[Text/Observer Network columnist Frederick]
At 9:00 a.m. local time on February 23, the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing with Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, a candidate for interior nominated by biden's cabinet, to discuss his appointment.
As the most controversial cabinet member in the Biden administration, Deb Harlan's label is not just a former Member of the House of Representatives of New Mexico, "Protector of the Sioux Native Indian Reservation in the Standing Rock Area" -
If the nomination is passed, Deb Harlan will be the first member of the President's Cabinet in U.S. history to be a Native American woman.
Deb Harlan (Infographic/Wikipedia)
When it comes to the history of armed struggle between the natives of North America (the so-called "Indians") and the European colonizers, most people can know some of these stories to a greater or lesser extent because of the mass media dissemination - "The Great British Filial Piety Iroquois", "The Battle of the Big and Small Horns", "The Castor Cavalry Regiment", "The Tears of Chief Cheyenne", "The Bull and the Bison Bill"...
But in addition to the history of these guns and guns, there are also some Indigenous Peoples in North America who have embarked on a different path of struggle. In addition to weapons, ambushes, and battles, they chose to protect their legitimate rights and interests by participating in American politics, participating in elections, political propaganda and other peaceful ways, and wrote their own different "big and small corner battles" in front of the ballot box.
I. The War of Independence and the "Box War" in the Early Period of the Founding of the People's Republic of China
Obviously, since the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the relationship between the Native Americans of North America and the "Americans" at that time has not been harmonious at all.
At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, most of the Native Americans sided with Great Britain, and under the command of British commanders, carried out several small-scale raids and massacres (e.g., the Wyoming War,[1] the Cherry Valley Massacre, etc.) out of concern for the maintenance of trade and concerns about the apparent "territorial expansion" of the Thirteen States. This led to the Thirteen State Colonies engaged in bloody revenge on the Native Americans.
For example, George Washington wrote in a letter to John Sullivan, commander of the Sullivan Expedition, which begins:
"You should destroy their (Native American) settlements as much as possible, capture captives of all ages and genders, and destroy their crops to prevent further sowing in the coming year..." [3]
Although Washington also mentions providing food to the Natives to solve their difficulties later, it is clear that Sullivan did not care to read the contents of the following article, but rushed the "British Filial Piety" Iroquois (one of the most powerful North American Indigenous tribal alliances at that time, including the Mohawks, Cayuga, etc., the tribes under the alliance can be collectively called the "Iroquois") to British Canada.
John Sullivan (Infographic/metmuseum.org)
The first Indigenous North American tribe to sign a peace agreement with the Thirteen States and willing to live in peace with the Thirteen States was the Lenape (also known as the "Delaware People"), whose leader, The White Eyes, was a loyal ally of the Thirteen States, and under their leadership, the Wa signed the Peace of Fort Pitt with the Thirteen States, supporting each other.
But this fragile peace did not last long, and with the death of White Eye himself from smallpox, the vast majority of the Draa Wa, led by their successor chief, threw themselves into the arms of the British.
Commemorative coins commemorating the Peace of Fort Pitt
The American Revolutionary War was only the "prelude" to the beginning of the integration of the Indigenous peoples of North America into the United States, and this "prelude" was soon closed. The "prologue" was again opened until the Second American Revolutionary War in 1812.
