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Part 4: New France (Indian Territories). Aurora Macha
JASON: The Dakotas, Minnesota, and much of Nebraska and Montana are the ancestral home of the Lakota Indian nation. And they are now part of New France. I have decided to meet with Aurora Macha a full-blooded member of the Lakota. We meet in the great room of her Lodge near Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She has the tan skin, strong profile, and dark eyes that speak of her family heritage. I will start with her current situation – family, job, aspirations. And then we will talk about past generations and experiences.
AURORA: “”I am a forty-year-old single mother with three children: a 19-year-old boy, and two girls aged 16 and 14. We live here just outside of Grand Rapids in this hundred-year-old “Chapa Akahpe”, or Beaver Lodge, which we operate with the help of my brother who lives with us. I am a full-blooded Lakota as you know. This Lodge has been in our family since the time of my great grandfather. He built it on this two hundred acre parcel of pastureland back in 1920. He wanted to have a place where people could come and stay, to explore the land, and learn about the way of life and traditions of the Lakota, the Plains Indians.
It started with just six rooms for guests. And it stayed that way through the hard times of the depression and into the post war years. In the 1950’s the war was over, there was a renewed interest in travel, and the new highways brought more visitors than ever. We had to turn some away until my grandfather built the additional rooms and this dining hall that you see now.
There are many kinds of guests, and just as many reasons for coming here. This is not Disneyland or the California beach, but we do have tourists, lots of them. Some are students or professors of history and want to learn about the Plains Indians, the culture, and history. They do this by experiencing the land that is so important to our culture. We do not use history books, videos, or bus tours. We assign a local guide for each family or group for the duration of their visit. – Oh yes, the visit must be at least three weeks, no less. This discourages some, but for those that come, we want them to have the necessary time to live the life and feel the experience. During the day, there are trips to and through the territories that our people have travelled for hundreds of years””.
JASON: “”I know there were hundreds of tribes living in North America at that time. Some were woodland tribes, some lived in the desert territories, and some like the Lakota were known as Plains tribes living in the rich grasslands of the north west””.
AURORA: “”You know even the Plains Tribes, the Lakota, Pawnee, and Arapaho were all different. The Lakota were mostly nomadic, living in teepees that could be easily moved to the next place while they followed the herds of game, small game and deer, but mostly buffalo. The Pawnees were villagers, and lived in earthen huts that were substantial in size and permanent. As many as a thousand lived in a village and they planted corn and other crops. However, for months on end, their men would also live the nomadic life, hunt and bring home fresh and cured meats like pemmican for the village.
We have always lived in concert with the land – it has provided a wealth of food and a constant beauty of birds and animals, lakes, rivers, and creeks. Our languages reflect this feeling. Our indigenous languages are verb based, not noun based, as your European languages. Consequently, we have two categories of entities – those that are alive and those that are inanimate. Our living group includes humans, but also all animals, fish, plants and trees. Whereas your European languages refer to plants and trees with the pronoun “it”, the same as inanimate objects.
Our men were skilled hunters and fishers. Our women set up and managed the camps. We Lakota did not stay in one place for long as the land needs to rest after a time. So, we would move on to new lands just as the herds did. Our women did not make a lot of handcrafts like some of the Woodland and stationary tribes. We had no need for these possessions that would weigh us down. We made the practical necessities – clothing, teepee hide covers, and cooking instruments. There was just the land and us””.
JASON: We know that the Plains Tribes, like many other indigenous peoples across North America were highly organized with what we would call structured governments and judicial systems today. These varied from tribe to tribe.
AURORA: “”Traditionally the Lakota were organized by the tiyospaye, a group of about thirty families with kinship ties, which formed the basis of Lakota society. Each tiyospaye was led by a headman, chosen for his demonstration of such qualities as valor, charity, good judgment, and also spiritual powers emanating from dreams.
One of the most important fraternities within the tiyospaye was the naca, which was comprised of elder men. Each summer, the nacas of each tribe of the Lakota would meet to decide broad issues affecting all parts of the nation, ratify or modify decisions made by the nacas over the past year, and consult on issues of tribe security.
The Lakota did not hold one leader to be supreme. The leader’s abilities to convince and influence others was the key to maintaining his position of leadership. Each of these must be discussed and debated, with all opinions taken into account, and only when there is full agreement is a new way agreed and enacted. In this, the Chief is merely one voice. An important voice, because he has been selected for his wisdom and he is influential because he has also been chosen for his powers of negotiation and abilities in convincing others. These qualities gained a great deal of respect and fame for one such Lakota leader - Sitting Bull. But more of that later.
