People Of Manitou

PEOPLE OF MANITOU
Introduction To The People of Manitou
The People of Manitou--
The Manitou-wisiwak

The History and Culture of the Algonquian-Speaking People
The Children of First Man



By Evan T. Pritchard
Copyright © 2000-2006
All Rights Reserved







Chapter One


The People of Manitou, An Introduction


Of the many Native American nations that have existed in North America since contact, at least eighty-four of them are derived from one original source, and according to oral tradition, from one man, "First-Man." Scientists would call this original source "Proto-Algonquian Culture,” and call the people “Algonquins,” although they also call one specific nation in the Ottawa valley by this name.

Oral history tells us there was once a great Confederacy of people, all honoring Manitou, or Great Spirit, in their prayers, one which spread across North America from coast to coast. These ancient people, whose roots in the new world have been traced back to 16,000 BCE (for example, at Cactus Hill, Va.) and older, recognize their origins in one ancestral nation, at a time when they all spoke the same language. This nation or race was made up of people who were “all related to one another by blood.” The Ojibway today call these people Anishinabi (good men, and other translations) In Mi’kmaq the similar word for this relationship is ooskijdin-abee, "all of us related by blood." The term “Algonquin” is the best known term by far, but it causes endless debate over semantics, and is not an Algonquin word. We might be better off using the spelling Algunkeean. The prefix al- means “like,” gun (or wun) means “old,” kee (short for hakee) means “land,” or “territory,” and the suffix -an means "many." So spelled this way, we who are related by blood (Ie of this certain ethnicity) can call ourselves “People like those of the old land,” Al-gun-kee-an. The term Anishinabi is also an appropriate term for the Algonquian-speaking people, except that this term has become, in some minds, specific to the Ojibway-Algonquin-Cree, and is hardly familiar to Lenape, Powhatan, and Shawnee.

But we are more than a bloodline, more than am ethnic group. The ways and earth-teachings that have been handed down intact from ancient times through this bloodline transcend that bloodline and are of great importance to everyone in the world in these times of spiritual and ecological distress. Ironically, while some members of this large family do honor and follow these spiritual ways, others do not. Just as some people of Jewish ethnicity are not interested in Jewish religion and philosophy but are still Jews, some Anishinabi/Algunkeeans are not interested in tradition, but are still Anishinabi/Algunkeeans, ethinically speaking.

But all great religions and philosophies have ethnic roots. And just as the faith of the Indus Valley people has become an important source of wisdom for the entire world, just as the Taoist beliefs of the ancient Chinese people has become important to the world, and just as the Arabic faith of Islam has become important to the world, so has the faith of these Algonquian-speaking people has become incredibly important to the world at large in this time of environmental disintegration. In fact, the so-called Gaia Theory, which has been accepted by all scientists in its "soft theory" form, (that the earth acts as a single organism) and by an increasing number in its "hard theory" form (that the earth "Gaia" is a conscious entity concerned with regulating its own health) is best expressed in the Al-gun-kee-an phrase "The Earth is Our Mother," and may not have been popular but for countless Native American prophets crying in the wilderness. This teaching is at the heart of Al-gun-kee-an wisdom. But to access this natural wisdom, we need to overcome a tremendous linguistic obstacle.

Some early missionaries saw this wisdom, the teachings of Manitou, as a great threat to their own global influence, and sought to scramble the terms with opposite meanings. Though closer to the earlier teachings of Jesus (Matthew 5 and 6 for example) than some of their own sermons, its gospel of equality and kinship with nature led to a profound understanding of ecology, or should I say, preserved that deep connection with nature that dates back to the earliest times. The idea of man as ruler of the natural world has led to the disastrous situation we now face; the religion that absorbed Aristotle has brought nature falling down around our ears like so many marble columns and statues. To reverse the situation, we must as a race reverse the linguistic traps set by the people of first contact, specifically missionaries. And we must begin with the word Manitou.

This mysterious word Manitou, based on an ancient word for “spirit,” (Some say Mani is a universally known word for the manifestations of spirit) is found in some recognizable form in all the Algonquian languages. It is the glue that binds the people together as one, even though they may be scattered to the four corners of “Turtle Island,” called North America by some. The missionaries heard about this, and were quick to translate Manitou as “devil." (Sometimes spelled Manetta) No matter how many native people use this definition, it will never be the correct word. The word for a bad spirit is Matchemanetou, or similar spelling. This is plain and clear. Manitou means Spirit, and Kitchemanitou means Great Spirit.

Once we reclaim this word, we can reclaim our culture, because it is that which all of the people of this blood and ethnicity have in common, and it represents the belief in the natural wisdom which all of the people have in common as a birthright.

In the middle 1800’s, anthropologists did the same thing the missionaries did; they scrambled up the words for that very blood identity as a people that so many have fought and died to preserve. They called us “Algonquins” as a whole and also called one particular nation “Algonquins.” The purpose and effect of this was to cause conflict and confusion between the one and the many. This conflict goes on today. Then years later, this word, as applied to the whole group, disappeared from academic lexicons in North America, and was never replaced. Instead, the academics claimed that there was only a language family, now called Algonquian, (or Algonkian) using a European scientific ending and imposing it on a word of dubious origins, a word that is not an Algonquin word! The clinical ending makes it clear that it is not an aboriginal word or a word anyone would voluntarily use to refer to their own loved ones.

So strange as it sounds, at the end of the day, through this three card monty of linguistics, there is now no word for the world’s largest, oldest, and most diverse ethnicity, one which originally claimed the largest and most fertile land base in the world. In order to twist myself out of this strange trap, I must re-establish the word Manitou for its real and obvious meaning, and then refer to the Al-gun-kee-ans (those who speak Algonquian languages) as People of Manitou.

Although this term is almost immediately and universally accepted among those familiar with the culture and the political situation, it is three words, and not one term. There are plenty of Algonkian suffixes that can be used with this Algonkian root, but there is a problem with many of them. In this feminist, unisex age, we cannot use suffixes that denote only male or female gender. The term Manitouwanini, those who follow Manitou, is excellent, except that wanini literally means “Men who follow (Manitou.)", technically excluding women. Paula Gunn Allen has popularized this term, and it is probably the best all-around solution in spite of the one problem with gender, and I use it frequently. I believe it was probably a term used thousands of years ago, and with some pride. The term Manitoueiu is appealing, they who are of Manitou, but this has not yet been found in colonial dictionaries as an actual word.

The term Manitou-wisiwak is an Algonquin word (taught to me by William Commanda) that refers to a unified group of spiritually-minded people of mixed gender, people who honor Manitou and perform similar rituals and have similar beliefs. That could then include anyone in the world who takes to heart a faith and belief in the power of Manitou, The Great Spirit, and the wisdom of that great being, which has been brought to light over the centuries by Its People, the Manitou-wisiwak. The word can be used to refer to anyone who identifies themselves with this ethnic group to any degree who is not opposed to the ways of Manitou and the traditions of Its People.

Suddenly, having found these usable roots, we are suddenly free from the shackles of linguistic slavery. We are free to express not only the natural truths, but can also point to the true source of these teachings, which have been appropriated by other sources for centuries, by other cultures and philosophers who laid claim to their invention. This body of Natural Wisdom comes from the culture of Manitou, and is for all people to share, providing they are respectful of the messengers of the Great Spirit who brought it foreword, and who, to varying degrees, walked the talk.

As I come across different cases and endings for this root, I will explain at the first use what I mean by the term. For example, I will need to use the word Manitouvian to describe that which is part of or related to the Culture of Manitou. (Man-i-tou-vi-an, the adjective form of the Culture of Manitou) It is a narrow path, but through it we can escape the wall of words that has kept the world in darkness for so long. For though no culture has a monopoly on truth, or on ecological truth, there exists today few if any groups of people who possess such a passion for protecting the earth from harm. The Manitou-wisiwak are the grandfathers. The Manitou-wisiwak made a covenant with the earth centuries ago, as did the Hopi, and perhaps the Cherokee, Iroquois, and Lakota, but theirs was perhaps the first, and it is believed possess the secrets to understanding the heart of North America, and perhaps the Mother Earth.

It is the use and misuse of this Manitouvian Land which has caused over 25% of the carbon emissions that are triggering bizarre climate changes beyond their normal courses of change. The Land Keepers of the Manitou-wisiwak have tried to prevent this from happening, but were totally outnumbered and outmaneuvered and outspent. But they are still the ones who speak up, not just for the rights of plants and animals, but for the rights of all humans, who all have a place on the hoop of life.


We Are All Related

Today, the descendants of the Manitou-wisiwak forefathers often use the expression, "We are all related" to refer to all the people of the world, but it is true of themselves quite literally. They all share the same creation story, and consider themselves to be literally the "Children of First Man," a person of the Creation Story who "shaped himself" from clay, a man some call Nadabozoo, Nanabush, Mistapeoe, Glooskap, Gluskabe, Weesuckerjack, and countless other names. He is our Great-Grandfather, our First Ancestor, The Oldest One, in any Algonkian language. No matter how many generations we are removed from our "people," we all have the blood of "First Man" in our veins.

What this means to us today is this: If we look closely at the record, we will find that many hundreds of the great figures in North America today and throughout modern history are descendants of the Manitou-wisiwak, and therefore all related--through "First-Man" if not more recently. As a child of First-Man myself, I tend to consider all beings to be my relations, and use the Mi'kmaq expression no-o-gomach, "all my relations," as a daily blessing or word of closure. All men are my brothers, all women my sisters, and all nations and peoples have a right to be here. My elders reinforce this as a living principle, not a platitude. This belief affects every act I perform. But I think it is interesting, nonetheless, to find that so many people from coast to coast whose contributions to society captivate and inspire me turn out to be my close cousins, my blood relations through First-Man.

We’re Not Dead

Recently, I met a young New York couple who were searching for spiritual truth, and I told them about the Manitou-wisiwak teachings and invited them to a talk. I mentioned the word "Algonquin." They said, "I thought we killed you all! Didn’t you people used to live here?"

At another gathering in Washington, D.C., a young black man, a seeker of truth also, came upon a conclave of "Algonquin" people and said, "I thought you were all killed a long time ago. Weren’t you from....right here?"

The hear the same comments in Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Chicago; many people even young college educated people, seem to think that "Algonquins" were A. were all killed; B. lived where they live now, and nowhere else! (Mis-Informed Americans). That is why I’m happy to teach Native American history at the college level. As I travel from university to university giving my talks, I get to help clean up the misinformation. It’s a custodial duty that I cherish

This book may help provide a few answers for those who are truly seeking. There is a great and ancient body of spiritual teaching behind Manitou-wisiwak culture, but unless the culture itself is brought back together and its people honored, that spiritual legacy will remain unappreciated, or will emerge out of context and become distorted or misunderstood.

It is true our people used to live where these Americans live now, and a lot of other places too. Half of the people of the U.S. and Canada live on land once enjoyed and cultivated by Manitou-wisiwak families. Just because they don’t know it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

But the Manitou-wisiwak people were not all killed by any means. Perhaps we can consider that wishful thinking, given the massive land base still considered to belong to them. Many Manitou-wisiwak were just kicked off, shipped off, married off or bought off, and we are the descendants of that legacy as well. Those hearty individuals who were able to shine their light through such storms deserve our compassion and admiration, not our sarcasm.


My Thank You

In this maskweedayg’n (writing) I would like to name and show honor to some of my favorite Manitou-wisiwak people, past and present, some of whom I’ve had the great pleasure of shaking hands and sharing hugs with. It’s my way of thanking them for what they’ve done for all of us.

In Manitou-wisiwak culture, when we honor someone, we usually tell a good story about them and we also sing an honor song, which is from the heart. Because we relate everything that is good to the natural world, the song is often called an "Eagle Song," and the eagle is mentioned because Manitou-wisiwak people consider the eagle to be the noblest of creatures. When someone is at a gathering outside (or even inside sometimes!) and they sing and drum the honor song from the heart, a band of eagles will swiftly appear and circle overhead, often seven in number. It’s not only the drum that attracts them, but the mentioning of their name. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true.

In traditional Manitou-wisiwak powwows, such an "Honor Song" or "Eagle Song" is sung and danced to honor a person or people who have brought a boon to their Nation, brought honor to the community, or made a sacrifice for the benefit of others. Often, an honor song is danced for the "old ones," for the ancestors. Sometimes an entire First Nation will be "danced," (as when a visiting chief arrives) and at other times it is danced for one person, or a group of people such as the war veterans.

The "Eagle Staff" is held by a grandfather in the front of the procession as they enter the sacred circle, or staging area. This staff looks to some Europeans like a "shepherd’s crook" a staff with a scrolled top suggesting the scroll fern of the woodland Indians, with many eagle feathers attached. These eagle feathers are more than symbols, they are imbued with the power of respect and nobility. If an eagle feather falls to the ground, the ceremony is stopped immediately, and an honor dance done for the feather itself. Without this depth of intention, the honor dance would not transfer the esteem of the people to the spirit of that person being "danced."

Honor Is Stronger Than Gold

In modern American society, it is hard for a native person to earn the honor and respect of both their own people and of the mainstream society. The values are that different, and sometimes there is a conflict of interest that must be worked out between being an American and a Native American. Some of our Algonquin people have lost hold of one type of honor to grasp for the other, with no guarantee of success. And yet honor, in all its forms, is the lifeblood of the people of Manitou. For some, it does not exist in this world, but only comes from the Creator, and held to with a fierce inner conviction. Ultimately, honor is something you live, often against all odds and opposition. Those that earn the honor of others are fortunate.

The Manitouvian ethic of true "honor" does not emphasize individual achievement or self-glorification, but group effort and quiet reflection, and so many talented people of Manitou have escaped notice by the mainstream media (which is otherwise occupied shoveling through Hollywood press kits) However, certain people of Manitou have been called to greatness during the course of history, and in some cases their efforts towards making the world a more humane (and more fun) place for all has been noted. Among these, only a few have earned the honor and respect of Americans in general.

The following is a subjective list of some of those I have heard about who merit recognition and who have inspired me through their work. There are many thousands of others I will probably never hear about who have worked equally hard, who are equally talented, and who help improve the lives of countless people wherever they go. My Eagle Song is for them too.

No One Is Perfect

This list is divided into two parts, those who are currently living (as far as I know), and those who have passed on into the spirit world.

