn Strange, Las Vegas performer Wayne Newton, and astronomer Percival Lowell.
Early life
Pocahontas' birth year is unknown, but some historians estimate it to have been around 1596. In A True Relation of Virginia (1608), Smith described the Pocahontas he met in the spring of 1608 as being "a child of ten years old". In a letter written in 1616, he again described her as she was in 1608, but this time as "a child of twelve or thirteen years of age".
Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, paramount chief of Tsenacommacah, an alliance of about thirty Algonquian-speaking groups and petty chiefdoms in Tidewater, Virginia. Her mother's name and origins are unknown but she was probably of lowly status. The colonist Henry Spelman, who had lived among the Powhatan as an interpreter, noted that when one of the paramount chief's many wives gave birth to a child, the mother was returned to her place of origin, to be supported there by the paramount chief until she found another husband. In the traditional histories of the Powhatan, Pocahontas' mother died in childbirth. An oral history of the Mattaponi Reservation Peoples, who are descendants of the Powhatan peoples, claims that Pocahontas' mother was first wife of Powhatan, and that Pocahontas was named after her.
Pocahontas' childhood was probably little different from that of most girls who lived in Tsenacommacah. She would have learned how to perform what was considered to be women's work, which included foraging for food and firewood, farming, and searching for the plant materials used in building thatched houses. As she grew older, she would have helped other members of Powhatan's household with preparations for large feasts. Serving feasts, such as the one presented to John Smith after his capture, was a regular obligation of the Mamanatowick, or paramount chief.
Names
At the time Pocahontas was born, it was common for Powhatan Native Americans to be given several personal names, have more than one name at the same time, have secret names that only a select few knew, and to change their names on important occasions. Bestowed at different times, the names carried different meanings and might be used in different contexts. Pocahontas was no different. Early in her life, she was given a secret name, Matoaka, but later she was also known as Amonute. Matoaka means "Bright Stream Between the Hills"; Amonute has not been translated.
According to the colonist William Strachey, "Pocahontas" was a childhood nickname that probably referred to her frolicsome nature; it meant "little wanton"; some interpret the meaning as "playful one". The 18th-century historian William Stith claimed that "her real name, it seems, was originally Matoax, which the Indians carefully concealed from the English and changed it to Pocahontas, out of a superstitious fear, lest they, by the knowledge of her true name, should be enabled to do her some hurt." According to the anthropologist Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas "revealed [her secret name] to the English only after she had taken another religious—baptismal—name, Rebecca".
Pocahontas' Christian name, Rebecca, may have been a symbolic gesture to Rebecca of the Book of Genesis who, as the mother of Jacob and Esau, was the mother of two "nations", or distinct peoples. Pocahontas, as a Powhatan marrying an Englishman, may have been seen by herself and by her contemporaries as being also, potentially, a matriarchal figure of two distinct peoples.
Title and status
Pocahontas has been considered in popular culture to be a princess. In 1841, William Watson Waldron of Trinity College, Dublin, in Ireland, published Pocahontas, American Princess: and Other Poems, calling Pocahontas "the beloved and only surviving daughter of the king". Indeed, Pocahontas was a favourite of her father's—his "delight and darling", according to the colonist Captain Ralph Hamor—but she was not in line to inherit a position as a weroance, subchief, or mamanatowick (paramount chief). Instead, Powhatan's brothers, sisters, and his sisters' children all stood in line to succeed him. In his A Map of Virginia John Smith explained how matrilineal inheritance worked among the Powhatans:
His [Powhatan's] kingdom descendeth not to his sonnes nor children: but first to his brethren, whereof he hath three namely Opitchapan, Opechanncanough, and Catataugh; and after their decease to his sisters. First to the eldest sister, then to the rest: and after them to the heires male and female of the eldest sister; but never to the heires of the males.
Interactions with the English
John Smith
In this chromolithograph credited to the New England Chromo. Lith. Company, around 1870, Pocahontas saves the life of John Smith. The scene is idealized and relies on stereotypes of Native Americans rather than reliable information about the particulars of this historical moment. There are no mountains in Tidewater Virginia, for example, and the Powhatans lived not in tipis but in thatched houses. And the scene that Smith famously described in his Generall Historie (1624) did not take place outdoors but in a longhouse.
Pocahontas is most famously linked to the English colonist Captain John Smith, who arrived in Virginia with a hundred other settlers in April 1607, at the behest of the London Company. After building a fort on a marshy peninsula poking out into the James River, the Englishmen had numerous encounters over the next several months with the people of Tsenacommacah, some of them friendly, some hostile. Then, in December 1607, while exploring on the Chickahominy River, Smith was captured by a hunting party led by Powhatan's younger brother (or close relative) Opechancanough and brought to Powhatan's capital at Werowocomoco. In his 1608 account, Smith describes a great feast followed by a long talk with Powhatan. He does not mention Pocahontas in relation to his capture, and claims that they first met some months later. Huber understands the meeting of Smith and Powhatan as the latter's attempt to bring Smith, and so the English, into his chiefdom: Powhatan offered Smith rule of the town of Capahosic, which was close to Powhatan's capital at Werowocomoco. The paramount chief thus hoped to keep Smith and his men "nearby and better under control".