Back to the Lodge guests. We guide them on hikes and overnight camping for two or three nights, sometimes longer. We travel by backpack, or sometimes go further on horseback. At the end of each day, and after food has been prepared and eaten, we hold a campfire story telling. This is how our elders traditionally recorded our history, and taught the young ones the ways of life on the land.
I know your people like to look forward, and honour a youthful society who seek to make great strides forward with each generation. What you call “progress” . . . and of course some are in a great rush to do so. We Lakota look back to earlier times and traditions. We have special honour and respect for our elders, and consequently we are in no hurry to move, as you would say, “forward”. Through storytelling and examples from the past, we explain that our personal goal should be as simple as to be happy and content, to do so usually in cooperation with and helping others, and not acting independently or competing with others. It is a slow process of daily and nightly stories - and yes, there are many questions.
A lot of questions are expressed in the early days of the excursions, when the guests sense some urgency to understand and store this information into an organized place in their mind, to relate it to some prior understanding they have, or compare it to their own way of life. Then, after several days, the questions diminish and there is a sense of just absorbing, without the urgency. We hope that they leave with a different outlook on life and recognize the alternatives. But we expect that for many it only takes a few weeks after they return home for the experience to have left them – but some, a few, may be awakened to a new way for themselves, or at least understand ours””.
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JASON: The storytelling tradition of passing down history. I want to hear some of that history, as it was understood, from her personal perspective – the way she and her ancestors experienced it. I am especially interested in the time period of the 1800s when life changed for the tribes in a significant, but not in a good, way.
AURORA: “”I might repeat some of what the history books have told you, but it will be from our point of view. Our people, the Lakota, go back hundreds, thousands, of years here. But we have to start somewhere. There are seven nations of Lakota and each has a council of elders that is called by the local Chief, to major council meetings each year. At these councils many matters are discussed – past experiences, good and bad, and most significantly this time - any changes or challenges that affect the tribe.
I tell you all this to introduce a time in our history where we can start – the time of chief Sitting Bull and the years are 1850 to 1900. In fact, my aunt says that my family can trace our ancestry back to Sitting Bull. She has no proof, and we ask for none. However, it is just something for us to enjoy since there is no real value in being descendants of a great chief – as I said, there are no Royal families here.
We start with the time of Sitting Bull because many important events happened in such a short time – and all have had lasting significance even today. It was a time when the Europeans from New England were seeking to make new settlements west of the great Mississippi. Each year there were increasing numbers, with wagons needing roads, and then the Iron Horse railways which would penetrate even further through our lands. For many years, we kept away from each other, my people and the white settlers. We had our traditional routes, campsites, and hunting grounds and if we varied them somewhat we could avoid the settlements and forts that were being built every year. But as time went on, the encroachments only increased and the roads and farms increasingly affected the game that we depended on. Something had to change””.
JASON: This was to be the beginning of the end for the tribal way of life, in many cases for the existence of some tribes entirely. The traditional hunting grounds were being spoiled by the arrival of the white man’s settlements. The wild game they depended on was diminishing. Some tribes moved onward into more remote lands to the north. But the wild buffalo herds that had provided the necessities of life – meat through the winter and strong hides for shelter, were being depleted through other means.
The wave of settlers arriving from the east, and their military escorts, realized that they could slaughter the buffalo by the hundreds, even thousands, and in doing so force the tribes to move onward. Hunting parties were formed, and in some cases the Iron Horse trains would stop for an hour while the passengers would slaughter a thousand buffalo. The next day local tribes, drawn by the smell, would find the carcasses rotting in the sun.
AURORA: “” Treaties were made and broken over these years. There is a famous quote by Red Cloud, chief of the Olgala. He said ”They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they only kept but one. They promised to take our land, and they did.” 279Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEAozQU4Zd2
One particularly harsh winter, the white military failed to make the promised treaty payments of food and other needs. This led to the Dakota War of 1862. There was a lot of bloodshed and the Lakota were pushed westward from Minnesota into the Dakotas and even into Nebraska, causing trouble for the Pawnees who inhabited that land. Six years later, there was a general peace that was established between Sitting Bull, representing the Lakota, and the New England military leaders – it was called the Treat of Fort Laramie where it was settled after a week of talks and discussion between the parties. Under this treaty, the Lakota were given the exclusive stewardship of the Black Hills in South Dakota, as well as the promise of annual supplies of tools and goods to be made available at the white man’s forts.