For the reader’s benefit, I have tried to focus on individuals whose life and work could, should, or would have a positive effect on the reader’s own life, if the effort to explore it were made. I’ve emphasized those who are most accessible, through the public library, the book store, the theater, or through live presentations. Please understand that this criteria would certainly exclude some of the greatest Manitou-wisiwak, as noted. You the reader may be one of these. I apologize for this omission, but I hope that this work will be a foundation on which to build and expand so that others will be recognized.

For the same reason, I include many people of Manitou whose talents lay in areas that would be of interest to Euro-Americans, such as pop music, baseball, football, hockey, TV, movies, and books. It is important to understand that these pursuits are not very highly regarded by traditional Manitou-wisiwak as a whole. However, in that they do no major harm to the environment and allow the person involved to meet and talk with all kinds of people to share their love of life in a positive way, they are respected. The greatest heroes of Manitou are those working quietly for the environment, for the preservation of our language and culture, for social equality and justice, and for healing and spiritual insight.

I also recognize that, just as First-Man was not perfect, no individual today is perfect either. Each of these honorees have their flaws, some of which have been widely publicized. Any Hall of Fame has its "Pete Roses," people who are great in one area and deficient in others, and this one is no exception. This honor roll is designed to celebrate the merit, not publicize the weaknesses, although I have been somewhat candid, as you will see. You may have preconceived ideas about some of these individuals, or even antipathy, based on what you heard. I hope you take this time to absorb and acknowledge what is truly noble in them, while remaining non-judgmental about the rest. I’m sure you would want the same chance.

You may also notice that the people of Manitou often turn out to have "multi-faceted" careers, mixing politics, spirituality, wood and metal crafting, weaving, acting, screenwriting, and orchestral conducting, for example. Our elders say that in the old days, none of these distinctions existed, we were just busy people. Now we are called "Renaissance Men." Perhaps that’s well and good, since we are enjoying a Native American Renaissance these days.

The Warrior Clause

Manitouvian culture was also the cradle of the "non-violence" movement in America, (see "Joseph Polis" under "Ancestors") and the Peace Keeping Tradition is still strong among our people. However, between 1600 and 1800, the nations of the entire world discovered our Turtle Island and conspired to take it for themselves, as most people well know. Through a "strategy of migration," Algonquins tried to prevent unneeded deaths and violence, but soon there was nowhere to go. Peace for its own sake is not enough. Peace for Manitou-wisiwak is an overriding principle, but not an absolute law. Gradually, heroic "defenders" (what some would call "warriors") arose whose roles involved violence when all of the other numerous avenues of peace were exhausted, but who were respected by their enemies and loved by their people. They too are included, and have earned a verse in my Eagle Song.

With that in mind, here are some of our Manitou-wisiwak brothers and sisters you might have heard of, all "Children of First Man," to quote the words of a book title by James Alexander Thom.

They are truly "all my relations."





Eagle Song: Honoring Manitouvian Leaders of Our Time
Chapter Two

An Informal “Honor Roll" Of Living Manitouvian Heroes Of the Present Age


Asani (Cree/Metis) These three talented Cree women are best known by their collective name “Asani,” a popular Aboriginal a capella music trio with an unmistakably Native sound. Their highly appealing sound is marked by close harmonies bent microtonally (like “blues notes”) without losing the chord, and elements from Anishinabi “throat singing,” a sound which cannot be explained in words. Many of their poignant lyrics are in Woodland Cree and English. Sherryl Sewepagaham is from the Little Red River Cree nation in John D’or Prairie in Northern Alberta. Sherryl began singing at a young age and went on to study classical voice and piano at the Alberta College Conservatory of Music. She has completed her B. Ed. (Elementary Music) at the University of Alberta. Sherryl is an elementary school teacher and the Artistic Director of the Edmonton Aboriginal Children’s Chorus. She is an outstanding songwriter who has been able to create a highly original but unmistakably Native American polyphonic texture in her music.

Sarah Pocklington is a Cree Metis and graduated from the vocal program at Grant MacEwan Community College, has a BA in English/Anthropology, a Masters Degree in Native Studies, and is currently working towards a PhD in Education Policy Studies. Sarah has been teaching in the field of Native American studies for the past 15 years.

Debbie Houle is a Cree Metis born in Edmonton, Alberta, and was raised in the Elizabeth Metis Settlement in Northeast Alberta. She has been singing since the age of five and studied voice briefly at Grant MacEwan Community College. She currently works full-time as a Children’s Services Sector Advisor for the Metis Nation of Alberta.

Asani performed their original compositions with the Alberta Symphony Orchestra at the 2003 Olympics, live before a television audience of over a billion viewers, and have since then performed at the Kennedy Center, Bamf, and many of the top venues in North America. I first heard them sing at the Smithsonian’s National Folk Life Festival in July of 2006 and went back the next day to hear them again. Their harmonies are flawless and the textures range effortlessly from simple to highly complex. Their current CD, nominated for the Native American Music Award for best album, is called Rattle and Drum (www.arborrecords.com)


(a photo by the author of Asani performing outdoors at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. in 100 degree heat in July of 2006. From left to right: Debbie Houle, Sherryl Sewepagaham, and Sarah Pocklington.)

Marie Annharte Baker (Anishinabe). Born in 1942, Marie is a poet and essayist whose work has been published in Semiotexte. She is the co-founder of the Regina Aboriginal Writers’ Group, and currently lives in Regina. Her published poetry books include Being on the Moon, and Coyote Columbus Cafe.

Dennis Banks aka Nowa Cumig, (Ojibway/Anishinabi). Born on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, this author, though controversial, has nonetheless shown remarkable dedication and commitment to American Indian issues and struggles throughout the United States and Canada for over twenty-five years. He established the first Sacred Run from Davis to Los Angeles which he continues to sponsor, and also organized The Longest Walk from Alcatraz to Washington, D.C. in 1978, a 3,600 mile march. As of 1996, he had led sacred runners a total of 58,000 miles across most of the continents in the world.

The Indian Occupation of Alcatraz island in 1969, which he helped organize, is the subject of a documentary film "Alcatraz Is Not an Island." Dennis has twenty children, twenty-four grandchildren and fifteen great grandchildren and still lives in a remote area of northern Minnesota where he lives a very simple life with no phone, TV, computer, or other indulgences. Banks also provides drug and alcohol counseling to Native Americans. He earned an Associates of Arts degree at Davis University and taught at DQ (Deganawida/Quetzecoatl) University, where he became their first American Indian chancellor. He taught at Stanford University in 1979.

Of course, Dennis is best known as a co-founder of the American Indian Movement, and although much of the AIM work in the 1970s migrated to the courts, Banks is still busy addressing native concerns. Working with the International Indian Treaty Council in San Francisco, CA, Dennis and AIM have worked for fifteen years to bring the issues and struggles of the American Indians to a worldwide audience including the United Nations and many other European governments.

Reading like a script for a movie about Geronimo, his wild and crazy youth includes some colorful moments which did not make him popular with the FBI. With AIM he organized a Trail of Broken Treaties caravan across the U.S. (According to historian Dark Rain Thom, there have been 349 major "treaties" with the United States, and there isn’t a single one where at least one promise has not been broken.) AIM anticipated meeting with Congressional leaders about Native issues, but when all officials refused to speak to them, this resulted in the seizure and occupation of BIA headquarters. AIM also spearheaded the effort to remove corruption from the Pine Ridge government offices, which led to the seventy-one day long Wounded Knee uprising. Also in 1973, Banks led a protest in Custer, South Dakota which led to his arrest.

Refusing a prison term, Banks went underground and later received amnesty in California by then-governor Jerry Brown. When Brown left office, Banks received sanctuary at the Onondaga Nation in New York in 1984, where he organized the Jim Thorpe Run from New York to Los Angeles, which ended at the Jim Thorpe Memorial Games where the gold medals Thorpe had won were restored to the Thorpe family. (See "Thorpe")

In 1985, Banks left the Onondaga reserve to surrender to law enforcement officials and spent eighteen months in prison. Upon his release, he worked on the Pine Ridge reserve as a drug and alcohol counselor, helping many native people break the yoke of addiction.

In 1987, grave-robbers in Uniontown, KY destroyed 1,200 Native American grave sites. Banks was called in to organize the reburial ceremonies for the remains. His efforts resulted in both Kentucky and Indiana passing strict legislation against grave desecration.

His autobiography, Sacred Soul, was published in Japan in 1988 and won the 1988 non-fiction book of the year award. He has had starring roles in the movies "Last of the Mohicans," "War Party," and "Thunderheart," and can be heard on Peter Gabrial’s "Les Musiques du Monde," Peter Matthiessen’s "No Boundaries," and with Cherokee Rose. His own album is called "Still Strong." His second autobiographical work, The Longest Walk, was released in 1997. (Based on the Internet site Ojibway Role Models.)

Mike Bastine (Algonquin). Mike Bastine is a story teller and founder of the "Touch The

Earth" Natural Resource Center of South Wales, in northern New York. Mike travels all over the US and Canada with his teachings. He has worked with William Commanda for many years. Before that, he was an assistant to the Seneca medicine man, Mad Bear. He has a video tape available, and is an advisor to The Center for Algonquin Culture. He has been like an older brother to me, and his teachings have been very helpful to me through times of both joy and sorrow.

Irene Bedard (Cree/French Canadian/Inupiat Eskimo). Irene is the speaking voice behind Disney’s Pocahontas character for kids (see "Pocahontas" for the real story). She grew up visiting ceremonial dances and potlatches in Anchorage, Alaska, where her father is still politically active on Native American issues. She now lives in New York with her musical husband Denny Wilson, and directs the "Half Moon" production company.

Irene played the leading lady in the movie "Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale." She also played Mary Crow Dog in “Lakota Woman--Siege At Wounded Knee” (1994) and starred in “Navajo Blues” (1996), “Crazy Horse” (1996), “True Women” (1997), “Two For Texas” (1998), “Smoke Signals” (1998, and “Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World” (1998).

By the way, Lakota activist turned actor Russell Means (who played himself in Thunderheart) played the voice of Pocahontas’ father Powhatan, in the movie. (See “Powhatan”) I really enjoyed the songs, even though Irene didn’t sing them. Although Disney’s story isn’t accurate, they got the hair right. Each character’s hairdo seems appropriate for their role in the Algonquin society they lived in, such as the young men. If you look carefully, the cartoon warriors have long hair on the left and shaved heads on the right. This was so that their hair wouldn’t get caught on the arrows; obviously, somebody did their homework.

Clyde Bellecourt (Ojibway). Clyde Bellecourt, born on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota in 1939, is one of the founders of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Along with Dennis Banks and George Mitchell, all three Ojibway men started AIM in Minneapolis in 1968 as a grassroots watchdog organization whose goal was to prevent the continual harassment and brutality of Minneapolis' urban Indians by the Minneapolis Police Department. With the success of this goal behind them, AIM went on to form a national organization with local chapters in cities across the nation. Clyde Bellecourt, although controversial even among native people, was instrumental in AIM's most notable protests and demonstrations; the march to Washington, D.C. and the take over of the BIA building there, as well as the AIM backed occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. (Picture of Clyde with Bonnie Raitt) Today, Clyde Bellcourt is still fighting for Ojibway and Indian causes, taking up the issue of Indian Mascots/Logos in professional and college sports. (Quoted from the Internet site "Ojibway Role Models")

Edward Benton Benaise (Ojibway) is a full-blooded Wisconsin Ojibway of the Fish Clan and a Spiritual Teacher of the Lac Court Orielles Band of the Ojibway Tribe. Eddie is the executive Director of the Red School House in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was one of its original founders in the late 1960s. Eddie was also directly involved with the original formation of the American Indian Movement, formed in 1968 as a grassroots organization set up to watchdog the Minneapolis Police Department after years of racist attacks and harassment of Minneapolis' Indian community. The Red School House was one of AIM's initial "Indian Survival Schools."

A pioneer in culture-based curriculum as well as Indian alternative education, Eddie achieved a long-standing ambition to set down the oral history of the Ojibway Nation with the publication in 1979 of The Mishomis Book, which is a representation of the life he lived as a youth within the family circle. He was very fortunate to have had the companionship of tribal elders who possessed the memories and inherent wisdom of the Ojibway Nation and who carefully treasured and preserved the ancient traditions upon which his book is based. The Mishomis Book, available from News from Indian Country, is the first and most reliable source of printed information on the Seven Fires Prophecy.

As a member of the Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society, Eddie continues his work passing on the sacred rites of this ancient Ojibway Religion. (From the Internet site "Ojibway Role Models.") Today, Eddie Benton Benaise is a respected educator, story-teller and spiritual leader, and he has been a college professor in world religions. A very busy man, Eddie has nevertheless given generously of his time and teachings to me, and invited me to be an observer at ceremonies.

Big Bear (Cree). Though not that well known to Americans, Canadians know Chief Big Bear as a powerful and influential spokesperson for native rights. The life of Big Bear was portrayed in 1999 on CBC TV by Gordon Tutusis, a Cree actor.

Jesse Bowman Bruchac (Abenaki). The son of Joseph Bruchac and founder of Bowman Web Design, Jesse is a self-taught website design specialist who is presently pursuing a Masters Degree in Computer Science. Jesse has created some of the best websites around for native research, including nativesearch.com, nativeauthors.com, greenfieldreview.org, and ndakinna.com.

Jesse studied anthropology at Ithaca College and has a Bachelors degree in Linguistic Anthropology from Goddard College, where he created the first Western Abenaki Language Syllabus as his senior thesis. Jesse has released several musical recordings alone and with the Bruchac family, and he toured with the Odanak Drum, Awasos Sigwan, in Belgium in 1995. He currently lives in Williamsville, NY.

His best-known solo music CD is Pa-be-kon-gan—Flute Songs, released in 1998, which includes 16 tracks featuring Jesse on the “spruce flute.” It is the first collection of songs recorded on this rare traditional Wabanaki instrument. Anthropologist Frank Speck wrote of the spruce flute in Penobscot Man: “It was used by shamans on account of the magic influence of its tones. It was also said to have been used to furnish music for dancing. As among the southern and western tribes, the Penobscot played love tunes on their flutes and called them “lonesome songs.”

Jesse and I attended Woodstock '94 together when he was just out of high school, and he has helped me with my mapping and linguistic preservation projects. In many ways, he’s a chip off the old Gluskabe.

