Volume 14 Spring 2003 Issue #3

Beyond "Discovery," Lewis & Clark from an Indigenous Perspective

By Dr. Richard Littlebear

The imminent Corps of Discovery bicentennial observances offer an excellent opportunity for us indigenous people to learn about non-indigenous people and for them to learn about us as a contemporary presence. After more than 500 years, both groups still have a lot to learn about each other.

I think the first thing non-indigenous people in this country have to learn is that American history did not begin with Columbus, and Western American history did not begin with Lewis and Clark. (However, I do have it on good authority that South Dakota history did begin with the completion of Mt. Rushmore and that the date will be revised when the Crazy Horse monument is completed.)

We Cheyenne people encountered Lewis and Clark in 1804 along the Missouri River in present day North Dakota, but that's not when our history began. For us Cheyenne people, this initial contact with a different culture was equivalent to what happened to us Americans on September 11, 2001. This 1804 encounter launched irreversible and, sometimes, catastrophic changes for the Cheyenne people and, indeed, for all of the indigenous people of this land.

Prophecies Fulfilled

Long before Lewis and Clark arrived, our Cheyenne prophet, Sweet Medicine, predicted much of what has happened to the Cheyenne and to other indigenous people. As most Cheyennes, I have heard stories about Sweet Medicine's prophecies ever since I was young. Sweet Medicine prophesied the coming of the white race and of the horse and cattle. He said that we would adopt many of the things and many of the ways that the white man brought to us, and when we did so, we would lose our culture. We would eat the quivering meat of the white man's cattle, and we would quiver like that meat. We would eat sweet water (sugar) and become lost because of it. He predicted the coming of fast transportation. Pointing to some distant hills, he said that we would be able to reach them in less than a day. Much of what he predicted has come to pass.

There was a time when a nontraditional Cheyenne like me, even though my first language is Cheyenne, could neither talk nor write about Sweet Medicine. He was that holy. However, since non-Cheyennes have written about him, it allows me to do so. The fact that we can write about Sweet Medicine may be indicative of the cultural, social, and spiritual breakdown that has occurred since we met Lewis and Clark. Nevertheless, the prophecies of Sweet Medicine still have an abiding influence on Cheyenne thinking to this day, and they contribute to my ambivalence toward the Lewis and Clark-led Corps of Discovery.

The "success" of Lewis and Clark hastened the killing of many of the indigenous people and more firmly set the tone for the way the U.S. government dealt with, and still deals with, the indigenous people of this land. How, for instance, can a people "discover" a country that is already inhabited by people, especially when the success of their journey depended so heavily on a young Shoshone girl who had apparently already traversed this "discovered" land at least once?

How can a people purchase territory that is already owned even though the ownership is not written or owned according to European standards? It takes a great deal of arrogance to buy land without consulting the indigenous people, no matter how difficult those consultations could have been. Even now the Bureau of Indian Affairs deals that way with us. It often conducts business and concludes deals and then "consults" with indigenous people after the fact. But that's another story.

This arrogance has characterized America ever since its inception. For instance, the Constitution advocates equality for all men, yet some of the framers of the Constitution owned slaves. This arrogance promotes a double standard of equality, which, in the end, is not equality. Many of us Americans wondered how Arabs could dance in celebration of what happened to America on Sept. 11, 2001. As outrageously despicable as that celebratory dancing was, American arrogance in dealing with other peoples and other countries partially explains this reaction. In 1864, the residents of Denver, CO, celebrated in the streets after Colonel Chivington and his troops massacred 163 women, children, and elderly at Sand Creek.

Here in America, this arrogance had its beginnings with the first Thanksgiving and its aftermath, continued with the Louisiana Purchase and the purchase of Alaska, and has permeated the American government's dealings with its indigenous people ever since. Thus my ambivalence toward the coming bicentennial commemoration is rooted in the above historical situations, as seen through my indigenous eyes.

Death of People, Languages, and Cultures

I begin to lose my ambivalence, however, when I view the Corps of Discovery in a current perspective, especially since nearly 200 years have passed. Our people, our languages, and our cultures started dying the moment the first European set foot on this hemisphere. Lewis and Clark speeded up this dying.

Yes, thankfully, the population of indigenous people has increased in the past 100 years. In the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, for instance, about 85% of our people are less than 25 years of age. We have a young and rapidly increasing population. This increase belies our "savage" stereotype. (With these dramatic increases in our tribal populations, we must have some highly "romantic" inclinations!)

The population increase is a relatively recent occurrence for indigenous people in this country. For four centuries, the indigenous populations declined. The slow motion devastation accelerated when the Cherokees were herded west, when the Navajos were forced to take the Long Walk, when the Sioux endured Wounded Knee, when the Cheyenne people withstood the Sand Creek and Washita Massacres.

Early in our association with the European cultures, epidemics of different diseases had a devastating impact. Historian Paula Mitchell Marks pointed out that the most massive epidemic recorded occurred in the late 1830s. In her 1998 book (In a Barren Land: The American Indian Quest For Cultural Survival, 1607 to the Present) Marks says smallpox swept across the plains from the Missouri River into the Pacific Northwest and all the way into Canada and Alaska . . .. "An American Fur Company steamboat navigating the Missouri River in 1837 with smallpox-carrying passengers left as many as 10,000 Plains Indians dying of smallpox within a few weeks," she says.