In 1616, Smith wrote a letter to Queen Anne in anticipation of Pocahontas's visit to England. In this new account, his capture included the threat of his own death: "at the minute of my execution", he wrote, "she [Pocahontas] hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown." In his 1624 Generall Historie, published long after the death of Pocahontas, Smith expanded the story. Writing about himself in the third person, he explained that after he was captured and taken to the paramount chief, "two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him [Smith], dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death ..."
In a later publication, True Travels (1630), Smith claimed a similar rescue by another young girl in 1602, following his capture by Turks in Hungary; the story resembles a popular contemporary type of moral tale, in which a Christian hero maintains his faith despite threats and intimidation. Karen Ordahl Kupperman suggests that Smith used such details to embroider his first account, thus producing a more dramatic, second account of his encounter with Pocahontas as a heroine worthy of reception by Queen Anne. Its later revision and publication was probably an attempt to raise his own stock and reputation; he had long since fallen from favor with the London Company, which had funded the Jamestown enterprise. Anthropologist Frederic W. Gleach, drawing on substantial ethnohistory, suggests that Smith's second account, while substantially accurate, represents his misunderstanding of a three-stage ritual intended to adopt Smith, as representative of the English colony, into the confederacy; but not all writers are convinced, some suggesting the absence of certain corroborating evidence.
Early histories did establish that Pocahontas befriended Smith and the Jamestown colony. Pocahontas often went to the settlement and played games with the boys there. When the colonists were starving, "every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought him [Smith] so much provision that saved many of their lives that else for all this had starved with hunger". As the colonists expanded their settlement further, the Powhatan felt their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again.
In late 1609, an injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England for medical care. The English told the Powhatans that Smith was dead. Pocahontas believed that account and hence afterwards, stopped visiting Jamestown. Much later, she learned that he was living in England when she traveled there with her husband John Rolfe.
Capture
In his engraving The abduction of Pocahontas (1619), Johann Theodor de Bry depicts a full narrative. Starting in the lower left, Pocahontas (centre) is deceived by the weroance Iopassus, who holds as bait a copper kettle, and his wife, who pretends to cry. At centre right, Pocahontas is put on the boat and feasted. In the background, the action moves from the Potomac to the York River, where negotiations for a hostage trade fail and the English attack and burn a Native American village.
Pocahontas's capture occurred in the context of the First Anglo-Powhatan War, a conflict between the Jamestown settlers and the Native Americans that began late in the summer of 1609. In the first years of war, the English took control of the James River, both at its mouth and at the falls. Captain Samuel Argall, in the meantime, pursued contacts with Native American groups in the northern portion of Powhatan's paramount chiefdom. The Patawomecks, who lived on the Potomac River, were not always loyal to Powhatan, and living with them was a young English interpreter named Henry Spelman. In March 1613, Argall learned that Pocahontas was visiting the Patawomeck village of Passapatanzy and living under the protection of the Weroance Iopassus (also known as Japazaws).
With Spelman's help translating, Argall pressured Iopassus to assist in Pocahontas's capture by promising an alliance with the English against the Powhatans. They tricked Pocahontas into boarding Argall's ship and held her for ransom, demanding the release of English prisoners held by her father, along with various stolen weapons and tools. Powhatan returned the prisoners but failed to satisfy the colonists with the number of weapons and tools he returned. A long standoff ensued, during which the English kept Pocahontas captive.
During the year-long wait, she was held at Henricus, in modern-day Chesterfield County, Virginia. Little is known about her life there, although colonist Ralph Hamor wrote that she received "extraordinary courteous usage". Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow, in a 2007 book, asserts that Pocahontas was raped during this time, citing oral tradition handed down over four centuries. According to Helen Rountree, "Other historians have disputed that such oral tradition survived and instead argue that any mistreatment of Pocahontas would have gone against the interests of the English in their negotiations with Powhatan. A truce had been called, the Indians still far outnumbered the English, and the colonists feared retaliation."
At this time, the minister at Henricus, Alexander Whitaker, taught Pocahontas about Christianity and helped her to improve her English. Upon her baptism, Pocahontas took the Christian name "Rebecca".
In March 1614, the standoff built up to a violent confrontation between hundreds of English and Powhatan men on the Pamunkey River. At Powhatan's capital of Matchcot, the English encountered a group of senior Native American leaders. The English allowed Pocahontas to talk to her countrymen. When Powhatan arrived, Pocahontas reportedly rebuked him for valuing her "less than old swords, pieces, or axes", and said that she preferred to live with the English, "who loved her".