Pushmataha of the Choctaws was the first "Indian general" to enjoy high prestige in both the Native American world and the white American world. Before the outbreak of the Second American Revolutionary War, in the face of a request from the Shawni chieftain Tecumseh[4] to join the war against the U.S. government, Pushmataha stated:
"These white-skinned Americans ... Gave us a fair deal, their clothes, guns, tools, and other things that the Chok potters needed but couldn't make... They heal our sick, cloak our suffering, bring food to our hunger... The whites and Indians here live together in friendly and mutually beneficial conditions..."[5]
Pushmataha also issued a "Discussion of Tkumsai Text" to Tekumsai, with words as sharp as Chen Lin's "For Yuan Shao Yu Zhou Wen", Yu Qiu Jian's "Table of Crimes Sima Shi" or Zhi Jiang's "Zhi Jiang Zhi":
"Our people have no friction with whites. Why? Because we don't have leaders who are making a fuss about their selfishness and ambitions. ”
"The Choktao are a peaceful people, and we make a living not by abusing our neighbors, but by honest and hard work. In this regard, the Choktau have nothing in common with you. ”
"I have always heard of your behavior, you are a big troublemaker, you have always been a troublemaker, whenever you provoke white people and can't beat them, you will tease right and wrong in the indigenous tribes." 」
"You are a tyrant who says no, and all the men, women, and children of the Shawnee tribe are to submit to your will. There is no such tradition among the Choktao and Chikasso peoples, and the leaders of our tribe are servants of the people, and this letter also reflects the will of our people. ”
Finally, Pashmattaha declared to Tkumseh, "You have made your choice, you have chosen to fight alongside Britain." Americans have always been our friends, and we will support them. ”[6]
Pushmahata (left) in U.S. military uniform and Tekumse (right) in British uniform (infographic/Wikipedia)
In the Second American Revolutionary War, Pashmatha led the Choktaws to the U.S. side, where he was awarded the rank of brigadier general and led his Chockatao warriors to another British ally, the Red Sticks, who had caused the "Membeau Massacre" [7] in the Battle of the Holy Land in 1813.
The heroic struggle of the Choktao eventually made them one of the first Native American peoples to become American citizens. [8] However, Pushmahata failed to see the day, and the revered man died in 1824 and was buried at the United States Capitol Cemetery in Washington.
The cemetery of Pushmahata (infographic/Wikipedia)
However, the first Native Americans to become U.S. citizens were not the Choctaws, but the more famous Cherokee (the origin of the name for the "famous" Cherokee car).
As early as the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Cherokee men began intermarrying with immigrant women of european settlers in neighboring neighborhoods, particularly Scottish women,[9] and the descendants of these multilingual, mixed-race descendants played an important role in the Cherokee race's civil rights struggle, and as early as 1817, the first Cherokees were granted American citizenship. [10]
However, at this stage of history, the relationship between Native Americans and the U.S. government was still "more fighting and less talking", a status quo that reached its peak with the Indian Migration Act of 1830.
Seemingly still raging in the Second War of Independence against the Native Americans who sided with Britain (he seems to have forgotten his old comrade Pushmahata and his friendly Crick allies), Andrew Jackson went his own way, completely ignoring the objections of native North American groups, Henry Clay (former Secretary of State, founder of the Whig Party, and later Senator of Kentucky), Daniel Webster (then Senator of Massachusetts and later Secretary of State under President Fillmore), etc. The Indigenous peoples of North America (including European immigrants who married indigenous peoples, as well as European missionaries who had long been preaching among indigenous peoples, etc.) were caught up in the "Road of Tears".
Not only were the Native American tribes that were hostile to the U.S. government in previous wars forced to migrate, but also the Cherokee, Chokto, and Chikaso people, who had always had good relations with the U.S. government, were forced to migrate. With the exception of natives who had been granted U.S. citizenship, the Cherokee were nearly "expelled" by militia during the Jackson and Van Buren periods, and the Chocotau and Chikasso were forced to migrate at least halfway.
For the Indian Migration Act, the Frenchman Tocqueville restored the tragic scenes he saw in his book "Democracy in America":
"At the end of 1831, I came to a place on the left bank of the Mississippi River called Memphis by Europeans. During my stay here, a large group of Chok Tao bu people came...
It was the middle of winter, and the year was unusually cold. Snow condenses into a hard shell on the ground, and huge ice floats in the river. The Indians led their families, followed by a group of old, sick and disabled... They had no tents or vehicles, only a little ration and rudimentary weapons.