This epidemic nearly annihilated the Mandans, who had hosted Lewis and Clark for a winter in 1803, possibly saving the Corps of Discovery from starvation. When they caught smallpox in 1837, their population dropped from an estimated 2,000 to 138, according to Marks. More than 90% of the Mandans died in four months. The population of the Mandans has since increased but their language and culture continue to slip away.

We seem to think that when those epidemics ended, nothing like that ever occurred again. Wrong! We now have epidemics of illiteracy, poverty, diabetes, alcoholism, drug abuse, and physical abuse of our children and the elderly. These epidemics are just as deadly as when Colonel Chivington rode into Black Kettle's Sand Creek camp. The irony is that some of these epidemics are self-inflicted. To compound this irony, some Cheyenne people are dealing drugs and alcohol to other Cheyennes! We indigenous people could avoid alcoholism, drugs, and abuse in all of its physical and violent forms, perhaps through our own Native healing practices.

Although the actual government-sanctioned, bounty hunting of indigenous people has ceased, the dying of our languages and cultures has been steady and relentless. These language and culture losses are a different sort of killing. Cultures and languages often become obsolete and disappear; that is a nearly inevitable and dynamic process. But in this case, government policies deliberately destroyed our people, our languages, and our cultures. Mission and boarding schools intensified the cultural and linguistic massacres during the 1870s, and the pressure continues to this day. Our languages and cultures have continued dying. We must find ways to halt this decline.

I could write endlessly about what the U.S. government and white people have done to the indigenous population of this land, but we have enough books already cataloguing all of these wrongs. But now we have the means to better our lives, and it is education.

Education can be our Buffalo

Education is the key to the success of America's indigenous people. We need an education that melds the best of both the indigenous and non-indigenous cultures. The students of today are going to be our leaders. I know that statement sounds trite, but there are momentous truths in it. Our leaders have to know about the stock exchange, about cybernetic technology, about international markets and foreign affairs, about negotiating with large corporate entities, and about effectively developing and marketing our natural resources and our individual natural talents.

We have suffered too long from inadequate, inappropriate, or just plain bad education. Tribal colleges and universities (tcus) are supplying a quality post-secondary education to our people despite limited physical and financial resources. We offer our people the choice to better our social, economic, and spiritual situations through education. The tribal colleges and universities offer an alternative to enrolling in regular four-year institutions as high school graduates so that the cultural and academic shock is minimized. Tcus were established to meet the needs of indigenous students and to offer venues for strengthening our languages and cultures and that's what they are doing by offering classes in indigenous languages, linguistics, and classroom methodologies. Our tribal colleges provide a transitional bridge to four-year institutions, especially for those students who are the first in their families to attend college. I often wish that I had had that kind of a bridge when I started college many years ago.

It is not easy to get an education at any level. I attended a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, though not as a boarder, during the first eight years of my schooling. This school is still located at Busby, MT, on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation where I was raised. I then attended an off-reservation high school where I was the only member of a minority. I got a bachelor's degree in English at Bethel College in Newton, KS, a master's in education at Montana State University, and a doctorate in education from Boston University.

I am often asked why I persisted. My academic education took over 30 years: I started college when I was 19 and finished my doctoral program when I was 54 years old. I too had limited physical, financial, and, sometimes I thought, intellectual resources. I kept going to school, sometimes out of sheer stubbornness (a characteristic that still helps me to this day).

I also persisted because I believe that if our Cheyenne ancestors could counsel us, they would say, "Get an education." To them an education would be the most potent weapon to deal with the white man's world. Getting educated means we are actualizing into the best Cheyenne people we can possibly be. My grandmother, Motse'eoo'e (Rose Little Bear), certainly instilled that belief in me. The years I spent getting an education have made my life a lot better. It has been a rewarding educational journey, one that will continue until I die.

To expand on this theme of education, I think that the Lewis and Clark (and Sakakawea) Bicentennial offers an excellent informational opportunity, especially for non-indigenous Americans, some of whom still view us as relics of the past. We can explain the realities of who we are today as indigenous people.

We also can learn about non-indigenous people because we, too, have stereotypes of other people. I often hear indigenous people preface some of their statements with "those white people." I think that all-inclusive statement does not recognize the diversity of white people. On the other hand, I resent the statements of non-indigenous people who say, "those Indians." and then go on to characterize us in stereotypical terms, also not acknowledging the reality of our diversity. I maintain that bias is bias no matter who the source is.

Conclusion

Personally, despite what has happened to us as indigenous people, I would still rather belong to a minority in this country than anywhere else on this planet. I believe that, among the nations of this world, America has the best chance of realizing its human rights ideals as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other pertinent documents. But, more importantly, this is also the land on which my loved ones have lived and died and where they are buried. This is the land that has our sacred places and that has deep spiritual connections to each of us indigenous people.

If my ambivalence is not to harden into resentment, the bicentennial commemoration should celebrate and acknowledge all of our presences here in this country, indigenous and non-indigenous. If this commemoration begins to educate people about other people and bring them together, it will, at the very least, start to build a fitting legacy for Sakakawea.

Hena'haanehe (that's all there is).

Richard Littlebear, Ed.D., has been president of Chief Dull Knife College on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana since 1999. He believes that learning to read and write the Cheyenne language has been his greatest academic achievement.