Possible first marriage
Current Mattaponi tradition holds that Pocahontas's first husband was Kocoum, brother of the Patawomeck weroance Japazaws, and that Kocoum was killed by the English after his wife's capture in 1613. Today's Patawomecks believe that Pocahontas and Kocoum had a daughter, Ka-Okee, who was raised by the Patawomecks after her father's death and her mother's abduction.
However, Kocoum's actual identity, location, and even existence have been widely debated among scholars for centuries, with several historians arguing that the only mention of a "Kocoum" in any English document is taken from a brief statement written about 1616 by William Strachey in England that Pocahontas had been living married to a "private captaine called Kocoum" for two years. Since 1614 is certainly when she married John Rolfe, and no other records even hint at any previous husband, it has accordingly been suggested that when Strachey wrote of the "private captaine called Kocoum" he was mistakenly referring to Rolfe himself, with the reference being later misunderstood as one of Powhatan's officers. There was a Powhatan military rank called kokoraws, sometimes translated "captain", and scholarly debate has asked whether Strachey could have meant this as one of his famously divergent spellings, as a gloss to "Captayne". In addition, the date of Strachey's original statement has been widely disputed by numerous authors attempting either to make the case or refute, that Pocahontas had been previously married. If there was such a marriage and Kocoum was not murdered, it likely ended, according to Powhatan custom, when Pocahontas was captured.
Marriage to John Rolfe
During her stay in Henricus, Pocahontas met John Rolfe, whose English-born wife, Sarah Hacker, and child, Bermuda Rolfe, had died before he came to Virginia. Rolfe established a Virginia plantation, Varina Farms, where he successfully cultivated a new strain of tobacco. He was a pious man and agonized over the potential moral repercussions of marrying a heathen. In a long letter to the governor requesting permission to wed her, he expressed his love for Pocahontas, and his belief that he would be saving her soul. He wrote that he was:
motivated not by the unbridled desire of carnal affection, but for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the Glory of God, for my own salvation ... namely Pocahontas, to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have been a long time so entangled, and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I was even a-wearied to unwind myself thereout.
Pocahontas's feelings about Rolfe are unknown. They were married on April 5, 1614, by chaplain Richard Buck, probably at Jamestown. For two years they lived at Rolfe's plantation, Varina Farms, across the James River from Henricus. Their son, Thomas, was born on January 30, 1615.
Their marriage created a climate of peace between the Jamestown colonists and Powhatan's tribes; it endured for eight years as the "Peace of Pocahontas." In 1615, Ralph Hamor wrote, "Since the wedding we have had friendly commerce and trade not only with Powhatan but also with his subjects round about us."
England
The Virginia Company of London had long seen one of its primary goals as the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity. With the conversion of Pocahontas and her marriage to an Englishman – all of which helped bring an end to the First Anglo-Powhatan War – the company saw an opportunity to promote investment. The company decided to bring Pocahontas to England as a symbol of the tamed New World "savage" and the success of the Jamestown settlement. In 1616, the Rolfes traveled to England, arriving at the port of Plymouth on June 12. They journeyed to London by coach, accompanied by a group of about eleven other Powhatans, including a holy man named Tomocomo. John Smith was living in London at the time and while Pocahontas was in Plymouth, she learned he was still alive. Smith did not meet Pocahontas, but wrote to Queen Anne, the wife of King James, urging that Pocahontas be treated with respect as a royal visitor. He suggested that if she were treated badly, her "present love to us and Christianity might turn to ... scorn and fury", and England might lose the chance to "rightly have a Kingdom by her means".
Pocahontas was entertained at various social gatherings. On January 5, 1617, she and Tomocomo were brought before the king at the old Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall at a performance of Ben Jonson's masque The Vision of Delight. According to Smith, King James was so unprepossessing that neither Pocahontas nor Tomocomo realized whom they had met until it was explained to them afterwards.
Although Pocahontas was not a princess in the context of Powhatan culture, the Virginia Company nevertheless presented her as a princess to the English public. The inscription on a 1616 engraving of Pocahontas, made for the company, reads: "MATOAKA ALS REBECCA FILIA POTENTISS : PRINC : POWHATANI IMP:VIRGINIÆ", which means: "Matoaka, alias Rebecca, daughter of the most powerful prince of the Powhatan Empire of Virginia". Many English at this time recognized Powhatan to be the ruler of an empire, and they presumably accorded to his daughter what they considered appropriate status. Smith's letter to Queen Anne refers to "Powhatan their chief King". Cleric and travel writer Samuel Purchas recalled meeting Pocahontas in London, noting that she impressed those she met because she "carried her selfe as the daughter of a king". When he met her again in London, Smith referred to Pocahontas deferentially as a "Kings daughter".
Pocahontas was apparently treated well in London. At the masque, her seats were described as "well placed", and, according to Purchas, John King, Bishop of London, "entertained her with festival state and pomp beyond what I have seen in his greate hospitalitie afforded to other ladies".