But once again, and soon after, the supplies were no longer available to us. Then the treaty became meaningless when gold was discovered in these same Black Hills and even more trespassers spread across our lands. We were once again betrayed by the white man’s treaties and needed to fight for our way of life.
And fight we did. Sitting Bull as head chief, and Crazy Horse as war chief, were already held in high regard by our people. Both became famous across the land when they fought General Custer in Montana at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. This became one of the most storied events of the time.
Yes, General George Armstrong Custer. He was feted as a hero of sorts by the white man’s history books. But in fact, that was based entirely on his past glories at Gettysburg when his outnumbered brigade won a decisive victory over the Confederate army. To be fair he had enjoyed dozens of military successes over what had been a stellar fifteen-year military career. Up to a point. His reputation suffered its first blow when he was court martialed for desertion of his post in Kansas. But a year later it seemed to take turn for the better. At the age of thirty-six the Union Army gave him a chance to redeem himself by heading up a regiment in the Indian Wars. His was one of three columns of soldiers commissioned to push the Lakota out of their Black Hills reservation in Montana. His arrogant nature saw this as the signature piece to his long military career. Which it was, but not in a good way.
Custer had been tracking Crazy Horse’s path in the north while the two other columns were closing in from the south. Then, upon discovering the location of the Lakota camp, he decided to not wait for reinforcements from the south. The glory would be his alone. Although outnumbered, he gave the order to attack.
He is thought to have engaged immediately due to his well-known arrogance and overconfidence in battle. He had little respect for his Indian enemies’ capabilities. At the outset of the engagement, Crazy Horse is said to have led a charge that split Custer’s infantry lines in two and led to the slaughter that followed. Custer may have been over confident, or maybe he was just desperate to regain his reputation, when he died in what was called his “last stand”. It could have been easily avoided had he waited for the needed reinforcements. It was our first major victory over the bluecoat armies of the whites with almost a thousand killed or wounded.
Despite this victory, Sitting Bull had come to realize that we could not keep the white man out of our lands. There were too many, and they were increasing in number every year. Negotiations with their military had failed and when we tried to stop their advance with intimidation and battles, too often we had heavy losses, as their weapons were far superior to ours.
They had built a network of roads and forts throughout our lands for protection of the settlers. And it is true that in times of peace, we would visit these forts and trade, and there had been a mutual respect and value demonstrated by both of us. But no more; we had become enemies. Lakota in our language is translated as “friend or ally” in your language. To them we were not called the Lakota, we were called the Sioux, which was a disparaging name that our native enemies had given us – it means “little snakes”.
It was 1877, one year after the Battle of the Little Big Horn and Sitting Bull was rightly worried about retaliation from the white man’s military as thousands were being deployed to avenge their General Custer. The murder of Crazy Horse, a year earlier at Fort Robinson, and the risk of increased blue coat attacks, led Sitting Bull to temporarily relocate from Montana to the safety of Canada for a time. They called Canada the Grandmother’s Country in honour of Queen Victoria and her government who had treated their Indian population fairly, as trading partners””.
JASON: “”Retreat and defeat. This is sounding like the battle was lost. The Plains Tribes were either contained in smaller and smaller reservations, or had fled to safer lands leaving their traditional homes forever. Thousands of years of history ended in less than a hundred years””.
AURORA: “”This time might be the last time for us. In preparation for this possibility, Sitting Bull returned and made an alliance with the tribes to the west - the Pawnees and Arapaho who for many generations had been our enemies. The Pawnees were ready for this since they had already been pushed further westward into Nebraska and Oklahoma by the white man’s expanding ways.
The settlers and military from New England took no heed even that they had crossed national borders and were operating in New France when they walked on our lands. The French of New France had claimed these territories as theirs many generations before, but they did not need them for settlements and had ignored the many tribes who thrived in these northern areas, including the Lakota. But the French were traditional enemies of the English, and their sense of pride did not want to see their lands subjected to English dominance. Yes, New England did try to acquire our lands by offering to purchase in 1803. What was called the Louisiana Purchase and would have included much more than Louisiana – it was the lands west of the Mississippi all the way to Montana! But New France rejected this out of a sense of pride. The New France government might have ignored what was happening in the north where we lived, but the English enemy was also making incursions into their southern provinces across the Mississippi. It was time to resist. And the time was right for both nations, the French and the Plains Tribes.