James Bruchac (Abenaki). Jim, the eldest son of Joseph Bruchac, spent the first two years of his life in Ghana, West Africa and grew up immersed in storytelling and native culture. Jim is a much sought-after storyteller, but is perhaps even better known for his innovative wilderness programs. As founder of Ndakinna Wilderness Project, Jim has led tracking expeditions all over North America and on several other continents.

Jim authored stories which are included in On The Edge, Tough Choices, and Pushing
The Limits. In 1998, he co-authored a collection of Native American monster stories, entitled When The Chenoo Howls: Native Tales of Terror with father Joe. Upcoming books include Bear and Brown Squirrel and Native American Games.

Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki) is the author of over sixty books,

many of which help preserve Native American culture, and his stories and articles have been published in over 500 publications. In 1998 he won both the Writer of the Year and Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of America.

Joe’s many Abenaki storytelling tapes about Gluskabe and other characters are bestsellers, and are treasured by children all over the planet. With his wife Carol, Joe is the founder and co-director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and the Greenfield Review Press. This press publishes the North American Native Authors Catalog, which carries many of the works mentioned in this book. Joe also performs traditional and contemporary music with The Dawnland Singers.

Born in 1942 in Saratoga Springs, NY, Joe received his B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the Union Graduate School in 1975. He is best known for poetry and storybooks based on authentic native tales. Among his more than twenty well-known children’s books are: A Boy Called Slow: The True Story of Sitting Bull, The Boy Who Lived With The Bears, Flying With Eagle, Racing The Bear, Fox Song, The Girl Who Married the Moon, Gluskabe and the Four Wishes, The Great Ball Game, Iroquois Stories, Heroes and Heroines, Monsters, and Magic, Native American Animal Stories, Native American Stories, Raven Tells Stories, Return of the Sun, The Story of the Milky Way: A Cherokee Tale, Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back, and Wind Eagle.

Joe’s full length books include Keepers of the Earth, Dawn Land, The Native American Sweat Lodge: History and Legends, Native Wisdom and many others.A recent book, published by Harcourt in March 2000, is simply called Sacajawea.

Few people work as hard for the peaceful exchange of ideas between Algonquin and mainstream cultures (and other First Nation peoples) as Joe does. As a co-presenter, I have been able to see Joe’s amazing story-telling style up close on several occasions. He has been a trusted advisor for many years. Joe and his wife Carol live in the Adirondack Mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the house where his maternal grandparents raised him.





Margaret Bruchac (Abenaki). Marge, Joseph Bruchac’s sister,
is a very gifted story teller, singer, scholar, consultant and historical interpreter. Her work focuses on hidden histories, material culture, and the continuing survival of Native American peoples in New England. She has a new album, “Hand in Hand: Voices In The Woods: Abenaki Songs and Stories,” with Justin Kennick (available as a CD or cassette). A storytelling video is also available.

As a consulting interpreter for Old Sturbridge Village Museum, Marge portrays "Molly Geet, the Indian Doctress." She is a member of The Dawnland Singers and The W’Abenaki Dancers.

Jonathan Buffalo (Sac and Fox). Tribal historian at Ames, Iowa Sac and Fox cultural center, author of a book on the history of the Sac and Fox. He shared hours of his time on short notice to convey an accurate picture of Mesquakee culture to me, for which I am grateful. He has one of the driest senses of humor I’ve ever seen.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Northern Cheyenne). Algonquin government practice emphasizes non-partisan politics, so it is interesting that Senator Campbell of Colorado switched from Democrat to Republican recently.

Born on April 13th, 1933 in Auburn, California to a Portuguese mother and a Northern Cheyenne father, he served in the Air Force during the Korean conflict. He is the first Native American in the Senate in sixty years, and the only one currently serving. (As a footnote, Herbert Hoover’s Vice President, Charles Curtis was one quarter Kaw Indian, born in a teepee on a Kaw reservation in Kansas.) Campbell was elected to the U.S. Senate in November of 1992 and again in 1998. He sits on four important sub-committees; he chairs the Indian Affairs Committee; Appropriations; Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and the Veterans Affairs Committee. He also finds time to honor his considerable artistic talents as a designer of traditional Cheyenne jewelry. He is also a judo champion, and a raiser of champion quarter horses. He has a degree in Phys-Ed and Fine Arts from San Jose State. In 1960 he attended Meiji University in Tokyo as a special research student.

As a Colorado Congressman from the 3rd District, Campbell worked to settle Indian water rights and to protect natural resources. He was instrumental in changing the name of Custer Battlefield Monument in Montana to The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, so that neither side in the conflict would be disrespected.

As Senator, Campbell has taken a leadership role in fighting fetal alcohol syndrome, and in fighting drug traffic.
His official government bio reads as follows: Representative and a Senator from Colorado; born in Auburn, Calif., April 13, 1933; attended public schools; B.A., California State University at San Jose 1957; attended Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan 1960-1964; served in U.S. Air Force in Korea 1951-1954; represented the United States in 1964 Olympic Games (judo) at Tokyo, Japan; jewelry designer; rancher; served in Colorado State Legislature 1983-1986; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundredth and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1987-January 3, 1993); was not a candidate for reelection to the House of Representatives in 1992, but was elected to the United States Senate in 1992; reelected in 1998 and served from January 3, 1993, to January 3, 2005; changed from the Democratic to the Republican party in 1995; chair, Committee on Indian Affairs (One Hundred Fifth and One Hundred Sixth Congresses, One Hundred Seventh Congress [January 20, 2001-June 6, 2001] One Hundred Eighth Congress); was not a candidate for reelection in 2004.


Tantoo Cardinal (Cree). One of the most popular of Native American actresses, she brings a realness and authenticity into American homes and theaters that touches people’s lives and makes everyone think of her as "one of the family."
She turned her activism into acting, and has given flesh to some of the most admirable female role-models in cinema. She was the mother in “Thunderheart,” played the part of Black Shawl, the knowing wife of the Holy Man Kicking Bird in “Dances With Wolves” (1990 winner of the Oscar for Best Picture), Bangor, the childless companion of Rip Torn in “Where the Rivers Flow North” (1993), and the mother of Brad Pitt’s wife, Pet, in “Legends of the Fall” (1994). She contributed an unforgettable death scene to the tragic film “Black Robe” (1991) by taking an arrow to her neck. She haunted her husband who raped and murdered her in Sam Shepard’s “Silent Tongue” (1993). She played the mother in “The Education of Little Tree” and in the beloved “Smoke Signals,” where she "stole the show" as Arlene Joseph with her "miraculous frybread." She also played in “Tecumseh: The Last Warrior.” Other film credits include “Loyalties” (1987), “Navigating the Heart” (?) and “Nobody’s Girls” (1995). Tantoo is a fluent Cree speaker.
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For over thirty years, Tantoo Cardinal (Métis) has brought complex representations of Native women to the screen. She is also the associate producer and co-narrator of the children's series Stories from the Seventh Fire. In 1998 she received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, established by Mohawk conductor John Kim Bell to honor indigenous Canadians with outstanding careers. She won the Best Actress Award at the 1993 American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, for her role as Bangor in the historical drama Where the Rivers Flow North. She received a lifetime achievement award from the Wind and Glacier Voices Festival in 1992. In 2004 Cardinal wrote the short story There Is a Place for the fiction anthology Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past. Cardinal was born in Fort McMurray, Alberta.
"What I find so exciting about the world of acting and film are the possibilities, that here is someplace that can reveal the stories that are in our communities, and reveal the beauty and strength of the people."


Eileen Charbonneau (Huron/Shoshone/Algonquin). A descendant of French and Native American people of early Montreal (Huron, Shoshone, and other unidentified nations, probably Algonquin), Eileen finds much inspiration and material for her young adult fiction in researching her native roots. She recently completed a play for children, "Manitowak," for which Dennis Yerry and I created a Lenape opening monologue. Her best known award-winning romance books include Waltzing In Ragtime, The Randolph Legacy, and Rachel LeMoyne. Her best known children’s books include The Ghosts of Stony Clove, In the Time of the Wolves, and Honor to the Hills. Eileen is a contemporary relative of the Shoshone woman Sacajawea, who was the principal guide of the Lewis and Clark expedition during the early 1800s.

Jay Chattaway (Piscataway). Chattaway, a former music professor in Maryland and an arranger for the U.S. Navy Band, is currently living in Malibu Beach. He is very aware of his Algonquin heritage, and feels he is following in the footsteps of his musical ancestors who composed and performed music long ago for the "Tayaks," the head chiefs of the Piscataway. Born on July 8, 1946 in Monongahela, PA, Jay is an award winning composer whose film credits include “Missing In Action,” Stephen King’s “Silver Bullet,” “Maniac Cop” and “Red Scorpion.” However, his most famous work by far is for the sound tracks to Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. Since 1987, he has composed music for over one hundred episodes, and has received three Emmy Award nominations. He has commented that he sees Captain Jean Luc Piccard as a Tayak of the future, an honorable and compassionate leader, and is happy to write music for him. He has also written scores for several National Geographic Specials. He is currently the president of the (U.S.) Society of Composers and Lyricists. (Jay was my first music theory teacher, by the way. Hi Jay!)

The Cheechoos (Cree). This remarkably talented family in the arts is from the town of Moose Factory, Ontario, where most of them still maintain residence. Some of the more famous members include Jonathan Cheechoo of the San Jose Sharks NHL hockey team, Shirley Cheechoo,
the actress who starred in "The Rez" and "Song of Hiawatha," (Photo of Shirley Cheechoo in Bearwalker)
Vernon Cheechoo, a legendary folk singer/songwriter whose voice has accompanied many TV documentaries and movies, Archie Cheechoo, whose debut CD "Bay Life" paints pictures of life on the shores of James Bay and has earned great reviews, and Thelma, a young singer/songwriter with a lovely voice who released a popular CD in 1996 called Pa Ma Sei Win (Rena Music). Archie Cheechoo has been a great help to me and my family as a spiritual advisor and friend, and has shared stories of his amazing family with ours. Archie Cheechoo passed away on February 17th, 2006 and will be honored in the next chapter, “

Sunny Chobeka-Sepe Mundy (Shawnee). Sunny is a Shawnee Clan mother and also an editor and founder of the Earthbridge Center in Marianna, Florida.

Steve Comer (Stockbridge Mohican). Steve Comer is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, a federally recognized tribe. He is the first enrolled member to live in his tribe’s original territory in over one hundred years. At present there are 1,500 tribal members, mostly west of the Mississippi. Steve is an official spokesperson for the tribe. He is a highly sought after speaker on Mohican history around the eastern U.S. and Canada, specializing in their history after their so-called demise at the ink-stained hands of James Fennimore Cooper. As a matter of fact, the "extinct" Mohicans are one of a very few tribes to defeat the Wal-Mart Corporation over desecration of burial grounds.

Steve is collaborating in the formation of a Native American Institute at Columbia-Greene Community College, developing primary and secondary school curricula covering native history of the Hudson Valley, archaeology and nature studies. He started out as a student at Wisconsin State University, but an interest in Eastern Religion led him to a Zen Buddhist center in his ancestral territory in New York, and the rest is history. I had the pleasure of exploring ancient Paleolithic sites in the Munsee-Mohican region with him. Clovis points dating back 12,000 years have been found in the region.

William Commanda (Algonquin) has been described as "The Gandhi of the People of Manitou." He currently travels all over the world speaking to large audiences about how we can respect the earth and be good to one another without violence. William Commanda never went to school. He was a trapper from the age of twelve, and at the age of forty he was hired to scale logs. At that late age, William was taught to read and write by a forest ranger. Nonetheless, he has had a tremendous impact on the world at large and has been respectfully welcomed to speak at the United Nations, at the Belonging To Mother Earth conference, and before many governmental bodies in Japan, Canada, the US, and other countries. In 1999 William addressed Parliament in Ottawa, speaking against the excessive use of nuclear power in Canada.

In the early 1960’s, William was stricken with cancer and given a month to live. He was in such pain that he prayed to the Great Spirit to take his life or heal him. He vowed that if healed he would be happy to live the rest of his life in service to the Divine. At that moment a bird came to the window sill and sang to him, and when he heard that song, he was transformed, healed, as he says, by the presence of the divine spirit. He was filled with such love that not only all the cancer, but all hatred as well vanished from his being. In forty years, the cancer has never returned, and neither has the hate.

The following year, on August 2nd, William pulled together an historic gathering on his own property at his own expense to help heal the long-seated differences between the Algonquin and Iroquoian peoples, inviting them both to come feast together. The results were so dramatic and healing for the community, that he was presented with three ancient wampum belts to carry for the Algonquin people. He now carries the "Seven Fires" Wampum Belt of Algonquin prophecy, which is said to be over four hundred years old. Its beaded seven diamonds told the people of seven prophets who came and foretold what would happen generation by generation, and how at a certain time we would come to a great crossroads in human history where we would have to decide between technologically-driven self-destruction and a return to simplicity and a respect for nature.


William lives in Maniwaki, Quebec and is featured in Wisdom Keepers, Native American Wisdom, and many other books. One of my two "adopted grandfathers," we collaborated on the introductory chapter to the book Belonging To Mother Earth. He has recently published a book Learning from a Kindergarden Dropout, and a DVD Good Enough For Two. He recently recieved an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa.

Matthew Coon-Come (Cree). Matthew was the first-ever Chief of The First Nations Alliance of Canada, elected 1988. In his own words from a recent speech at Harvard University,

"I am a Cree from Eeyou Astchee, which translates as the 'people's land' or 'our land. ' Others, who have recently come to the Cree Territory have decided to call it by their own names: Rupert's Land, Northern Quebec, James Bay, Nouveau Quebec, and the latest - Radissonia.

We Crees -- and the Inuit, the Naskapi, and the Innu -- are the peoples of the land bounded by the waters of the James, Hudson and Ungava Bays. We have always lived there. About 300 years ago our territory was discovered by European colonists, who without our knowledge or consent, imposed their societies and laws."

Matthew is currently Grand Chief of the Cree.

Lee Cremo (Mi’kmaq). This bus driver
from Cape Breton has gained international acclaim for his spirited Acadian fiddle playing. He can be heard on Smithsonian’s Indigenous Music label, and at his live performances around Turtle Island.