Not all the English were so impressed. According to Helen C. Rountree, "there is no contemporary evidence to suggest ... that Pocahontas was regarded [in England] as anything like royalty". Rather, she was considered to be something of a curiosity and, according to one observer, she was merely "the Virginian woman".
Pocahontas and Rolfe lived in the suburb of Brentford, Middlesex, for some time, as well as at Rolfe's family home at Heacham Hall, Heacham, Norfolk. In early 1617, Smith met the couple at a social gathering and later wrote that when Pocahontas saw him, "without any words, she turned about, obscured her face, as not seeming well contented", and was left alone for two or three hours. Later, they spoke more; Smith's record of what she said to him is fragmentary and enigmatic. She reminded him of the "courtesies she had done", saying, "you did promise Powhatan what was yours would be his, and he the like to you". She then discomfited him by calling him "father", explaining Smith had called Powhatan "father" when a stranger in Virginia, "and by the same reason so must I do you". Smith did not accept this form of address because, he wrote, Pocahontas outranked him as "a King's daughter". Pocahontas then, "with a well-set countenance", said:
Were you not afraid to come into my father's country and caused fear in him and all his people (but me) and fear you here I should call you "father"? I tell you then I will, and you shall call me child, and so I will be for ever and ever your countryman.
Finally, Pocahontas told Smith that she and her fellow Native Americans had thought him dead, but her father had told Tomocomo to seek him "because your countrymen will lie much".
Death
In March 1617, John Rolfe and Pocahontas boarded a ship to return to Virginia; the ship had sailed only as far as Gravesend on the river Thames, when Pocahontas became gravely ill. She was taken ashore and died at the approximate age of 21. It is not known what caused her death, but theories range from pneumonia, smallpox, and tuberculosis to her having been poisoned. According to Rolfe, she died saying, "all must die, but tis enough that her child liveth".
Pocahontas' funeral took place on March 21, 1617, in the parish of Saint George's, Gravesend. Her grave is thought to be underneath the church's chancel, though since that church was destroyed in a fire in 1727, her exact gravesite is unknown. Her memory is honored with a life-size bronze statue at St. George's Church by William Ordway Partridge.
Descendants and legacy
Pocahontas and her husband, John Rolfe, had one child, Thomas Rolfe, who was born in January 1615. The following year, Thomas' parents travelled to London.
Pocahontas and her father, Chief Powhatan, have many notable descendants, including Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, Woodrow Wilson's wife; American Western actor Glenn Strange, astronomer and mathematician Percival Lowell and members of the First Families of Virginia, including George Wythe Randolph, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, and Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd.
In 1907, Pocahontas became the first Native American to be honored on a US stamp. She was a member of the inaugural class of Virginia Women in History in 2000.
In July 2015, the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, descendants of the Powhatan chiefdom, of which Pocahontas was a member, became the first federally recognized tribe in the state of Virginia.*
Idealized illustration of "Pine Leaf", possibly identified with Woman Chief, from James Beckwourth's autobiography.
Bíawacheeitchish, in English Woman Chief (c. 1806 – 1858), was a bacheeítche (chief) and warrior of the Crow people. Interested in traditionally male pursuits from an early age, she became one of the Crows' most significant leaders, joining the Council of Chiefs as the third ranking member. She attracted substantial attention from Western visitors; she may be the same person as "Pine Leaf" described by James Beckwourth, though the accuracy of this account is challenged.
Biography
The woman eventually known as Woman Chief was born to the Gros Ventres people; her birth name is unknown. At the age of about 10 she was taken prisoner by a raiding party of Crows, and was adopted by a Crow warrior who raised her among his people. She showed a disposition to assume traditionally male activities, and her foster father evidently encouraged her pursuits, as he had lost his sons to death or capture. She earned acclaim for her horse riding, marksmanship, and ability to field-dress a buffalo. However, unlike other Two-Spirits, she wore typical female clothing rather than adopting men's garments. When her father died, she assumed leadership of his lodge.
She gained renown as a warrior during a raid by the Blackfoot on a fort sheltering Crow and white families. She reportedly fought off multiple attackers and was instrumental in turning back the raid. She subsequently raised her own band of warriors and raided Blackfoot settlements, taking off many horses and scalps. For her deeds she was accepted to represent her lodge as bacheeítche (chief) in the Council of Chiefs and was given the name Bíawacheeitchish, or Woman Chief. She eventually rose to the rank of third among the Council's 160 lodges. She married four wives, which increased the wealth and prestige of her lodge. She became involved in peace negotiations with other Upper Missouri tribes following the Treaty of Fort Laramie, and successfully negotiated peace with the Gros Ventres, the tribe of her birth. After several years of peace, Woman Chief was ambushed and killed by a Gros Ventres party.