I saw them get on a boat and cross the river, and I will never forget that serious scene. In that dense crowd, no one cried or sobbed, and everyone was silent. Their suffering has a long history, and they feel unable to escape it. ”[11]
In this regard, Tocqueville commented at the beginning of "Democracy in America":
"Man depended on agriculture to occupy the land, while the ancestors of North America made a living by hunting. Their deep-seated prejudices, their unquenchable passions, their vices, and perhaps their savage character, set them on the inevitable path of destruction... When God placed them in the fertile lands of the New World, it seemed that he had given them only the right to use the proceeds temporarily. They lived there as if they were waiting for someone else to arrive. ”[12]
Second, the progress and prosperity of the Indigenous civil rights movement in North America
Over the next eighty years, the political status of Indigenous Peoples in North America underwent a serious setback.
Even Abraham Lincoln, who has always been regarded as a model of equality, is by no means a "hero" to the Native Americans— one of the ugliest "Indian massacres" in American history, the Sand Creek Massacre of November 29, 1864, under Lincoln's rule.
At that time, an American militia force, under the command of the commander, Colonel John Tsvington, launched an attack on the Native American Reservation in Colorado without warning.
Completely different from the unclear "who did it first" conflict in the early days of the United States[13], the "Shaxi Massacre" was not instigated by the British, no indigenous people "moved first", the place of attack was the reservation stipulated by the United States law, and even the tribes that were attacked, the Cheyenne and Arabajo tribes, have always been close to the U.S. government and coexist peacefully with their neighbors.
Zyvington's unforeseen attack naturally provoked the resentment of his subordinates, and many officers and soldiers refused to carry out his orders. In this regard, Eventon said the "famous saying of history":
"All the bastards who sympathize with the Indians are damned!" Kill and peel off your scalp, young and old, and the lice will give birth to more lice (nits make lice)! ”[14]
Eventually, Tsvington led the militia that still obeyed his orders, killing and plundering more than one hundred and fifty Cheyenne and Alabajo civilians, most of them women and children, and brutally skinning and dismembering them. [15] However, although the U.S. Congressional Joint Committee on Acts of War later tried Zivington, in the end, Eventon was only "angrily reprimanded" and released without incident.
John Tsvington who created the Sand Creek Massacre (Infographic/Wikipedia)
Although the new Civil Rights Act of 1866 temporarily gave the "green light" to the legal status of Indigenous peoples, its role was soon offset by the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871.
Even in the early twentieth century, when Theodore Roosevelt, also the most respected president in American history, entered the White House in place of the shot-dead McKinley, he left a "proclamation" when he mentioned the Native Americans.
This phrase was widely circulated in China as "The Only Good Indians Are the Dead Indians", but this saying is not the original words of "teddy bears", nor is it enough to reflect the "rigor" of "teddy bears" - Theodore Roosevelt's original words are:
"I don't think the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe 9 out of every 10 are." （“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are.” ）[16]
The first major breakthrough of the Native American civil rights movement came during World War I.
At that time, North American Natives enthusiastically joined the army, more than 10,000 Indigenous people[17] served in the U.S. Military, and they even became the backbone of the U.S. intelligence service— the movie "Wind Whisperer Warriors", filmed by Wu Yusen and starring Nicolas Cage, was very famous, which described the history of the Navajo people's intelligence work in World War II, but in fact, the design of codes in the Indigenous language had already begun as early as World War I, but the U.S. army cipher soldiers in World War I were mainly from the Choktao rather than the Navajo.
The Choktao Cipher Soldiers of World War I
It was also because of the heroic struggle of the Native Americans that in 1919, the U.S. government under Woodrow Wilson granted citizenship to Native Americans who had served in the U.S. military; and five years later, then-U.S. President Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting all Native Americans born in the United States the status of U.S. nationals.
Five years after the Signing of the Indian Citizenship Act, the United States gave birth to the first senior dignitary of Native American descent, charles Curtis, the 31st Vice President and President of the Senate.
Charles Curtis (infographic/Wikipedia)
Unlike in 2020, when He Jinli was elected vice president, Indians first raised their eyebrows and then were poured "a cold water", Charles Curtis's Native American identity is "genuine".