Dark Rain Thom (Shawnee). This elder is the author of an outstanding book on the history and culture of the Shawnee people, Kohkumthena’s Children, The Shawnee, published by Guild Press of Indiana. She is the Water Panther Clan Mother for the Shawnee Nation (United Remnant Band of Ohio). She was instrumental in helping the tribe achieve recognition in Ohio. She has been lecturing for twenty-five years on Shawnee traditions. She is the wife of popular author James Alexander Thom, who is the author of Red Heart, Children of First Man, and others.
Her work was introduced to me by her grand-daughter Serena, who is carrying on the traditions. She is pictured here with her author-husband Jim Thom who is also a renowned writer on Native American themes.

Brant Davids (Stockbridge Mohican). Davids is a contemporary orchestral composer who is a member of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

The Davis Family, Jim, Martha, and Marybeth (Munsee). The Davises are outspoken advocates of Native Americans and Native issues, and are directors of the Wittenburg Center in Bearsville, NY. Outspoken firebrands on environmental issues, the Davises have also been instrumental in launching The Cry of the Earth Conference at the U.N., The Annual Prayer Vigil on the Washington Monument grounds, The Native American Peace Village site at Woodstock 1994 and countless marches, gatherings, and workshops. They have produced one of the largest video libraries of Native American speakers in North America. Jim Davis has done considerable research on local Lenape history as well. The Davises have lived continuously in the eastern corridor of New York State in spite of five hundred years of wars, removals, broken treaties, and plagues designed to eliminate the "Delaware" from the eastern seaboard. All my relations!

Ada Deer (Menominee).
The first woman assistant secretary to the of the Interior in the BIA, Ada was born in 1935. When she was eighteen years old, the U.S. Government passed an act terminating the Menominee in 1953, plunging her tribe into poverty. In 1970, Deer began her famous campaign to win back the land for her people. After three years of lobbying, their land was restored.

Robbie Dick (Cree). Robbie Dick is not a public person by nature, but he happened to be chief during the battle against Hydro-Quebec. He and his Cree reservation were victorious in one of the most lopsided legal upsets in environmental history. The super-utility industries of North America were no match for quiet Robbie Dick and his relatives. The famous saga is retold on a video called simply "Power." My sister visited him a few years ago at his Cree settlement in James Bay, northern Ontario, and can attest to his good nature and humble manner.

Willie Dunn (Mi’kmaq). actor and singer,and an outstanding songwriter. He has been mentioned in many native journals. He is now a film director as well, and directed “These Are My People.”

The following is from the Trikont internet site: Willie Dunn is from Canada. One can hear it – his voice, his guitar, his songs – are moving between Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot. But Willie Dunn is also a native Indian, the son of a Red Indian mother (from the Mi’kmaq tribe) and a father from Scotland. To many Canadian First Nations, the name "Willie Dunn" is synonymous with contemporary ballads depicting the life and death struggle of First Nation Chiefs who led their people through difficult times in the eighteen hundreds.

Willie Dunn already became known in the early 1970s as a folksinger and poet of songs about his Indian heritage. A Mohawk chief gave him the name Roha’tiio, meaning “his voice is beautiful”.

Willie Dunn donated proceeds of his album entitled "Willie Dunn" to White Roots of Peace in order for the company to further their efforts in publishing a journal of Amerindian life, the Akwesasne Notes . Also since the seventies, Willie Dunn is working as a director with the National Film Board of Canada. The motion pictures included “Ballad of Crowfoot” and “The Other Side of the Ledger”. These films won numerous international awards. In 1971, he produced Canada’s first music video for his song Ballad of Crowfoot, which alone won seven international awards. Willie has since then recorded several LP's for TRIKONT Our Own Voice in Germany, eg "The Pacific".

The past 30 years have been highlighted by tours that have taken him to hundreds of cities and towns throughout Europe and North America. He worked with other native artists from various parts of North America, namely Floyd Westerman (also an TRIKONT artist), Paul Ortega, Buffy St. Marie and Alannis Obomsowin. Willie Dunn, a singer, songwriter, musician, playwright, director, award-winning filmmaker,
First Nations ambassador for Canada, and an artist with contradictions which he is never trying to hide. An artist,who developed his voice, as a musician and a native historian, due to his heritage – both Mi’kmaq and Scottish. This can be heard in a perfect manner on “SON OF THE SUN”: A song out of his Indian world is always followed by one, which is dedicated to Willie Dunn European roots. Along with his own lyrics he likes to work with English classics like Shakespeare, T.S. Eliott (“Pacific”) or on SON OF THE SUN William Johnson´s “The Planting of the Apple Tree”. The titlesong “Son of the Sun” became a chartbuster in Canada, mainly when it was sung by the duo “Kashtin”. Willie Dunn´s SON OF THE SUN contains new and early songs, recorded in Ottawa, finishing with Live-Recordings from Berlin, Germany.


Elden "Grandfather Eagle" (Mi’kmaq). This truly traditional pipe carrier speaks his mind on the old ways of following the spirit. He helped heal my family and gave me many powerful teachings, and a gift of the ribbon shirt.

Powhatan Swift Eagle (Chickahominy) is a singer/songwriter, outstanding flute maker, story teller and "a nice guy." "Pow," as he is called, is Chickahominy on his mother’s side.

His father was half Apache and half Santo Domingo Pueblo. Pow often works with his sister Matokah (whose name is also Pocahontas’ real name) Eagle, a storyteller and singer who works for the Posse Foundation. Powhatan and Matokah are popular names on their mother’s reservation in Virginia, although the earlier father/daughter team were of the nearby Pamunkey nation. Chickahominy means "course ground."

Pow and Makotah’s older sister, who has passed on, was named Singing Eagle. Their older brother’s name is Dancing Eagle. Their famous father was an actor and singer who worked at Frontier Town, and also boxed professionally and played saxophone and clarinet. Pow loves to play jazz guitar (we first jammed at Joe Bruchac’s house), and he lives in Coxsackie, NY with his wife and family.

Phillipe Entrement (Mi’kmaq/Cajun). Entrement, a top concert pianist and composer, is currently the conductor of the New Orleans Philharmonic. Phillipe is part Cajun, as is evidenced by his name, and most Cajuns are part Mi’kmaq. The term "Cajun" is a mispronunciation of "Acadian," a hybrid ethnic group of French and Mi’kmaq culture who were expelled in 1755 from British Nova Scotia. The first Baron Philippe MiusD’Entremont’s son Philippe Mius was the first Frenchman to marry a Mi’kmaq woman in the early years of the Acadian settlement in Canada (near Yarmouth around 1650). She was the first Mi’kmaq to be Christened ("Marie") and their children were the first true Acadians. Three of these sons became Mi’kmaq chiefs.

Louise Erdrich (Ojibway/German). A popular novelist born in North Dakota in 1951 to Ojibway/German parents, Louise’s most recent book The Bingo Palace is typical of her depictions of modern Native American life. Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks are among her other novels. Her second book, Love Medicine was the winner of both the Book Critics Award for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times award for best novel of 1985, and has appeared in more than ten foreign editions. "It is a multi-generational portrait of new truths and secrets whose time has come; of those who left the Indian land and those who stayed behind; of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of danger, desire, and the healing power called Love Medicine."

James Apaumut Fall (Mohican). Fall was born and raised in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn, Illinois, and had already several stage appearances to his credit by the age of nine.

He performed as a soloist in the Illinois State Gifted Children’s Program shortly thereafter. After his eighteenth birthday, Fall moved to New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Upon graduation in 1987, he began his professional career, appearing in many regional and touring productions. He is best known by far for his performance as Kocoum, the suitor in the Disney movie "Pocahontas.”

Fall played the title role in the world premiere of a production of "Honor Song For Crazy Horse," a new musical, and "Black Elk Speaks" at the Denver Center and the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. Fall is a prolific poet, songwriter and aspiring playwright, working on his first play, as well as an accomplished singer and actor. He also performs with his band Concrete Canyon, a traditional drum group.

Adam Fortunate Eagle (Chippewa/Ojibway). Born in 1929 on the Ojibway Reserve at Red Lake, Minnesota, and later was sent to a residential school.
Adam is the "spiritual leader of the keepers of the sacred tradition of pipemakers." He is known for his off-beat sense of humor, and he once garnered worldwide attention by stepping off a plane in Italy, driving a spear into the ground and claiming Italy for Native Americans. He now lives with his wife Bobbi on her Shoshone/Paiute reservation near Fallon, Nevada where they run an art gallery. He wrote Alcatraz! Alcatraz! The Indian Occupation of 1969-71, a book based on his role as organizer
of the AIM protest there.

Susan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne).
Born in 1945, Susan Snown Harjo has been president
of The Morning Star Institute since 1984. She is known for her activism, saxophone, and poetry readings.

Don Hechenberger (Illinois). Hechenberger gives workshops around the Illinois area teaching traditional Illinois crafts and knowledge to children and people of all ages.

Tomson Highway (Cree). Born in 1951 in northwest Manitoba, Canada, he earned his B.A. in music and another B.A. in English from the same university, University of Western Ontario (1975). President of the Native Earth Performing Arts company in Toronto, he has won several awards for new Canadian plays. “Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing” (which starred Gary Farmer) and “The Rez Sisters” were his first two published plays. He has been a regular guest on CBC’s Dead Dog Café Radio Hour (“Minus 45 Minutes”) a weekly venue for Native American humor. An avid pianist, he is currently working on a new musical.

Ruth Holmes-Whitehead (Mi’kmaq). A renowned Mi’kmaq specialist, Ruth Holmes- Whitehead is staff ethnologist and assistant curator in history at the Nova Scotia Museum. She is also the world’s most prolific and respected author on Mi’kmaq culture, and through her lifetime of research and writing, has restored to the collective memory of the Mi’kmaq people much of their true heritage. Although she has never acknowledged her Mi’kmaq heritage in print (to my knowledge), it is safe to say that she would be adopted a hundred times over if she ever wished to be.

Gabriel Horn aka White Deer of Autumn (Wampanoag). This quiet professor at
St. Petersburg State College in Florida has gotten lots of press lately for his writings.
He was born in 1947, and was one of the first educators to join the American Indian Movement survival school, The Red School House in Minnesota. Some of his book titles include The Native American Book of Change, The Native American Book of Knowledge, The Native American Book of Life, Native Heart, and Circle of Nations. Gabriel Horn was given the name "White Deer of Autumn" by his uncles, Metacomet and Nippawanock, and by Princess Red Wing of the Narragansett tribe, Wampanoag nation. He has taught in reservation schools, American Indian Movement (AIM) survival school, public school, and junior colleges. He helped develop the curriculum and was head teacher at the Red School House in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was cultural arts director of the Minneapolis American Indian Center from 1980 to 1982 and helped establish the Minneapolis American Indian Art Gallery and the Living Traditions Museum. For his work in Indian rights, he was nominated for the Human Rights Award in the state of Minnesota.

Gabriel Horn has a master's degree in English and currently devotes his time to lecturing, teaching, and writing. He is a teacher in Florida as well as a member of the National Committee on American Indian History and an advisor to the Native American national newspaper, Indigenous Thought. He lives on the Florida coast, close to Mother Earth and the natural world that is so precious to him.

Iron Thunderhorse (Quinnipiac). Iron Thunderhorse is a direct descendant of Elizabeth Sakaskantaw (the last matriarch of the Quinnipiac’s Totoket Band) of the people of southwestern Connecticut, who were among the first Algonquin people to be driven from their land. In spite of this, they were never converted into the Praying Puritan refugees who were forced to flee in search of new shelter. Many of the Quinnipiac did join refugees who fled, but Thuderhorse’s ancestor was not among them. Several others who remained trace their lineage to a common ancestor include the Paugussett and Schaghticoke at Kent, CT.

Thunderhorse is an outstanding author, artist, and illustrator. His books include Return of the Thunderbeings, co-authored with Donn LeVie, Jr., and two new books, one of which is Wampano: Algonquian Dawnlanders of Southwestern New England, which will be published by the Institute of American Indian Studies (Washington, CT). Thunderhourse is a linguist and scholar and a collection of his work can be found at the Mashantucket Pequot Research Center in Mashantucket, CT. He now lives in Texas. His research on the "Mi’kmaq Suckerfish Writing" (hieroglyphics) is a great contribution to Mi’kmaq history and scholarship.

Shabazz Jackson (Mohican/Lenape). Son-in-law of and co-worker with Pete Seeger,a recognized master of the non-violence techniques which have come down to us through the Penobscot, Shabazz took the initiative in the recycling movement and designed and directed Beacon, New York’s first recycling plant. His ancestors come from the Greenhaven area in northern Dutchess County, NY and are of mixed Algonquin (Quick family of the Delaware) and African-American descent. When I lived in Beacon, we worked together in several ways to help improve the quality of life in our town. “Think globally act locally” was our motto. His wife Tinya Seeger is a fine potter, and his talented son Kitama, one of my former students and part Algonquin as well, will some day make this list I’m sure. He is currently working as a camera man and producer for PBS, working on a documentary about families of prisoners.

Mise’l M. Joe aka Wapeik Kalipu/White Caribou (Mi’kmaq). Mise’l Joe holds both the traditional and elected position of Saqamaw (Chief) of the Miawpukek Mi’kmaq Nation of Conne River of Newfoundland. Mise’l was born in Conne River in 1946 into a strong Mi’kmaq family; and was educated in the Mi’kmaq ways. Both his grandfather and uncle have held the office of Saqamaw.

Conne River is on Newfoundland’s Southwest Coast, and the reserve has a membership of approximately 1,900 individuals, 800 of whom reside on the reserve itself. Mise’l Joe was host for the 1996 International Healing Conference at Conne River, Newfoundland. During the summer of 2000, Conne River will once again host this prestigious event.

Mise’l Joe is the owner of the LNU Cultural Lodge, a traditional Mi’kmaq spiritual and cultural retreat. He is a published author of children’s’ books. He is currently writing an account of the first European exploration of Newfoundland as seen through the eyes of Sylvester Joe, the Mi’kmaq guide.

Mr. Joe is the recognized Pipe Carrier of the band, and leads the people in the Vision Quest, Sunrise Ceremony, Sweet Grass Ceremony, and Sweat Lodge Ceremony, along with the Talking Circle and Healing Circle. He is a proud father and grandfather.

Basil Johnson (Ojibway). Basil Johnston is perhaps one of the leading Indian authors and scholars in Canada and the US. He has written eleven books including classics such as The Manitous, Ojibway Heritage, Ojibway Ceremonies, Ojibway Tales, and Indian School Days, among others. He is one of the few fluent speakers of the ancient Ojibway language who also writes in that language.