Western visitors who met Woman Chief including Edwin Denig and Rudolph Kurz, were fascinated with her. Typically, they considered her an exotic figure among the patriarchal Crow and likened her to the Amazons of European myth. Their accounts are now considered biased, though they provide valuable details about Woman Chief's life. James Beckwourth wrote about a Crow warrior named Bar-chee-am-pe, or Pine Leaf, who may be identified with Woman Chief. Some details of Pine Leaf's life match what is known of Woman Chief, though Beckwourth's account appears to be greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fictional. Beckwourth claimed to have met Pine Leaf while living with the Crow in the 1820's. He wrote that she was a formidable warrior who vowed to kill one hundred enemies before she would marry. He further claimed to have had a romantic relationship with her and to have proposed marriage. Among those challenging Beckwourth's account was Bernard DeVoto, who wrote that Beckwourth is reliable save for three areas: numbers, romance, and his own importance.
Beside Woman Chief there were other known Warrior Women of the Crow Nation, including Akkeekaahuush (Comes Toward The Near Bank, c. 1810 – 1880) and Biliíche Héeleelash (Among The Willows, c. 1837 – 1912), the latter a prominent war leader (pipe carrier).*
Lori Ann Piestewa (/paɪˈɛstəwɑː/ py-ESS-tə-wah; December 14, 1979 – March 23, 2003) was a United States Army soldier killed during the Iraq War. A member of the Quartermaster Corps, she died in the same Iraqi attack in which fellow soldiers Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch were injured. A member of the Hopi tribe, Piestewa was the first Native American woman in history to die in combat while serving in the U.S. military and the first woman in the U.S. military killed in the Iraq War. Arizona's Piestewa Peak is named in her honor.
Early life and education
Piestewa was born in Tuba City, Arizona, to Terry Piestewa and Priscilla "Percy" Baca. Her father is a full-blooded Hopi Native American, her mother is a Mexican-American. The couple first met in 1964 and married in November 1968.
The Piestewa family had a long military tradition; her paternal grandfather served in the U.S. Army in the European Theatre of World War II, and her father Terry Piestewa was drafted in the U.S. Army in September 1965 and served a tour of duty in the Vietnam War before he returned home in March 1967.
The Piestewa family resided in a trailer park in Tuba City, a town located on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Coconino County. As a child, she was given the Hopi name Qötsa-Hon-Mana (Hopi pronunciation: [ˈḵøt͡sa ˈhon ˈmana], White Bear Girl). Her surname is derived from a Hopi language root meaning "water pooled on the desert by a hard rain"; thus, Piestewa (Hopi: [piˈɛstɛwa]) translates loosely as "the people who live by the water."
Ambush in Nasiriyah, Iraq
Piestewa was a member of the US Army's 507th Maintenance Company, a support unit of maintenance and repair personnel. Her company was traveling in a convoy through the desert and was meant to bypass Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq, during the opening days of the war; but the convoy got lost and ran into an ambush in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003.
As Piestewa came under "a torrent of fire" (in the words of an Army investigation of the battle) she drove at high speed, evading enemy fire until a rocket-propelled grenade hit her Humvee. The explosion sent her vehicle into the rear of a disabled tractor-trailer. Piestewa, Johnson, and Lynch all survived the crash with injuries, while three other soldiers in the Humvee died. They were taken prisoner along with four others, with Piestewa dying of her wounds soon after. A video of some of the American prisoners of war, including Piestewa (filmed shortly before she died in an Iraqi hospital), was later shown around the world on Al Jazeera television. According to Jessica Lynch's book—I'm a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story—Piestewa was wounded in the head, and it was impossible to perform delicate neurosurgery in an Iraqi civilian hospital in wartime conditions (such as intermittent electric power).
The families of soldiers in the 507th heard almost right away of the ambush and fatalities in the unit. The Piestewa family saw people in her unit being interviewed by Iraqi TV, and for more than a week families of the two women waited for news. All around Tuba City signs were hung out telling people: "Put your porch light on, show Lori the way home." They used white stone to spell her name on a 200 foot high mesa just outside the town.
Legacy
Piestewa was awarded the Purple Heart and Prisoner of War Medal. The U.S. Army posthumously promoted her from private first class to specialist.
Lynch has repeatedly stated that Piestewa was the true heroine of the ambush and named her daughter Dakota Ann in honor of her fallen comrade. In addition, many entities have honored her memory with memorials. Arizona's state government renamed Squaw Peak in the Phoenix Mountains near Phoenix as Piestewa Peak and this was codified by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names on April 10, 2008; the freeway that passes near this mountain was also renamed in her honor. In addition, Senator Tom Daschle honored her, as did Indian Nations across United States. Since her death, the Grand Canyon State Games organizers have held an annual Lori Piestewa National Native American Games, which brings participants from across the country. A plaque bearing her name is also located at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and Fort Bliss, Texas. She has also been memorialized with a plaque and ceremony at Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial in La Jolla, California. On November 10, 2011, American Legion Post No. 80 on the Hopi Reservation was renamed the Lori Piestewa Post # 80. On November 30, 2011, the Directorate of Training Sustainment headquarters at Fort Benning, Georgia was named Piestewa Hall in her honor.