Sitting Bull was now representing the seven nations of Lakota plus our new ”friends of convenience” the Pawnee, Arapaho and even some Cheyenne. This was known as the Plains Council. He was aware that some fifty years before, the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh from the Ohio region, along with the Six Nations Mohawk and Iroquois had joined forces with the British Canadians to repel the encroaching armies of New England in what was called the War of 1812. The tribes had gained, in return for their help in the securing the victory, land grants that were to form a large buffer territory south of the Great Lakes to protect Canada from further invasions from their southern neighbour.
It was time to meet with the leaders of New France and discuss the common goal of blocking the English incursions. Messengers were sent, a meeting was agreed, and the place was to be Kansas City. The meetings were of the highest level and included all of the senior leaders of the French departments, including the sixty five year old New France President the “Great Father” Richelieu himself. The meetings and talks took place over three weeks with many feasts and ceremonies included to establish the necessary trust for the grand alliance. The French were content to live in their traditional provinces of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. The French would concentrate their military on defending these Provinces against the New England incursions.
The Plains tribes would be tasked to make war and push the invaders out of northern New France – North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin. They would be armed with modern repeater rifles supplied by the French and they would apply their superior war strategies which were well suited to the type of conflict that lay ahead. And not just the Plains Tribes. You remember the Trail of Tears. The southern tribes of Shawnee and Cherokee that had been forced out of Georgia and Mississippi by the English also joined forces and fought alongside the New France armies.
Our way was what you call guerrilla warfare, hit and run, seek, kill, and hide, aided by the special ability to fight very effectively from horseback. The white man’s way of battle was still in organized lines of infantry which had been effective against similar European armies. It previously had success against the tribes when the blue coats had the superiority of numbers and modern repeater rifles and cannon. So, the Kansas City Alliance required the tribes to teach the New France military leaders in the new style of guerrilla warfare, which would be effective against the larger advancing armies of New England. This was the first use of what we now call camouflage clothing instead of the peacock uniforms of the past.
War was officially declared. Now the tribes were equipped with modern rifles. Our warriors could besiege the forts that had been impenetrable in the past, and wait until the inhabitants were starving and had to give up. The tribes granted safe passage to whichever village or fort flew the white flag. They were protected and safe as long as they headed in a steady path eastward back to New England. Although there were a few examples of confusion, that my aunt still calls retribution, that resulted in some exceptions to this practice of safe passage.
Eventually the New France borders were secure. The tribe’s hit-and-run strategy worked and the hostilities ended with the Treaty of Kansas in 1890. And going back to Red Cloud’s famous quotation, once the white man decided to keep their promises, and allow the tribe to keep their land, the hostilities ended and both could live in peace””.
JASON: “”By agreement with New France, the tribes of the Plains Council held on to their traditional lands of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa. Some of the forts and village settlements remained, but they were populated by New France citizens who traded with the tribes and mutually supported each other. In many cases, New England settlers who had made their homes here stayed, but now as New France citizens. The French held the southern provinces. And that is pretty much as it is today with the Indian populations in the north and the largely Black populations in the south.
So,what happened to the Lakota leaders after this extraordinary time between 1850 and 1890?””
AURORA: “”This was the time when the land we love was in turmoil as to who would live here. Would the tradition and spirituality of past generations cease, or would it carry on? Sitting Bull lived a long life and lived to see the success of his struggles when he died in 1890 at the age of 59. He was born in Grand River, South Dakota country, and that is where he died. He continued as the overall Chief of the seven Lakota nations almost to the end of his life. With aging overtaking him, he was replaced with a council of leaders a few years before his death. By that time, his leadership over the most challenging times was no longer needed. Oh, there were a few small uprisings of younger men wanting to depose him, but due to his popularity among the larger Lakota population, these attempts were small and were easily suppressed.
Crazy Horse! He was not so fortunate. His name in Lakota is “Thasunke Witko”, which translates to Crazy Horse. It was his father’s name and when he was a young man and showing great promise and gaining respect for his bravery, his father gave him his own name and took another for himself. He was not reckless and impetuous as his name might imply for some. He was very quiet, a man of few words, spoken softly. But he was one to lead, one to be followed. Because of his bravery, and of course his cunning on the hunting grounds and in the battles with other tribes, he became the war leader of the Oglala Nation of the Lakotas. He learned early that to be successful as a game hunter he needed to understand and anticipate his quarry. He applied this same cunning to understanding the white soldiers, to anticipate their moves, to know when to strike and when to retreat. He had many successes as such under chief Red Cloud and was very important in the battles that led to the second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. But when the treaty collapsed a year later, he returned to the warpath, this time with the full alliance of the Plains Council that had been formed by Sitting Bull.