Basil Johnson was born on the Parry Island Indian Reserves in Ontario, Canada, in 1929. He graduated from Loyola College in Montreal, Quebec cum laude in 1954. Basil Johnston is a linguist and lecturer in the Department of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Mr. Johnston also travels extensively throughout Canada and the US to speak about the Ojibway culture and language. He often visits Canada's and the United States' Ojibway reservations and schools where he continues to pass down the stories, customs, and history of the Ojibway people in the Ojibway oral tradition. Basil Johnston is from the Cape Crocker Ojibway Reserve in Ontario, Canada. (From the Internet site "Ojibway Role Models.")





Roger Jourdain (Ojibway).
Roger Jourdain, now eighty-four years old, has spent most of his adult life participating in tribal government, state education and national Indian affairs on behalf of the Red Lake Band of Ojibway (Chippewa) in northern Minnesota. He has served as tribal chairman of the Red Lake nation for thirty-two years. Mr. Jourdain has devoted countless hours working for the betterment of his people. He has become known across the nation for leadership, influence and positive growth for the Indian people. In the 1950s he was instrumental in the creation of the Minnesota Indian Scholarship Program. He is also one of the oldest active members of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota. He has worked for and against some of the leading politicians of this century including Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. In addition to his interest in politics, Mr. Jourdain has taken up the cause of Indian elders. He feels that today's younger generation needs to follow the traditional spiritual values "to be able to smell the smoke from the pipe." (From the Internet site "Ojibway Role Models.")

Keewaydinoquay (Ojibway). Keewaydinoquay Peschel is an Ojibwa medicine woman and story teller, known for interpreting birchbark writings.

Clara Sue Kidwell (Chippewa/Choctaw). Born in Tahlequah, OK in 1941, she obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1970. She is a historian and associate professor of Native American studies at the University of Berkeley, CA. She is also assistant director of cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Two of her important works on native history include The Choctaws: A Critical Bibliography, and Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818-1918.

Isabelle Knockwood (Mi’kmaq) is yet another prominent Mi’kmaq in the arts,
who wrote an important book on the devastation visited on native people by the Residential Schools. (I believe the title is simply Residential Schools.)

Winona LaDuke (Ojibway). Winona LaDuke, born in 1959, lives on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation in Northern Minnesota with her three children. LaDuke began working on Indian issues at a young age and spoke before the United Nations when just eighteen years old. LaDuke attended and graduated from Harvard and then accepted the job of reservation principal of the local school and became involved with a lawsuit to recover lands that had been taken by the federal government and the logging industry from the White Earth Reservation. (This was recorded in her book Strangers Devour The Land.) She then founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project and began the work of recovering some of the 800,000 acres of Ojibway land stolen by the government. In the 1980s, Winona LaDuke was a leader of the successful opposition to the James Bay hydroelectric projects and was named "the most prominent Native American environmental activist" by several publications. She next founded the Indigenous Womens' Network which she led to 1995's World Conference on Women in Beijing.

In October of 1994, Winona was arrested while protesting the clear cutting of both old growth and new growth forests used to make phone books. In Spring of 1995, LaDuke organized and hosted a national tour with the Indigo Girls and other musical guests. The tour was known as the "Honor the Earth" tour, and was organized to raise money for local grassroots organizations. In March of 1995 LaDuke was nominated by Time magazine as one of "50 Leaders of the Future." In 1996, at the age of thirty-seven, Winona LaDuke was selected by consumer advocate Ralph Nader to be his Vice Presidential running mate on the Green Party ticket, and she was the candidate again in 2000. (From the Internet site "Ojibway Role Models.")

In 1997 Winona’s first novel, Last Standing Woman, was published, and in 1999 her book All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life was released. In 2004, her book Indigenous Peoples, Power and Politics: A Renewable Future for the Seventh Generation was published. It speaks authoritatively about global warming. It is available through Honortheearth@earthlink.net. Www.honorearth.org. She is also the daughter of "Sun Bear," the pan-nativist teacher of Ojibway descent who wrote a series of books which popularized native wisdom in the 1970s.

The following is from Speakoutnow.org. Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabeg. She is the Program Director of Honor the Earth and the Founding Director of White Earth Land Recovery Project.

In 1989, LaDuke received the Reebok Human Rights Award, with which, in part, she began the White Earth Land Recovery Project. In 1994, she was nominated by Time magazine as one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age, and was also awarded the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the Ann Bancroft Award, the 1997 Ms. Woman of the Year Award (with the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers), the Global Green Award, and numerous other honors.

LaDuke and the White Earth Land Recovery Project recently received the prestigious international Slow Food Award for their work with protecting wild rice and local biodiversity.

A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues. Her books include Last Standing Woman (fiction), All Our Relations (non-fiction), In the Sugarbush (children’s non-fiction), and The Winona LaDuke Reader. Her forthcoming book, Recovering the Sacred, will be released by South End Press in 2005.

Trudy Lamb Richmond (Scatacook). Trudy was formerly director of the American Indian Museum in Washingtonville, CT and is currently Program Manager for Education for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, in Mashantucket, CT, which has one of the largest collections of publications on Algonquins in the world. I quoted from her in my books No Word For Time and Native New Yorkers.

Jeorgina Larocque aka. Sagaligesgw (Mi’kmaq). Plant Woman Jeorgina is a co-worker and friend of Wisdom Keeper William Commanda, and is well-loved by many. She keeps her hand in many arts, including painting, beadwork, herbs, and the art of living close to the earth. Her brother Donald and his son Simone are also active in preserving “the ways.”

Phoebe Legere (Penobscot/Mi’kmaq/Wampanoag) Phoebe Legere, a relentless champion of Algonquin culture and a descendant of Wampanoag sachems Metacomet, Witamu and Wamsutta, is a composer/lyricist of great renown, and has written and produced a number of stage musicals, including Queen of New England, Hello Mrs. President, and many others which have opened off-Broadway and toured the United States, with cast recordings, with herself often in a lead role. Each of her musical productions incorporates some aspect of native Algonquin culture. She is undoubtedly one of the most gifted female vocalists today, with a five octave range and a pure tone that has earned her a worldwide reputation as a musical phenomenon. Her line of rock and roll CDs are ubiquitous items on the internet and have a large following.

Phoebe is also famed (particularly in Paris and New York’s East Village) for her unforgettable cabaret singing, accompanying herself on the accordion/piano. She often appears at the Blue Note and other New York jazz Meccas to packed houses. I played the part of Wamsutta in “Queen,” and Chief Golden Eagle in “Hello Mrs. President,” off Broadway, a truly creative experience.


(publicity shot from Hello Mrs. President of Phoebe and Evan, photo People Magazine)


Ken Little Hawk (Mi’kmaq/Mohawk) is a co-founder of The Hawk Project jazz group. His voice has been heard on countless TV shows and documentaries, and his flute playing has been part of sound tracks for major motion pictures as well as for The Civil War series on PBS. Ken is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and Actors’ Equity. He lives in southern New Jersey. A man I call my brother, "Beeboogwess Bemitch Demik" and I have performed together many times, including on WBAI and at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and at powwows. We also performed together in 2000 at the New Paltz Unity in Diversity/Meet the Composer concert, “Fire In Our Hearts” featuring the Aboriginal music of Evan Pritchard.



As a recording artist, Ken has sung and performed his original music on traditional instruments for two films produced by Ken Burns, “The West” and “Lewis and Clark.” A story-telling CD, “Wind, Sun and Stars” (Helicon Records), was nominated for Best Children’s Recording at the 1998 Native American Music Awards. Little Hawk’s independent recordings include “First Light,” “The Hawk Project,” “From the Heart of Little Hawk,” and “Brothers of the Wind.”

An actor known for his powerful and dignified presence, Little Hawk performed in the Denver and Los Angeles runs of “Black Elk Speaks.” He played Chief Joseph in “Indians” in Princeton, NJ, and portrayed a Native elder in “Inheritance,” directed by Mark Williams. Ken’s rich, deep voice-overs are featured in “Lewis and Clark,” “The West,” and “Land of the Eagle” (Time Life), and also on “A Touch of Native America” (Time Warner Cable).

Ken has given story-telling presentations at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Lincoln Center in New York City, The Brooklyn Childrens Museum, the University of Iowa at Iowa City, the Children’s Library on the Oneida Reservation in Green Bay, WI, Hopi Mesa Schools and the Mission School on the Hopi Reservation, AZ, and Turtle School on the Oneida Reservation.

Little Hawk teaches respect for differences as well as appreciation for the “common thread that binds us.” He says, “The Great Spirit made us and all things. With every breath of air, we draw in the life of the Great Spirit.”

Manitonquat aka Medicine Story (Wampanoag). Native New England author and story teller, Medicine Story was instrumental in helping to create many intentional communities during the 1960s and 70s. He helped guide the beginnings of the "Rainbow Nation," and the "Rainbow Gatherings" which still exist today. He writes about child-raising and personal interaction. Manitonquat maintains a residence in New Hampshire and edits the Native liberation journal, Heritage. He still travels around the world telling his stories. His books include The Children of Morning Light: Wampanoag Tales, and Return To Creation: A Survival Manual for Native and Natural People.

Edna Manitowabi (Ojibway). Born in 1945, Edna is known for her writings about the trauma of being a Native American in a Catholic boarding school.

Joanne Menchini (Anishinabek). My honor roll would not be complete without a verse for a very industrious woman of Anishinabek ancestry who works hard building ties of communication and understanding among native people in New York City.

Carla Messinger (Lenni-Lenape) is the (retired) founder and director of the Museum of Indian Culture,
one of the best known and most successful Native American centers on the East Coast. Owned and operated by The Lenni Lenape Historical Society, the museum is situated close by the banks of the Little Lehigh River in Allentown, PA. Carla and her staff have been very helpful over the years in answering my questions about Lenape culture and language. There is a new team working there, continuing the work that needs to be done in preserving the great culture of the Lenape. 2825 Fish Hatchery Rd, Allentown, PA 18103-9801 (610) 797-2121.

Bill Miller (Stockbridge Mohican/German). A member of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, Bill Miller has opened for such pop luminaries as Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, Tori Amos on her "Under The Pink" tour. Both Vedder and Amos are among his admirers, also Steve Earle. His traditional-spiritual album Red Road was a substantial album with solid success, including a re-release on Warner Western in 1994. Since touring with many big names, his Raven In The Snow (1996) album has enjoyed much cross-over popularity on Reprise Records It consists of a return to rock music, which for him has been a welcome one. "I’m trying to create rock art," he says. He calls his up-dated traditional music "Alterednative" music, and says there is no other category that works.

Although Bill has occasionally had to deal with racism, abuse and prejudice, he has not regretted the journey, and has filled his songs with the spirit of strength and hope that has helped him survive the hard times.

“Raven In The Snow” does not hold anything back. For example, one song is called "Pile of Stones," referring to the prayers his sons had for him while he was away many weeks at a time on the road. In tradition, each stone represents a daily prayer, and they are piled together on the earth. {Note: If you look up the origin of the English word poetry, it derives from a Greek word for piled stones. ED}

When asked how he came to name the album, Bill said, "I was driving home early this year, leaving my mother at the reservation. There had been a fresh snowfall, and this huge raven flew and landed in front of me, and I knew. I stand out, my mother stands out, my people stand out .... like ravens in the snow.

The following update is from Bill Miller’s website; Over the past three years, singer/songwriter Bill Miller has produced two amazing projects, Spirit Rain and Cedar Dream Songs that exemplify his artistry by blending the Native American and western folk/blues traditions in something wholly new. These are works of a man who knows first-hand life's keenest joys and sorrows, a man who distills experience into a potent musical style.

Cedar Dream Songs brought Bill great recognition by winning this year's Grammy Award for Best Native American Recording. This instrumental CD contains nine beautiful songs which, as the subtitle suggests, are perfect examples of ‘Musical Portraits on the Native American flute.'

A Mohican Indian from northern Wisconsin, Bill Miller has long been one of the most admired figures in the Native American music arena and beyond. As an award-winning recording artist, performer, songwriter, activist, and painter, he's been a voice for the voiceless, a link between two great and clashing civilizations. On Spirit Rain he walks the path of reconciliation in a set of fourteen heartfelt songs and evocative instrumentals.
Co-produced by Bill and Michael von Muchow, and written or co-written entirely by Bill, Spirit Rain took the singer back to his roots. It was recorded at Actual Sound Studios in La Crosse, WI, not far from the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation he called home. "It was very different from being in a media center like L.A. or Nashville," says Bill. "Everyone turned off their cell phones. My buddies and I would go fishing on the Mississippi River. The recording was low-tech too: 16-tracks, no digital. I could have pushed it technically, but I felt closer to the spirit doing it this way."

That spirit comes through on songs like the prayerful "You Are The Rain," the acoustic-flavored "Rain Down Your Love," "The Promise," and "Never Too Far," which celebrate the divine glory of sky, prairie, mountain and rain. Says Bill, "This album is about attaining a measure of wisdom through suffering. It's about the pieces of my life." That sentiment rings true in songs like "Face The Blues," a hot-blooded blues tune about being knocked down and getting back up again. Tracks like "I Believe" and "Love Sustained" make bold statements about living out one's personal credo, while songs like "Little Brother (Spirit Rain)" and "Underneath The Blue Sky" ingeniously adapt traditional Native American musical conventions to the folk/rock idiom. Instrumentals like "Approaching Thunder," "Sun Dog," and "Red Sky Heart" showcase Bill's mastery of the Native American flute, while "1st Dream" is a thrilling chant-and-drum song performed by members of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Perhaps the album's most touching track is "Prayers For The Truth," which restates all that the Native American community hold sacred, while offering forgiveness to those that nearly annihilated an entire people. "I don't want anyone to carry around this guilt," says Bill. "All we need is to be allowed to speak, to mourn, to express anger, then be allowed to forgive our oppressors. That could lead to a deeply powerful spiritual change in the U.S. and the world. It could be a statement about the peacemaking that comes with courage."

Digging deep with music and art is nothing new to Bill Miller. With music, he discovered a way out of the entrenched poverty of the reservation, and he has used his talent to build bridges where ever he goes. The son of Mohican-German parents, Bill grew up amid the streams and woodlands of the reservation (his tribe is properly called Mahicanuk, which means People From Where The Waters Are Never Still). Even then, water made a deep impression. "I've always been connected to water," says Bill. "My reservation was in northern Wisconsin, so I grew up near lakes and rivers. There's a mystical energy in water. Every Native creation story has water in it."