Her death led to a rare joint prayer gathering between members of the Hopi and Navajo tribes, which have had a centuries-old rivalry.
In May 2005, Piestewa's parents and children had a brand-new home built by Ty Pennington and his crew on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition accompanied by Jessica Lynch. They also built a new veterans' center on the Navajo reservation.*
Susan LaFlesche Picotte (June 17, 1865 – September 18, 1915) was an Omaha Native American doctor and reformer in the late 19th century. She is widely acknowledged as the first Native American to earn a medical degree. She campaigned for public health and for the formal, legal allotment of land to members of the Omaha tribe.
Picotte was an active social reformer as well as a physician. She worked to discourage drinking on the reservation where she worked as the physician, as part of the temperance movement of the 19th century. Picotte also campaigned to prevent and treat tuberculosis, which then had no cure, as part of a public health campaign on the reservation. She also worked to help other Omaha navigate the bureaucracy of the Office of Indian Affairs and receive the money owed to them for the sale of their land.
Early life
Susan La Flesche was born in June 1865 on the Omaha Reservation in eastern Nebraska. Her parents were both biracial and had lived for periods of time beyond the borders of the reservation. They married sometime in 1845-1846.
Her father, Joseph LaFlesche, also called Iron Eye, was of Ponca and French Canadian ancestry. He was educated in St. Louis, but returned to the reservation as a young man and identified culturally as Omaha. He was adopted by Chief Young Elk in 1853, who chose him as his successor, and LaFlesche became the principal leader of the Omaha tribe around 1855. Iron Eye sought to help his people by encouraging assimilation, particularly through the policy of land allotment, which caused some friction among the Omaha.
Her mother, Mary Gale, was the daughter of Dr. John Gale, an Army surgeon stationed at Fort Atkinson, and Nicomi, a woman of mixed Omaha-Oto-Iowa heritage. Like her husband, Mary Gale identified as Omaha, and though she understood French and English, she refused to speak any language other than Omaha.
Susan was the youngest of four girls, including her sisters Susette (1854–1903), Rosalie (1861–1900), and Marguerite (1862–1945). Her older half-brother Francis La Flesche later became renowned as an ethnologist, anthropologist and musicologist, who focused on the Omaha and Osage cultures. As she grew, LaFlesche learned the traditions of her heritage, but her parents felt that certain native rituals would be detrimental in the white world; they kept their youngest daughter from receiving an Omaha name or traditional tattoos across her forehead. She spoke Omaha with her parents, but her father and oldest sister Susette encouraged her to speak English with her sisters.
Education
Early education
LaFlesche's education began early, at the mission school on the reservation, which was run first by the Presbyterians and then by the Quakers after the enactment of President Ulysses S. Grant's "Peace Policy" in 1869. The reservation school was a boarding school where whites took LaFlesche and other Native children away from their families and taught them the habits of white people in hopes of assimilating them into white society.
After several years at the mission school, LaFlesche left the reservation for Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she studied at the Elizabeth Institute for two and a half years. She returned to the reservation in 1882 and taught at the agency school before leaving again for more education, this time at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, from 1884 to 1886. It had been established as an historically black college after the American Civil War, but had become a destination also for Native American students.
At Hampton, LaFlesche attended with her sister Marguerite, her stepbrother Cary, and ten other Omaha children. The girls learned housewife skills and the boys learned vocational skills as part of the ongoing campaign to "civilize" Native Americans through education. While LaFlesche was a student at the Hampton Institute, she became romantically involved with a young Sioux man named Thomas Ikinicapi. She referred to him affectionately as "T.I." but broke off her relationship with him before graduating from Hampton.
Female graduates of the Hampton Institute were generally encouraged to teach or to return to their reservations and become Christian wives and mothers. LaFlesche, however, decided in 1886 that she would apply to medical school.
Medical school
Though women were often healers in Omaha society, it was uncommon for any Victorian woman in the United States to go to medical school. In the late 19th century, only a few medical schools accepted women.
LaFlesche was accepted at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), which had been established in 1850 as one of the few medical schools on the East Coast for the education of women. Medical school was expensive, however, and LaFlesche was not able to afford it on her own. For help, she turned to family friend Alice Fletcher, an ethnographer from Massachusetts who had a broad network of contacts within women's reform organizations.
Fletcher encouraged LaFlesche to appeal to the Connecticut Indian Association, a local auxiliary of the Women's National Indian Association (WNIA). The WNIA sought to "civilize" the Indians by encouraging Victorian values of domesticity among Indian women, and sponsored field matrons whose task was to teach Native American women "cleanliness" and "godliness."