Curtis was born in Kansas in 1860 to a European father and a mother of both Kaw and Osage descent. Due to the early death of his mother and the early imprisonment of his father, Curtis was raised by his maternal grandparents, who were indigenous people, and even as a young warrior against the rival Cheyenne tribe. [18]
Curtis himself strongly supports natives' active participation in local politics and integration into mainstream American society.
During his political career, he led a series of policies to help Indigenous peoples achieve ethnic integration, including but not limited to the distribution of public land to Indigenous peoples, reducing the control of Indigenous chiefs over ordinary people, encouraging Indigenous peoples to accept citizenship, and establishing schools for Indigenous youth, etc. The passage of the Indian Citizenship Bill was also behind Curtis, who was a member of the Senate and the leader of the Senate Majority Party at that time.
World War II, the Korean War, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s became a new opportunity for the development of indigenous civil rights.
More than 40,000 Native Americans served in World War II,[19] more than three times as many as in World War I,[100 more than 10,000 Native Americans served in the Korean War, which the United States claimed to have gone to as "partial divisions."] [20] In addition to the countless Purple, Bronze, and Silver Stars, Native Americans received several invaluable medals of honor.
Naval officer Ernest Evans, a Cherokee+ Crick, died in the Battle of the Philippines in 1944 and was the only Recipient of the Medal of Honor in World War II to be identified as having Native American ancestry.
The five recipients of the Medal of Honor of Aboriginal descent from left to right in the Korean War were: Mitchell " Red Clouds", Holy Language (Winnebago); Raymond Harvey, Chicasso; Tony Bliss, Chockato; Woodrow Kibble, Sioux; Charles George, Cherokee.
Native Americans were also widely involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and many Native Americans began to participate more actively in local and even federal elections, entering all levels of parliament.
Although small-scale, regional violent conflicts continued to occur at this stage (such as the famous "Wounded Knee Occupation Movement", and until the mid-1970s, federal agents still had small-scale conflicts and even firefights with Indigenous tribes, with casualties on both sides), but on the whole, peaceful struggles and parliamentary struggles gradually became the mainstream of indigenous struggles, and these struggles also achieved good results:
In 1968, the new Civil Rights Act was passed, which although it was considered a product of the black civil rights movement in the United States, it also greatly limited the power of the federal government over Indigenous peoples and their lands, and greatly protected the interests of Indigenous peoples, and Native American politicians, including House member Benjamin Reiffel, contributed a lot to it;
In 1973, the Indian Right to Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act was passed, in which the federal government recognized the right of Native Americans to self-determination, but at the same time supported the integration of Native Americans into American society;
At the end of 2009, the United States enacted a new defense budget bill in which the U.S. government formally apologized to native Americans. [21]
House of South Dakota Legislator Benjamin Riffer, Sioux. Reiffel himself was a strenuous opponent of apartheid, supported the Civil Rights Act, and during his tenure vigorously promoted indigenous education. He pointed out that the "Indian boarding schools" that were once the products of progress can no longer adapt to the trend of the times, but should vigorously promote the construction of ordinary schools where indigenous peoples and other ethnic groups learn and exchange together.
On February 23, the first female Native American nomination cabinet member in U.S. history will be questioned by the Senate. Whether Deb Harlan can become an Aboriginal civil rights movement leader like Charles Curtis and Benjamin Reiffel, and be placed on the list of "Memorable Aboriginal Celebrities" by countless Aboriginal websites, will have to wait for time to test.
exegesis:
[1] A series of battles broke out in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and other states in 1778. In this battle, the British army and the Iroquois annihilated about 360 continental militiamen, and the Iroquois alone "stripped 227 scalps", see Ernest Cruikshank. Butler's Rangers and the Settlement of Niagara, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2016), p. 47; it should be noted that some us media refer to the Wyoming War as the "Wyoming Massacre", which is not true, the British army and the Iroquois did not kill non-combatants in this battle and after that, see Henry Commager, Richard Morris. The Spirit of Seventy-Six, Da Capo Press（1968），p.1010.