Music was an also essential part of life, and Bill (whose Indian name, Fush-Ya Heay Ka, means "bird song") learned traditional songs at an early age. "We didn't have much," he recalls. "There was nothing but woods, trout and a Zenith radio that picked up AM stations across the country. I'd hear Barbra Streisand, The Beatles, Stones, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan. I became a fan of all kinds of good music and the emotion it can capture."

At age 12, Bill got his first guitar. Although he played in teen rock bands for a few years, he soon tired of it. Trading his electric guitar for an acoustic, he began to play folk music and bluegrass, as well as taking up the Native American flute, which he came to master. "With the flute, the breath speaks for you," says Bill. "It's a faith instrument, a spirit instrument." For Bill, the turning point came when he attended a Pete Seeger concert shortly after leaving the reservation to study art at the Layton School of Art and Design in Milwaukee (he later attended the University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse). The experience inspired him to move to Nashville to pursue a career as a singer/songwriter.
In the early days, Bill often faced virulent racism because of his Native American heritage, but he persevered. In time, he made tremendous inroads, writing songs with the likes of Nancy Griffith, Peter Rowan and Kim Carnes, and sharing the bill with such diverse artists as Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, the BoDeans, Richie Havens, and Arlo Guthrie. He got a big break when Tori Amos asked him to be her opening act on the Under The Pink U.S. and Canadian tour. The tour, which sold out venues across the country, was extended to over two hundred shows.

Despite some setbacks, including battles with alcoholism and family tragedies, Bill never stopped growing as a singer, songwriter, and performer. His long recording career includes such landmark albums as Loon Mountain And Moon (1991), Red Road (1994), Reservation Road, Raven In The Snow (1995), Ghost Dance (1999), and The Art Of Survival (2000). His song "Tumbleweed," co-written with Peter Rowan, was included on the 1990 album Dustbowl Children.

Ghost Dance brought Bill some long-deserved recognition at the 2000 Native American Music Awards. He took home five Nammys that night, including Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, and Song of the Year. With up to 200 days a year on the road, Bill and his band continue to make friends across the country and around the world. It may sound grueling, but for Bill Miller it's all about the joy of sharing music.
With his new album's, Bill hopes to further inspire fans, both present and future. "My faith in my Creator leaves me content with the gifts I have," he says, "and I use them to enrich the world through His blessings. I choose to bless people rather than curse them, to be a peacemaker rather than a warmaker." As songs like "The Promise" make clear, Bill feels just as passionate about saving the environment of North America, the land of his forebears. " I think we should feel as if we're living in the Garden of Eden, and we should take care of the land," he says emphatically. "I'll always use my music to urge people to preserve the land."

Bill has an equally active career as a painter. His work has been shown and sold in prestigious galleries around the country, and he maintains a studio at his Nashville home, where he lives with his wife and children. With so busy a personal and professional life, it would seem that Bill Miller could cruise ever onward in easy contentment. But artists don't work that way. "I've been given a lot of second chances in my life," he says. "I've been through alcoholism and other problems. I was lifted out of the ditch, and I still see a blue sky above. After years of living against the grain, I see things as rivers, creeks and rainstorms, as the liquid layers of my life."


Mixishawn (Mohican) is a musician who plays native flute and the "copibara," a unique instrument from the Amazon. He is a founder of the Pequonowonk Canoe Society of Connecticut.

Joe Montana (Blackfoot). One of the greatest quarterbacks in the game, Joe led the 49’ers to four Super Bowl championships and was named MVP in three of those four games. During his lengthy career, he always conducted himself with nobility and fortitude on the field. Thousands of young male Americans idolized him as a father figure. Joe Montana was my favorite quarterback even before I knew of his Algonquin roots.

Joe was born in Monongahela, Pennsylvania in 1956, and he grew up near Carlisle, PA, where Jim Thorpe had led the college team to a championship years before. Joe began his football career at the Pop Warner level, where he became an All Star. He was All-American in high school and college, and All-Pro in the NFL. He was drafted in the third round of the 1979 draft by the San Francisco 49’ers. Sports Illustrated named him the best passer in the NFL after 1978.

Montana was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs following an elbow injury in 1993 and retired a year later. He has written four books, including his autobiography, Montana. Very little about his private life is published.

Kelly Moonwater Frederick aka Mnee-we (Innu/Montagnais). Kelly has a line of Native American crafts, "Feather In The Wind Creations," and is also a poet/singer/songwriter from New Jersey.

Norval Morrisseau (Ojibway). Norval Morrisseau is arguably the most well known Ojibway artist, perhaps even the most recognized First Nations artist in the world. He is the founder of the Canadian-originated school of art called "Woodland" or sometimes "Legend" painting. His work has influenced a large group of younger Ojibway and Cree artists, among them Blake Debassige, Tom Chee Chee and Leland Bell. Although Morrisseau's work is not as well known in the US, particularly in the trendy "Indian Art" world of Santa Fe, NM, his work has been exhibited in Canada and Europe for decades. (From the Internet.)

Nanatasis aka Cheryl Bluto (Abenaki) of Vermont, is a friend and an outspoken advocate of Algonquin values and traditions, and an excellent networking source. Her newspaper editorials can often be found commenting on a wide variety of native issues. She worked with John Moody and other Abenakis for many years through the Missisquoi Tribal office as a member of the Abenaki Research Project (ARP) which is now defunct. Cheryl spent many years working with developers, state and private archaeologists, and other Abenakis to protect sacred sites and burials, and to repatriate her ancestors. She is still called to do some of this work. In November 1994, she was one of a handful of people who made a canoe journey bringing the remains of ancestors home from Montpelier to Highgate (remains repatriated from the state of VT) via the Winooski River and Lake Champlain to Missisquoi River. The journey was one of the most memorable and spiritual experiences of her life.

James Neptune (Penobscot). Noted for his art research, he is the curator of the Penobscot Museum on Indian Island.

Wayne Newton (Powhatan). Born in Virginia, Wayne Newton lays claim to Powhatan Indian ancestry, and possibly Choctaw or Cherokee. One of the prominent Choctaw chiefs recently attended a tour opening, dressed in fine regalia. Wayne welcomed the elder to the stage to speak to the Las Vegas public, and was warmly received.

When Wayne Newton was born in 1942, his Irish-Powhatan father and German-Cherokee mother were living in Roanoke, Virginia, where his father made his living as an auto mechanic. At 4 years old, Wayne was picking out tunes by ear on the piano and guitar. By the age of 10, he was performing on a Roanoke radio station.

All was not well for Wayne in the humid Virginia air. He was diagnosed with severe bronchial asthma. In 1952 the family decided to move to Phoenix where it was expected that the climate would benefit the youngest Newton like it had many thousands of other Arizona emigrants.

Not long after the Newtons moved to their residence on East Brill Street in Phoenix, Wayne and his older brother, Jerry, were performing at local drug and grocery store openings. They became very popular and began singing on radio. Wayne Newton dropped out of High School two weeks before graduating to work at the Freemont in Las Vegas. His short contract was extended for months.

In the summer of 1962, Jackie Gleason was headed through Phoenix on a train trip to promote his Jackie Gleason Show. The owner of the TV station where the Newton Boys had performed was looking for entertainment for "The Great One." He called Wayne asking him to entertain the guest at a luncheon. Wayne came to Phoenix and sang Danny Boy. At the end of the show, Gleason stood up and said, "You're on my first 5 shows."
The Newton Brothers made their debut on the September 29, 1962 broadcast of the Jackie Gleason Show. Jackie helped the boys secure a six month engagement at the Copa Cabana.

One evening Bobby Darin caught their act at the Copa. Darin wanted to branch into record production, and thought that a song written for him would be perfect for Wayne. In the spring of 1963, 21 year old Wayne recorded "Danke Schoen."

In April 2000, Newton announced that he was covering expenses to fulfill a lifetime quest to find and return the remains of Pocahontas, who died in England, to her native Virginia. Newton’s wish is to close a piece of history. This will be long term project, using modern forensic science (e.g. DNA samples from some of Pocahontas’ descendants), to identify her remains amongst thousands of displaced bones located within the grounds of St. George Church in Gravesend, England. (See Pocahontas)

Ted Nolan (Ojibway). Ted Nolan, NHL Coach of the Year for 1997, is from the Garden River Ojibway First Nation near Sault St. Marie, Ontario. He has been the head coach for the Buffalo Sabres since 1995 and is the only head coach in the NHL who is Native. His hard work enabled the Sabres to reach the playoffs and defeat the Ottawa Senators in the first round, a feat no one expected of the team at the beginning of the season. Prior to his coaching career, which includes a successful tenure in the Canadian Junior leagues, Nolan played professionally, primarily for the Detroit Red Wings before a knee injury cut his playing career short. Mr. Nolan, who is described as an excellent teacher and student of hockey, spends much of his off time working with young First Nation kids. He credits his Ojibway parents for instilling a sense of hard work, ambition, perseverance and cultural pride all of which have helped him get to where he is today. He was elected Coach of the Year in only his second season. (Quoted from Internet site "Ojibway Role Models.")




The following is quoted from Canadaeast.com.

Ted Nolan remembers the long hours it took to build a backyard rink when he was growing up on a small First Nation reserve. He didn't have the benefit of running water with a hose to flood the surface.

"We didn't have indoor plumbing, " he said. "I used to pack it all down and build it with one pail of water at a time. I kept running back and forth with one pail of water at a time.

"It might take three months to build a rink, but I was pretty persistent and I built a rink in my backyard almost every winter. I tell this to all kinds of kids. No matter what avenue in life you're following, it's one step at a time. I use the analogy it's one pail at a time." Nolan, 47, is the new head coach and director of hockey operations for the Moncton Wildcats and he hopes to bring that same work ethic and determination to his players.

He's the highest profile hiring in the history of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League franchise and his mission is well defined.

The Wildcats are looking to cap off their 10th anniversary in dream fashion when they host the 2006 Memorial Cup, scheduled from May 19-28 at the Moncton Coliseum.

The four-team tournament will also feature a second QMJHL representative and the champions of the Ontario Hockey League and Western Hockey League. Nolan, an Ojibway, grew up on the Garden River First Nation just outside Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. He's the third youngest in a family of twelve kids six boys and six girls.

His father died of a heart attack when he was 14 years old. His mother got hit by a drunk driver and died when he was 23 years old.

From a poor upbringing to tragedy to prejudice, Nolan has faced lots of adversity in life. He overcame mountains of hardship on the way to becoming a player and coach in the National Hockey League.

He was a fifth-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings in the 1978 NHL draft and he played nine seasons in the pros. The forward suited up for 78 NHL games with Detroit and the Pittsburgh Penguins and spent the remainder of his career in the American Hockey League and Central Hockey League.

He also worked behind the bench in the NHL for three seasons.He was Buffalo Sabres head coach when he was named NHL Coach of the Year in 1996-97."Hockey in our First Nation community is a big sport, " said Nolan. "My brothers played on the local men's team, the Garden River Braves. Living in Moncton, kids grow up aspiring to be a Wildcat. My heroes were the guys from the reserve playing for the Garden River Braves and I just wanted to be one of them some day.

"Then all of a sudden I was 22 years old skating in the NHL at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit against some of the best players in the world. Then a few years later I was coaching in the NHL against some of the best coaches in the world.

When I have a chance to reflect on that, anything is possible with the right approach to life." Nolan and his wife Sandra have two kids. Brandon, 22, plays for the Manitoba Moose, the American Hockey League farm club for the NHL's Vancouver Canucks. Jordan, 16, is a rookie with the Erie Otters of the Ontario Hockey League.

Nolan grew up on a First Nation reserve with a population of about 500. There was no arena in the community so he began skating on his backyard rink at age five and he played house league or recreational hockey for the first few years.

"I never got to play in the city league until I was 11 years old, " he said. "Then I got a lucky break when I was 16 to go away to Kenora and play in the Manitoba junior A league. That was the first high level team I played for.

"One of the toughest things I ever had to do was leave home and go to Kenora, but going there was the turning point of my life. We didn't have a gym, trainers, all those skating drills or hockey schools back home.Then I got to Kenora and they were talking about conditioning coaches and strength programs.

Jim Northrup (Ojibway). Jim Northrup lives on the Fond du Lac Ojibway Reservation near Duluth, Minnesota. Jim is perhaps best known for his barbed humor and wit, which truly reflects his Anishinabe identity and culture. His play "Rez Road Follies," his book of poetry and short stories Walking the Rez Road, and his syndicated column "Fond du Lac Follies" have defined Jim as a writer whose words transcend reservation boundaries, while maintaining a profound sense of what it means to be an Ojibway person living in today's modern world. Jim also recently finished a film with filmmakers Mike Hazard and Mike Rivard called "With Reservations."

Shyla O’Shea (Wappinger). A radio celebrity and popular psychic and spiritual advisor well known to people of the Mid-Hudson region, Shyla is proud of her Irish, Welsh, and Wappinger roots. Coincidentally, the reach of her fame pretty much corresponds with the traditional extended region of the Wappinger people.

Larry Ottoway (Innu). A singer/songwriter of northern Quebec who uses Scottish Highland Eulian Pipes in his songs, Larry is seeking to bring public attention to the government’s misuse of their great waterways. The people of his region were formerly known as "Montagnais."

Trudy Ann Parker (Abenaki). She is the author of Aunt Sarah: Woman of the Dawnland.

George Paul (Mi’kmaq), A fine visual artist, George is the creator of many excellent traditional Mi’kmaq tapes, including "Traditional Songs and Chants," "Traditional Voices," and others. He lives in New Brunswick, Canada.

Tully Paul (Mi’kmaq). Tully Spotted Eagle Boy and his wife travel around North America sharing the traditional ways of the Mi’kmaq people. We dined at the Nations Capitol together once. (This was not as glamorous as it sounds; they stuck us in the basement!) He is the director of Mother Earth Lodge II, "for wellness and healing of all people."

Wilfred Pelletier (Ottawa). Born in 1927, Pelletier is the author of Childhood in an Indian Village, No Foreign Land: The Biography of a North American Indian (autobiographical) and Le Silence d’un Cri.