LaFlesche, in writing to the Connecticut Indian Association, had described her desire to enter the homes of her people as a physician and teach them hygiene as well as curing their ills; this was in line with the Victorian virtues of domesticity which the Association wanted to encourage. The Association sponsored LaFlesche's medical school expenses, and also paid for her housing, books and other supplies. They requested that she remain single during her time at medical school and for several years after her graduation, in order to focus on her practice.
At the WMCP, LaFlesche studied chemistry, anatomy, physiology, histology, pharmaceutical science, obstetrics, and general medicine, and, like her peers, did clinical work at facilities in Philadelphia alongside students from other colleges, both male and female. She was valedictorian and graduated at the top of her class on March 14, 1889, after a rigorous three-year course of study.
In June 1889, she applied for the position of government physician at the Omaha Agency Indian School and was offered the position less than two months later. After her graduation, she went on a speaking tour at the request of the Connecticut Indian Association, assuring white audiences that Indians could benefit from white civilization. She maintained her ties with the Association even after medical school; she was made a medical missionary to the Omaha after graduation, and the Association funded medical instruments and books for her during her early years of practicing medicine in Nebraska.
Medical practice
LaFlesche returned to the Omaha reservation in 1889 to take up her position as the physician at the government boarding school on the reservation, run by the Office of Indian Affairs. There she was responsible for teaching the students about hygiene and keeping them healthy.
Though she was not obligated to care for the broader community, the school was closer to many people than the official reservation agency, and LaFlesche found herself caring for many members of the community as well as for the children of the school. From her office in a corner of the schoolyard, with the supplies provided by the Connecticut Indian Association, she helped people with their health but also with more mundane tasks, such as writing letters and translating official documents.
She was widely trusted in the community, making house calls and caring for patients sick with tuberculosis, influenza, cholera, dysentery, and trachoma. For several years, she traveled the reservation caring for patients, on a government salary of $500.00 per year, in addition to the $250 from the Women's National Indian Association for her work as a medical missionary.
In December 1892, she became very sick, and was bedridden for several weeks. She was forced to take time off in 1893 to care for her ailing mother and also to restore her own health. She resigned in 1893 to take care of her dying mother, putting familial obligations before her public work.
In 1894, LaFlesche met and became engaged to Henry Picotte, a Sioux Indian from the Yankton agency. He had been married before and divorced his wife. Many of LaFlesche's friends and family were surprised at the romance, but the two were married in June 1894.
Picotte and her husband had two sons: Caryl, born in 1895 or 1896, and Pierre, born in early 1898. Picotte continued to practice medicine after the birth of her children, depending on the support of her husband to make that possible. This was unusual for Victorian-era women, who were generally expected to stay home after marriage in order to be full-time mothers. Picotte's practice treated both Omaha and white patients in the town of Bancroft and surrounding communities.
Public health reforms
Temperance
In addition to caring for her people's immediate medical problems, Picotte sought to educate her community about preventive medicine and other public health issues, including temperance. Alcoholism was a serious problem on the Omaha reservation, and a personal one for Picotte: her husband Henry was an alcoholic. Disreputable whites used alcohol to take advantage of Omahas while making land deals. Picotte, as reservation physician and a prominent member of the community, was well aware of the damage such practices caused.
Picotte campaigned against alcohol, giving lectures about the virtues of temperance, and embracing coercive efforts as well, such as prohibition. In the early 1890's, she campaigned for a prohibition law in Thurston County, which did not pass, in part because of unscrupulous liquor dealers who took advantage of illiterate Omahas by handing them ballot tickets with "Against Prohibition" on them. Later, she lobbied for the Meilklejohn Bill, which would outlaw the sale of alcohol to any recipient of allotted land whose property was still held in trust by the government. The Meiklejohn Bill became law in January 1897 but proved nearly impossible to enforce.
Picotte continued to fight against alcohol for the rest of her life, and when the peyote religion arrived on the Omaha reservation in the early 1900's, she gradually accepted it as a means of fighting alcoholism, as many members of the peyote religion were able to reconnect with their spiritual traditions and reject alcoholic ambitions.
Sanitation, tuberculosis, and other public health reforms
A public health poster from the 1920s, part of the campaign against tuberculosis in which Picotte participated.
Beyond temperance, Picotte worked on public health issues in the wider community, including school hygiene, food sanitation, and efforts to combat the spread of tuberculosis. She served on the health board of the town of Walthill, and was a founding member of the Thurston County Medical Society in 1907.
Picotte was also the chair of the state health committee of the Nebraska Federation of Women's Clubs during the first decade of the 20th century. As chair, she spearheaded efforts to educate people about public health issues, particularly in the schools, believing that the key to fighting disease was education. From her time in medical school onward, she also campaigned for the building of a hospital on the reservation. It was finally completed in 1913 and later named in her honor.
Her most important crusade was against tuberculosis, which killed hundreds of Omaha, including her husband Henry in 1905. In 1907, she wrote to the Indian Office to try to persuade them to help, but they turned her down, blaming a lack of funding. Because there was not yet a cure available, Picotte advocated cleanliness, fresh air, and the eradication of houseflies, which were believed to be major carriers of TB.