I say he was not so fortunate because toward the end of these campaigns he was captured and imprisoned in Fort Robinson. The bluecoats realized he was not the kind of man to live inside prison walls, and he would not live quietly if sent to a reservation. So, when a path to escape was revealed to him, he took it and ended up being killed by the thrust of a bayonet. They say it was delivered by a soldier, during a dispute with a fellow tribesman. You can choose what you want to believe, but it happened. He was 35 years old at the time of his death in 1877. He was mourned deeply by a 46-year-old Sitting Bull at the time””.
JASON: “”Finally I believe by the end of the century there was relative peace for the Plains Tribes living in the northern reaches of New France. Was this the case, and why?””.
AURORA: “” Yes, the end of an important chapter in our history. But this was not the last big event for the next generations. My ancestors lived through two World Wars and our young men, who were expert marksmen, played important roles in the military of New France, which joined with the other nations of North America and Europe against the aggressor nations. There were times of plenty and times of economic depression. You know our people survived the Great Depression better that the European cultures because we traditionally lived with and for the land and did not depend on industry so much for our well-being.
So, since my grandparent’s time to now there have been many changes. We still regard the past traditions with great reverence, but our way of life has changed. We are still living on vast lands and surrounded by nature, but we now live in villages, nurture crops, and raise livestock for our needs. But many of us go out into what is still a vast open region of protected parkland and live in the old ways, camping, hunting and fishing if only for a few months at a time. It is with great pride that a young man, or woman, can go alone onto the plains for three or four months with only a horse, a pack, a fishing kit, a rifle, and ammunition . . . . And live alone with just nature and their thoughts. It is a spiritual cleansing.
Story telling still remains our trusted and preferred way of relating our history. Today everyone, young and old, read books and newspapers and watch TV and movies of course – but those are stories that are set down in print or other media, and are broadcast to a vast unseen audience. Stories often told with a bias, that cannot be trusted to be the truth. I know that the white man has always put much faith in the written word, and his news media, and now his social media. However, I think this trust is being lost as the media sources of these stories expands to include so many unseen and unknown mouths. We have a saying that when you are speaking face to face with a man it is easy to tell if he is lying, and not very difficult to tell if he is speaking the truth. That is why we continue to trust personal story telling to pass on our own history and traditions.
I suppose you could say my family and our Lodge staff live a “halfway” existence today. I mean with time spent in the new ways and time living and guiding others in the traditional ways. Like our people, we are not in a hurry, we are happy in our place, and revere the past as a foundation for the now””.
JASON: “”The New France plains tribes are now famous the world over for their leadership in environmental protection and ecological sustainability. We often wonder how this happened””.
AURORA: “”For us it did not “happen”, it has always been with us – for generations and generations. But when we experienced some of the natural balance being weakened and then lost with the encroachment of the white man and his ways, our elders were very concerned. At one of the Seven Nations Council meetings, it was decided that a larger movement of like-minded people was needed if the erosion of the natural balance was to be controlled. Two years later, we formed the Ecologistes sans Frontieres or ESF –Ecologists without Borders - an organization of trained experts that travel the world as consultants and set up local divisions to teach and help manage the many, but limited, natural resources of the earth.
Our friends among the Great Lakes tribes joined in this with their own experience and expertise. This group has carried out much research and produced the guidance and procedures being followed by the most civilized countries of the world. And yes, along with the more scientific teachings of the ESF, our people as the founders, have tried to instill the spiritual side of the relationship between man and the land. It has become much like a religion which has spread as a way of life for those who have accepted it. And after many decades, as results are being demonstrated, more and more people are joining what is understood to be a better, healthier life – for all, not just mankind. Sorry for the preaching words, but as I said, it is much like a religion””.
JASON: “” Thank you Aurora for telling this story of the Lakota as set down over generations by your ancestors. And I think that is a good place to leave it, with the institution of the ESF – what has become an international secular religion for many.””
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Next, I will travel to Boston. To learn of the evolution of another nation of North America - New England. It is an interesting evolution. At one time New England had designs on taking over all of North America for themselves – and they tried to do so. More than once. So, on to Boston we will go.
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