Leonard Peltier (Ojibway/Lakota). "Free Leonard Peltier" is one of the most oft-heard slogans of our time, and foreign leaders such as Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, often ask our U.S. politicians about his future, yet many Americans still don’t know what all the fuss is about. Currently serving two consecutive life terms in a Federal penitentiary for the alleged murder of two FBI agents during a shoot-out near Pine Ridge, South Dakota in 1975, Leonard continues to maintain his innocence. Millions have signed petitions for Leonard’s release, and even certain Federal experts have stated in court that the evidence is questionable, and that "the bullets don’t match the gun." However, the FBI feels strongly that Leonard should be held guilty of murder as charged. Other Algonquins involved in the shoot-out included Anna Maye Pictou Aquash, a Mi’kmaq who was also killed, and Clyde Bellecourt, an Ojibway who survived his bullet wounds.

According to the Internet site, Ojibway Role Models, "With the publication of Peter Matthiesen's book In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, as well as the making of the documentary film 'Incident at Oglala,' and the further revelations of formerly classified documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, it has become quite clear during the twenty years Leonard has spent as a political prisoner that he has been wrongly accused and wrongly convicted of this crime."

Before the incident at Oglala, Leonard was already proving himself to be a man of strength and courage through his involvement with the American Indian Movement, and particularly with his efforts to support and protect elders and "traditionalists" who called upon AIM for help during the "reign of terror" on Pine Ridge in the early seventies. (Also quoted from the Internet site, “Ojibway Role Models.")

Leonard is also a painter and a sculptor. His new book, Writings From Prison: "My Life is My Sundance" (St. Martin’s Press), contains a mixture of essays and poetry, and has received critical acclaim from the Native American community.

In March 2000, Leonard was moved from Leavenworth to a Minnesota prison where he was operated on at the Mayo clinic for ankylosis on both sides of his jaw, an incapacitating and painful injury. His jaw had become totally frozen. Leonard had been tortured for four years by a condition that could have been fixed in five hours, but which had been left untreated for most of his twenty years in prison. Prison officials had maintained for over a year that Leonard’s condition did not warrant x-rays, a second opinion, or any treatment at all. Leonard’s latest appeal for parole was denied in June 2000.

Mark Peters (Lenape). Peters (retired) was chief of the Munsee, a Lenape Nation who are the original people of New York City, lower New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. His people, who played a pivotal role in the intellectual formation of the United States, have been living in exile near Thames River, Ontario, since the Revolutionary War. He is also tribal historian. At my request, he gave a talk at the New York Open Center in 1999, possibly the first Munsee Chief in 250 years to speak to white people in his home region of New York City. Mark was accompanied by spokesperson and former chief Leo Nicholas, Jr. He was instrumental in providing unpublished historical documents that formed the basis for the book Native New Yorkers. Mark is now a trial lawyer in London, Ontario, where he often defends Native Americans in the Canadian court system.

Chief J. Hawk Pope (Shawnee). United Remnant Band, Ohio. Not only has the Chief
been one of the greatest unifying agents in Shawnee history since Tecumseh, he is also involved in many art forms, including music and movies. He was a consultant for TNT’s “Tecumseh: The Last Warrior.”

Rose Powhatan (Chickahominy). Rose, a descendant of Chief Powhatan, was a Fulbright Scholar in Native American history in her youth, and now teaches full time, and advises public schools on presenting Native American history. She and her husband also produce an outstanding line of artistic sweat shirts that have an educational Native American theme. (I have one in my closet.) They live in Maryland.

Lynn Pritchard (Mi’kmaq). Some Algonquin people have accused of being nepotistic, but I’m sure my sister Lynn would never dream of calling me that. She is a great singer and healer who has been very active in organizing national and local events that promote Native American values. She lives in the wilds of New Brunswick, Canada, and works with aboriginal youth at risk.

Oannes Arthur Pritzker (Wabanaki-Penobscot). Founder of Yat Kitischee, an intertribal social justice, environmental protection, cultural art, and native news organization, his voice has been heard around the world as host and producer of RFPI Radio For Peace International’s weekly broadcast, "Honoring Mother Earth," Indigenous Voices programming. As host he has interviewed some of the most important voices in the Native American community, including the Hopi spokespersons Emery Homes and Martin Geshiveseoma, Arvol Looking Horse, Sara James, Robert Owens, Manny Two Feathers, Grace Smith Yellow Hammer, Carter Camp, Roberto Borrero, Corbin Harney, Ted Williams, (Evan Pritchard!) Tiokasin Ghosthorse, and Robert Ghostwolf. Wolf Mountain Radio is currently available on www.radio4all.net.

Oannes is whole-heartedly devoted to Wabanaki-Penobscot traditions. Oannes grew up around the Indian Island Reserve of the Penobscot River in what is called Maine. At a young age, he learned trapping, snow shoeing, and beaver hunting. Oannes is the director of Wolf Mountain Press, and is also known as Wolf Watches Beaver. He lives in Naples, Florida with Betty Hurst, a cultural artist and director of Kinonwatquasin ("All Our Relations"), an intertribal arts coop. She is Saponi/Carolina Blackfoot. Oannes is an advisor to CAC.

Oannes was in the Peace Corps in Asia in 1979, and returned to Indian Island, in the Penobscot River in Maine, and someone at the campus radio station at the University of Maine in Orono, asked to interview him. After the interview he asked what was involved in having a radio show on the campus station. The answer was nothing, if you’re a student, you just sign up and do it. He fell in love with radio and never looked back. He has now been recording and broadcasting interviews for 25 years, all in service to native people and mother earth. He started out very simply, announcing births and deaths on the reservation, local news, weather…(snowsnake scores and standings?) He thought of it as Wabanaki Radio. He traveled around a lot and began to wonder how he could find a way to broadcast his environmental message to the whole world. He prayed about it one day in 1992. A few days or weeks later, on March 26th of that year, he found himself at a symposium in Eugene, Oregon called Peace on the Planet: Native Wisdom, Native Rights and Mother Earth. It was there that he met up with the folks at RFPI, Radio For Peace International, and began to broadcast Wolf Mountain Radio on worldwide shortwave. It was around 1997 he was invited to broadcast from the Belonging to Mother Earth symposium in Virginia Beach, VA.

I was there, and saw Richard Schneider, the organizer of the event, and founder of RFPI, walking in the lobby proudly carrying a beautiful medicine pouch. I said, “Wow, Richard, that is the most beautiful Penobscot medicine pouch I ever saw. Where did you get it?” He said, “How do you know its Penobscot?”

I said, “The style is absolutely unmistakable. That is a very fine traditional style PENOBSCOT pouch! I’d put money on it.” He answered, “I will introduce you to the maker. He is indeed Penobscot, and he will be extremely happy to hear that you recognized his tribe from his work! His name is Oannes Pritzger and he is broadcasting live on RFPI (Richard was/is deeply involved in the station) from the lobby as we speak. Perhaps we can arrange an interview for you.”

That’s how I met Oannes, and did that interview the next day, and several more besides. I ended up being a host and interviewer for RFPI myself, and presented a 24 week series on “The Indigenous Roots of World Religion,” as part of RFPI’s University of the Air. Oannes played an advisory role in that. I was traveling that summer and was able to hear my broadcast from various locations in the US on the shortwave.


Gladys Proctor (Piscataway). A museum curator for the Piscataway Nation of Bradywine, MD, this lively and engaging elder gave us a guided tour of the museum, a wonderful experience.

Wally Rabbitskin (Cree) is a long distance runner who often does well in the Boston Marathon.

Bonnie Red Basket (Narragansett). Bonnie holds a women’s circle, and carries many traditional oral teachings handed down to her from a number of Algonquin elders of her region. She sponsored a workshop for the Center of Algonquin Culture in 1999 in Rhode Island.




Rita Joe (Mi’kmaq). Born in 1932 in Wycocomagh on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Rita Joe went to Shubbenacadie Residential School until the 8th grade. She didn’t begin to write poetry until her late sixties. Rita Joe is a poet well known and well loved among Canadians, both native and non-native, especially among her own Mi’kmaq people. Her work advocates love and understanding between peoples of different cultures. She has won several awards, including the Order of Canada, the highest honor in Canada. Her life is retold in Song Of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi’kmaq Poet.

Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree). Buffy is the eternally young singer-songwriter, who has
been an outspoken advocate for peace, justice, and freedom for the past thirty years. Born in 1941 on a Cree reservation in Canada, she was orphaned and then adopted by a couple in Maine.
She graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Fine Arts and moved to New York.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was a graduating college senior in 1962 and hit the ground running in the early the Sixties, after the beatniks and before the hippies. All alone she toured North America's colleges, reservations and concert halls, meeting both huge acclaim and huge misperception from audiences and record companies who expected Pocahontas in fringes, and instead were both entertained and educated with their initial dose of Native American reality in the first person.

By age 24, Buffy Sainte-Marie had appeared all over Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia, receiving honors, medals and awards which continue to this day. For her very first album she was voted Billboard's Best New Artist.

Buffy was discovered after performing at Town Hall in New York City, and she signed a recording contract. She is small but powerful, and looks at life with a paradoxical sparkle in her eye. Her song “Up Where We Belong,” recorded by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for the film “An Officer and A Gentleman” won an academy award in 1982. Although her well-known song "Universal Soldier," recorded by Donovan, became a famous protest song, Buffy did not participate in anti-war marches. Some of her other songs include "Until It’s Time For You To Go" (recorded by Presley, Diamond, Streisand and Flack) and "Piney Wood Hills" (recorded by Bobby Bare). Buffy has been the subject of several documentaries. She was a pioneer in desktop computer publishing and her CD “Coincidence and Likely Stories” was produced on a Macintosh computer at her home studio.

She disappeared suddenly from the mainstream American airwaves during the Lyndon Johnson years. As part of a blacklist which affected Eartha Kitt, Taj Mahal and a host of other outspoken performers, her name was included on White House stationery as among those whose music "deserved to be suppressed". In Indian country and abroad, however, her fame only grew. She continued to appear at countless grassroots concerts, AIM events and other activist benefits. She made 17 albums of her music, three of her own television specials, spent five years on Sesame Street, scored movies, helped to found Canada's 'Music of Aboriginal Canada' JUNO category, raised a son, earned a Ph.D. in Fine Arts, taught Digital Music as adjunct professor at several colleges, and won an Academy Award Oscar for the song "Up Where We Belong".

Buffy has been an advocate for many struggling Native American artists and writers, is continually fighting for Native rights, and seems to be involved in just about everything that’s going on around the indigenous world, including the American Indian College Fund (which is where we met). As she says, "There’s a lot of arrows in the air right now."

Richard Salter (Mi’kmaq). Author of many books on a variety of subjects, but especially children’s books, Richard is prolifically creative in many directions. He and I did many sweat lodges together.

Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki). Her 1996 children’s book Muskrat Will Be Swimming celebrates the teachings of elders and the traditions of Native people, and was named a 1996 Notable Book for Children by the Smithsonian. Two of her other books include Dirt Road Home, and Home Country.

Chris Simon (Ojibway). With a reputation for toughness and size, Chris Simon is perhaps one of the NHL's premiere Native hockey players. In 1996 he was a major contributor to the success of the Stanley Cup Champion team the Colorado Avalanche, and his play in the 1996 playoffs was exemplary, scoring key goals when they counted most. Chris finished his career with a long stint with the Washington Capitols, after an off-season trade in 1996.

Since breaking into the NHL over three years ago, Simon has been highly regarded by the Native American community, especially the Ojibway/Anishinabe people of Canada. He has emerged as a strong role model for Canada's First Nation youth and American Indian children in the U.S.. As a recovering alcoholic, Chris has set a positive example for Ojibway and other Native youth to follow. Today, Chris spends much of his free time hunting and fishing, which he feels is much healthier than hanging around bars and clubs. Upon retiring from hockey, he would like to return to his home in Ontario and live a small town lifestyle. Chris does not hesitate to credit his Ojibway family and friends from his hometown and Reserve in Ontario for their support and encouragement. Chris spends time during the off-season working with Native youth sponsoring hockey clinics and giving advice whenever asked.

Ruby Slipperjack (Ojibway).
Born in 1952, Ruby is a multi-talented Ojibway woman raised on traditional stories and crafts. She attended a residential school in Sault Ste. Marie, and earned a B.A. and B.Ed. from Lakehead University in 1989. In addition to writing Honour the Sun and Silent Words, she is an accomplished painter.

Larry Snake (Lenape) helped bring the Western Delaware Nation into reality.

Connie Stevens (Narragansett/Mohawk). A pop singer icon of the sixties, Connie has had a versatile career, spanning motion pictures, television, Broadway, recordings, and the concert stage. She is also a producer and successful business entrepreneur. She has performed for U.S. Presidents at the White House and the Kennedy Center, and continues to headline in Las Vegas and Atlantic City today. In 1991, Connie received the "Lady of Humanities" award from Shriner’s Hospital, and in March 2002 she received a medal for distinguished service to
the USO.

Connie started out as the first artist signed by the new Warner Brothers record label. Her "Sixteen Reasons," hit number one in 1961, helping establish the label as well as her career in music. After starring in five movies, Connie Stevens was Cricket Blake in the TV series "Hawaiian Eye," who became a cult figure for American teenage girls. Connie performed in a number of films after that, including "Grease 2" with Michelle Pfeiffer. She also portrayed Marilyn Monroe in ABC’s movie of the week "The Sex Symbol." Connie starred opposite George Burns in the popular TV series "Wendy and Me." She was also a popular guest on "Murder She Wrote" and "Love Boat," not to mention countless others. On Broadway she played the title role in Neil Simon’s Star Spangled Girl," co-starring Anthony Perkins.

Connie is the creator of the Forever Spring beauty system and product line. Her skin health care products, which preserve youthfulness using ginseng and other nutrients, are now "playing ball" in competition with Revlon, Lancome, and other major players.

Connie’s work with Native Americans is widely recognized. Her Windfeather project
has enabled over one hundred colleges to award full scholarships, sent surplus goods to Indian reservations nationwide, and provided summer camps for Native American children who have never left a reservation. Windfeather’s address is 8721 Sunset Boulevard, Penthouse 4, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

Her two daughters by Eddie Fisher are Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. Joely was
a co-star of the popular "Ellen" TV series for ABC and the star of the movie “Inspector Gadget,” co-starring Matthew Broderick. Tricia Leigh played Heidi Fleiss for CBS and Monica Lewinsky in “Starr Struck." Needless to say, both of these Hollywood starlets are descendants of the Narragansett branch of the Algonquin family as well. In addition, Connie has two teenage sons from her marriage to cinematographer Christopher Duddy, and was once married to actor James Stacy. That’s Hollywood.