Picotte's willingness to engage in political action carried over into areas other than public health. After the death of her husband, she became increasingly active in campaigns against land fraud among the Omaha.
Political involvement and the issue of allotment
Struggles with inheritance
The issue of land allotment came up again when Picotte's husband Henry died in 1905. He left about 185 acres of land in South Dakota to her and their two sons, Pierre and Caryl, but complications had arisen in claiming and selling it. At the time of Henry's death, the land was still held in trust by the government, and in order to receive the monies from its sale, his heirs had to prove competency. Minors, such as Picotte's sons, had to have a legal guardian who could prove competency on their behalf.
The process of gaining the monies owed to them was long and arduous, and Picotte had to send letter after letter to the Indian Office to get them to recognize her as a competent individual in order to receive her portion of the inheritance, which R. J. Taylor, the agent on the Yankton reservation, finally granted to her in 1907, nearly two years after her husband's death. However, gaining her children's inheritance proved to be a harder struggle. Another relative, Peter Picotte, was the legal guardian of her sons' land, because it was in another state, but he refused to consent to the sale of the land.
Picotte responded by bombarding Commissioner Leupp, head of the Indian Office, with letters, painting Peter Picotte as a drunk and R. J. Taylor as intransigent and incompetent, while making a case for herself as the best manager of her sons' money. This time, her letters received attention, and the Indian Office responded to her within a week of the original letters, informing her that Taylor had been ordered to ignore Peter Picotte's objections.
Picotte invested this money in rental properties, and was able to use that income to support herself and her sons. This was not the end of her fights with the bureaucracy of the federal government, however. Her children inherited land from some Sioux relatives of her husband, and she entered into another battle with the bureaucracy, which ended positively in 1908.
Action for the community
Picotte's struggles with the bureaucracy of allotment continued on behalf of other members of her community. In her position as a doctor, Picotte had gained the trust of her community, and her role as a local leader had expanded from letter writer/interpreter to defender of Omaha land interests. She sought to help other Omaha who wanted to sell their lands and gain control of the monies owed to them, and she also tried to help resolve situations where whites took advantage of Indians who chose to lease land.
Doing this work, she became increasingly aware and outraged at the land fraud committed by a syndicate of men on and around the Omaha reservation. Picotte focused on the syndicate, which was made up of three white and two Omaha men who defrauded minors of their inheritances. In a bizarre twist, Picotte, who had spent much of her life proclaiming that the Omaha had the same capacity for "civilization" as any white man, wrote to the Indian Office in 1909 to say that some of her people were too incompetent to protect themselves against the fraudsters and thus needed the continued guardianship of the federal government. In 1910, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with officials from the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA), and told them that though most of the Omaha were perfectly competent to manage their own affairs, the Indian Office had stifled the development of business skills and knowledge of the white world among Indians, and thus the incompetence of a minority of Omaha was, in fact, the fault of the federal government.
This argument was the product of her campaigns against the consolidation of the Omaha and Winnebago agencies, which had been suggested in 1904 and revived in 1910. Picotte had been part of a movement among the Omaha opposing this consolidation, and used letters and harshly critical newspaper articles to get her point across to the OIA bureaucracy. She argued that the unnecessary red tape created by the consolidation was nothing but an extra burden on the Omaha and was further proof that the OIA treated them like children, rather than as citizens ready to participate in a democracy. She continued to work on her community's behalf until the end of her life, though much of that work seemed to be in vain, as her people lost many of their ancestral lands and became more, not less, dependent on the OIA.
Illness and death
Picotte suffered for most of her life from chronic illness. In medical school, she had been bothered by trouble breathing, and after a few years working on the reservation, she was forced to take a break to recover her health in 1892, as she suffered from chronic pain in her neck, head, and ears. She recovered but became ill again in 1893, after a fall from her horse left her with significant internal injuries.
As Picotte aged, her health declined, and by the time that the new reservation hospital was built in Walthill in 1913, she was too frail to be its sole administrator. By early March 1915, she was suffering greatly and died of bone cancer on September 18, 1915. She is buried in Bancroft Cemetery, Bancroft, Nebraska near her father, mother, sisters and half-brother.
Picotte's sons went on to live full lives. Caryl Picotte made a career in the United States Army and served in World War II, eventually settling in Detroit, Michigan. Pierre Picotte lived in Walthill, Nebraska, for most of his life and raised a family of three children.
Tributes to Picotte
The reservation hospital in Walthill, Nebraska, now a community center, is named after Picotte and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993.
An elementary school in western Omaha Nebraska is named after Picotte.
On June 17, 2017, the 152nd anniversary of her birth, Google released a Google Doodle honoring Picotte.*
The closer we are to the present moment, the more details exist: this is because the closer we are to the present, the more we have to remember, and the more material archives we need in order to hold all of the information bits.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