[2] The Battle of New York State broke out in 1778. During the battle, British troops and the Iroquois killed about 30 civilians. See Barbara Graymont. The Iroquois in the American Revolution, Syracuse University Press（1972），p.190.
[3] From George Washington to Major General John Sullivan, 31 May 1779，https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0661.
[4] At the outbreak of the Second American Revolutionary War, Tecommesa became a staunch ally and "most reliable force" for the British army, and "forged a solid friendship" with the British commander, General Bullock. See Sandy Antal. A Wampum Denied: Procter's War of 1812. Carleton University Press（1997），p.92.
[5] Sharing Choctaw History, http://www.tc.umn.edu/~mboucher/mikebouchweb/choctaw/push1.htm.
[6] Choctaw Chief Pushmataha Response to Chief Tecumseh on War Against the Americans, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/nativeamericans/chiefpushmataha.htm.
[7] The Battle of Alabama took place in 1813. William Weatherford ("Red Eagle"), the leader of the Red Stick (now a branch of the Creek clan), attacked the settlement of Memesburg with the support of British merchants, after which more than 250 civilians (including Crick settlers who opposed the "Red Eagle") were killed or taken into slavery, see David Stephen Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler. "Creek War," in Encyclopedia of the War of 1812, ABC-CLIO（1997），p.355.
[8] Although the process was not pleasant, when negotiations between the Choktaws and the U.S. government began, the former U.S. president James Madison, who had a friendly attitude toward the Choktaos, had long since ended his term, and the president of the United States at the time was Andrew Jackson, the "Charlie King of America," who had a bad attitude towards his allies, even worse than the "red eagles" who had always opposed him.
[9] James Moone. Myths of the Cherokee, The Project Gutenberg EBook, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45634/45634-h/45634-h.htm.
[10] William G. McLoughlin. Experiment in Cherokee Citizenship, 1817-1829, American Quarterly Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), p. 3-25.
[11] [f] Tocqueville: On Democracy in the United States (Vol. I), translated by Dong Guoliang, Commercial Press, 1991, p. 379
[12] [French] Tocqueville: On Democracy in the United States (Volume I), translated by Dong Guoliang, Commercial Publishing House, 1991, p. 29.
[13] For example, the "Cherry Valley Massacre" mentioned above is that the North American Aborigines were responsible for the acts committed by the North Americans at the instigation of the British. However, in response to this matter, the Mohawks once argued in letters at the time: "You first burned down our houses and disturbed us, and we killed your men, women and children." See Barbara Graymont. The Iroquois in the American Revolution, Syracuse University Press（1972），p.190.
[14] Black Kettle. Who is the Savage? https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/four/whois.htm.
[15] American Battlefield Trust. Sand Creek Massacre, Chivington Massacre, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/sand-creek.
[16] Alyssa Landry. Theodore Roosevelt: ‘The Only Good Indians Are the Dead Indians’, Indian Country Today: https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/theodore-roosevelt-the-only-good-indians-are-the-dead-indians-oN1cdfuEW02KzOVVyrp7ig.
[17] Danna Bell. Native Americans in the First World War and the Fight for Citizenship, https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2018/04/native-americans-in-the-first-world-war-and-the-fight-for-citizenship/.
[18] William Unrau. Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity, University of Oklahoma Press（1971），p. 72–75.
[19] Thomas Morgan. Native Americans in WWII, http://www.history.army.mil/html/topics/natam/natam-wwii.html.
[20] Dennis Zotigh. A Native American Remembrance on Korean Armistice Day, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2020/07/27/native-remembrance-korean-armistice/.
[21] John D. McKinnon. U.S. Offers An Official Apology to Native Americans, https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-15589.
[22] AMERICAN INDIAN EDUCATION FUND. Notable native Americans, Ben Reifel, http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=aief_hist_nna_benreifel
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