Darryl Stonefish (Munsee). Darryl Stonefish, of the prominent Stonefish family, is currently the historian of the Moraviantown band of the Munsees in Ontario, Canada.

Hyemeyohsts (Wolf) Storm (Cheyenne). Born in Lame Deer, Montana in 1935 and
raised on the Cheyenne and Crow reservations, Storm raised a storm of controversy over the publication of his first book of stories, Seven Arrows, which used some broad, creative interpretations of sacred stories. His other books include Lightningbolt, published in 1994, and Song of Heyoehkah, released in 1981.

Brahm and Deirdre Stuart (Mi’kmaq/Cajun/Irish/Welsh/Lebanese). Brother and sister songwriters, Brahm and Dierdre are the lead singers in a pagan/Celtic band called Shaman, and have produced many albums under that name. Brahm is one of my favorite songwriters, but my favorite song is "The Green Man," by Dierdre. Brahm is a great Cajun/Celtic fiddle player but he has also performed Metis versions of traditional Mi’kmaq music with me on occasion.


Tchin (Blackfoot). I met Tchin at a powwow in the early 1990s, and thought he carried a remarkably peaceable air about him, and an easy-going manner, not to mention being very talented. He is the author of the children’s favorite, Rabbit’s Wish For Snow, and has produced a series of tapes of recorded flute music. He is also a professional artist.

Jean Thompson, aka. Ssipsis (Penobscot), has been instrumental in designing appropriate curriculum for Native American school children. Her book about a Passamaquoddy girl of the Bear Clan, Molly Molasses and Me: A Collection of Living Adventures, is an example of her work.

The Ticontis (Algonquin). Frank and Peter, two prominent members of this prominent Algonquin family, are helpers to Grandfather William Commanda. They make it possible for William to travel around the world to share his message of non-violence and respect for Mother Earth as well as assisting with the three wampum belts in his care. One of these belts is the four hundred year old "Seven Fires" wampum belt of Algonquin prophecy. (See Commanda)

Sheila Tousey (Stockbridge Mohican) Sheila is a member of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. This popular actress has performed in “Thunderheart “(1990), “Land of Illusions” (1995), “Ravenous” (1999), “Smoke Signals” (1998), “Silent Tongue” (1994),” All The Winters That Have Been” (1997), “Grand Avenue” (1996), “Slaughter of the Innocents” (1993), and “Medicine River” (1993). She has performed at the Joseph Papp Theater in New York City.

Gail Tremblay (Mi’kmaq). Born in 1945 in Buffalo, NY, Gail earned her B.A. in drama from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA from the University of Oregon. Multi-talented, she excels both as a writer and artist, all of which draws upon her traditional Mi’kmaq heritage. She has been on the faculty of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington since 1981. Her books include Close To Home, Indian Singing in 20th Century America and Night Gives Women the Word.

Gerard Tsonakwa (Abenaki). Tsonakwa grew up in the Algonquin region of Canada. His books include Light of Dawn, From The Land of Dawn, and Welcome the Caribou Man.

Grandfather Turtle (Mi’kmaq). This beloved teacher of Mi’kmaq tradition shuns the limelight. My adopted grandfather has a great healing gift, great knowledge of traditional ways, and many teachings for our time, but likes to keep his life simple and close to nature. He avoids books, telephones, and TVs. I wrote about him in No Word For Time.

Gordon Tutusis (Cree) played Big Bear in the Canadian TV special by the same name.

Shania Twain (Ojibway).
Shania is a young powerhouse performer who is very aware of her native influences, having been adopted into an Ojibway family at a young age. She was born Eileen Regina Edwards in August of 1965 to Clarence and Sharon Edwards. After her parents divorced, she moved five hundred miles north of Toronto, to Timmons with her two sisters and her mom. In 1971 her mother married Jerry Twain, an Ojibway. Jerry adopted Eileen and her two sisters, extending full fellowship into the Ojibway Nation. After that point, she was raised as part of Jerry’s hunting and fishing family sixty miles from the nearest town, an Ojibway reservation.

At the age of 22, Eileen’s parents were killed in a car accident. She immediately became the parent to her two sisters. She dropped her birth name and became "Shania," which is said to mean "I’m on my way there” or “where you are headed" in Ojibway. As one of the leading entertainers in the world today at the age of thirty-four, she is certainly well on her way.

Shania now lives in Switzerland, doesn’t smoke, drink, or use drugs, and is a vegetarian. She is enormously successful, but tries to remain down to earth. A recent rumor has it that she has become involved with Sant Mat, a spiritual path that has grown out of the lineage within the Sikh religion which stems from the mystic poet Kabir, a simple Persian mystic of the 13th century, who was close to nature. Incidentally, Kabir’s teaching has several points in common with that of the Midewiwin Society of the Ojibway.

Gerald Vizenor (Ojibway).
Like Basil Johnston, Gerald Vizenor is also one of the leading American Indian scholars in the United States. Vizenor is from the White Earth Ojibway Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota. He has been a professor at the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently a professor of Native American Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published numerous books including The People Named The Chippewa, Manifest Manners, Heirs of Columbus, Interior Landscapes, and the 1990 American Book Award winner Griever: An American Monkey King in China. Vizenor has also written the prize-winning screenplay "Harold of Orange." (Quoted from the Internet site, "Ojibway Role Models.")

Walks With Wolves Woman (Shawnee). A direct descendant of Tecumseh, "Wolves" and her family have been very active in Shawnee matters in Ohio over the years. She showed me the spots in the woods around Chillicothe where her ancestor Tecumseh set up camp, and got me tickets to the outstanding outdoor drama “Tecumseh!” which is performed partly in Shawnee, accurately spoken thanks to the efforts of the local Shawnee elders.

Albert Ward (Mi’kmaq) is an heir to the spiritual wisdom and tradition of Albert Lightning. Hundreds of people look to Albert as a spiritual advisor and healer throughout the U.S. and Canada, and he is building a healing center in New Brunswick near the Miramichi River. Albert is also a marvelous woodcarver.

Joe Leonard Ward (Mi’kmaq). This young traditionalist from Nova Scotia has received recognition for his work as an artist, teacher, traditional language instructor, craftsman and woodsman, and also as a drug and alcohol counsellor, particularly with prisoners.

Watawaso, aka Barbara Giammarino (Penobscot). Barbara is the director of the Sunny Hill Native American Museum in Connecticut, and once encouraged me to do an afternoon of Mi’kmaq storytelling there, with children of all colors. Her grandmother, who is fluent in Penobscot, had a mocassin shop in Old Orchard Beach Maine which my mother frequented back in the early 1940s.

Don Waterhawk (Shawnee). Don is a renowned craftsman and creator of Native American art whose works are highly sought after. He once helped me locate a Lenape-speaking elder, Jim McCann, but McCann passed away before I was able to talk with him.

Kathy Watkins (Passamaquoddy). Former director of the Rhode Island Indian Council, this firebrand elder (who likes to laugh) helped start me on my journey to exploring my Wabanaki roots, long before “Dances With Wolves” came out. When I told her of my Aunt Helen’s work with animals, and said I thought she was Mi’kmaq. Kathy answered, "Helen? I know her! I thought she was Passamaquoddy!" (In fact, Helen had been adopted into the Passamaquoddy at an early age, long before Kathy was born.) That’s how my journey started.

Wayquay (Ojibway). A pop singer who has lived many years in New York City, is also an outstanding performance artist and poet, Wayquay is a fierce spokesperson for human rights and is also fun to be around. Her CDs , including “Tribal Grind,” are in the stores. She recently sang at the Native American Music Awards Ceremony.

Ron Welburn (Assateague/Cherokee/African-American). Ron Welburn is an associate English professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his poems are widely known in the small press market. He has published six books of poetry. Ron is also the professor of Native American studies at U. Mass. His book Roanoke and Wampum will soon be published by Peter Lang Publishers.

An African-American as well as Native American, Ron Welburn grew up in Philadelphia where he fell in love with jazz. He has commented that Oscar Pettiford, Blandford, Charles Mingus, Keewee Smith, Illinois Jaquet, Lee Wiley, Jim Pepper, Joy Harjo, Kay Starr, and Frankie Trumbaw were all great Native American jazz players. To that list I add Twylah Nitch, Floyd Westerman, Hugh Brodie, and Powhatan Swift Eagle.

According to Dr. Laurence Hauptman, "Welburn is a recognized authority on Native American oral literature as well as contemporary Native American literature in English, and has been in the field more than a quarter century."

Ron Welburn and I worked together in 2006 on a 3 day symposium at the University of Massachusetts on Reconstructing Algonquin History. A presentation on techniques used in writing Native New Yorkers is still online at umass.

W. Richard West, Jr. (Cheyenne-Arapaho of Oklahoma). Born in 1943, W. Richard West is founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian, now part of the Smithsonian Institute. He has been a celebrated painter since he was a teenager. He is also a lawyer who represents Native people in court.

I saw Richard give a talk once, and he seemed very knowledgeable and dignified, and delightfully unconcerned with stereotypes. He is a universal citizen of the planet (but from an Algonquin perspective, I might add).

Henrietta Whiteman (Cheyenne). Whiteman was responsible for the creation of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, a bill that she helped draft. She is professor of Native American Studies at the University of Montana.

Wolfsong (Abenaki). Author of Stories of the Dawnland, Wolfsong is an Abenaki storyteller from Vermont who performs on behalf of the Abenaki Reburial Fund to raise money for the purchase of land for reburial of Abenaki ancestral remains. He is featured in Steven McFadden’s book, Native American Wisdom.

Eric Wood (Cree/Romany). The music of Eric Wood has been described as intense, compelling, intimate, provocative, poetic and personal by music critics in America, Canada, and Europe. An American amalgam of folk, jazz, country and rock merges with Brazilian and even Middle Eastern idioms in his music. The poignant lyrics are rendered in Wood’s smoky, baritone voice.

Eric came from an austere background in the Appalachian foothills near the Ohio-West Virginia border, of Cree and Romanian parents. Although slightly isolated from the mainstream, they had radio, and when Eric’s "loosely wrapped" mom started listening to Bob Dylan, even the most open-minded of their neighbors had a hard time listening. Eric had no trouble with this new direction, and left home at fifteen to join the Beats and hippies in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, and heard all types of great music.

Shortly thereafter, Eric was in a near-fatal car crash in which he lost his memory. Characteristically and perhaps prophetically, among the first things to come back into his mind were the complex lyrics of Bob Dylan, mixed with the flotsam and jetsam of his memories which he wrote down as music. His renewed search for folk music brought him into contact with Tim Buckley’s music (whose music Eric’s is often compared to) and Joni Mitchell. Soon, Eric was singing his own songs across the country, and was discovered by Kris Kristofferson. Kris offered him a deal at Combine Music, where he produced two highly original albums which the country music scene in Nashville "didn’t get," and were never released. He left for New York City in 1979. He has since toured with Susan Vega, Shawn Colvin and others, and his first CD "Letters From The Earth" was voted #9 by Billboard Magazine Critic’s Poll for 1997. Dina Fanai and I ran into him on the streets of New York one day. She recognized him as a singer-songwriter, and I recognized him as an Algonquin person from his looks. We were both right!

Jack Woolridge (Potawatomi). Born in 1929, a Citizen Potawatomi, Jack was born near the reservation in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He wrote a series of books called Potawatomi Fables, including A Boy Named What, The Cleaning Fairy, The Hidden Children, Jomni Lightfoot, Jomin’s Lamp, The Magic Oak, Misho Tells a Story, Mko (Bear) Valley, Nisho, Potawatomi Pony, Redwing’s Flight, Seven-Day Dog, Shuly’s Brain Takes A Vacation, Sissy Cloud, Tom Toms, and Winnie Two-Shadows.

Winston Witeney Wuptunnee (Cree). Actor.

Chief Yellow Fawn (Shawnee). Yellow Fawn is a Shawnee grandfather who teaches and works out of Farnerville, Louisianna. Walks With Wolves of the Shawnee, herself a direct descendant of Tecumseh, feels she has learned a lot from him.

Neil Young (Ojibway). Neil Young is a very private person, and makes no claims to being Ojibway, Algonkian, Manitouwisiwak, or even Native American, but he looks like he could be Dennis Banks’ brother, and we all know Dennis is Anishinabi.
(I dare anyone to compare these or any two photos of them side by side and say they don't look like brothers.) Son of sports writer Scott Young, Neil was born in Toronto, but returned with his mother to Winnepeg when he was still in school. His band Crazy Horse’s music contains many of the unique elements of contemporary indigenous musical style. If he’s not Anishinabe, he’s sure trying to be.

Ray Young Bear aka Maqui-banash (Mesquakie/Fox). Born in Iowa in 1950, Ray grew up on the Mesquakie tribal settlement near Ames, Iowa. (I’ve been there; it is not a reservation, but privately owned land.) The poet Young Bear attended Claremont College in CA as well as Grinnell, University of Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa (all known for their outstanding poetry programs). He has been a visiting faculty member at Eastern Washington University and the University of Iowa. Young Bear and his wife Stella co-founded the Woodland Song and Dance Troupe of Arts Midwest in 1983, which has performed in the U.S. and the Netherlands.
In spite of all this prestigious training in literature, Ray cites his maternal grandmother, Ada Kapayou Old Bear, as his main poetic influence. Ray’s published books include Black Eagle Child: The Facepaint Narratives, The Invisible Musician, Remnants of the First Earth, and Winter of the Salamander, The Keeper of Importance.




Departed Heroes of Manitou






Chapter Three

Honoring the Ancestors
and Those Who Have Passed On
Into The Spirit World


William Apes (Pequot). Born in 1798, Apes was described as an "Indian reformer in the Jackson Era." His autobiography, A Son of the Forest, published in 1831, made quite a splash in those days, though safely couched in the familiar terms of a Christian preacher. Although an assimilationist, he was certainly a pioneer among Native American authors. He did much to dispel the myth among whites that Native Americans were intellectually inferior. He died in New York City, April 9th, 1839 at the age of forty-one.

Joe Augustine (Mi’kmaq) Joe “White Owl” Augustine was a Mi’kmaq craftsperson and hunter, and medicine person who helped many people with this wonderful knowledge. He was a fluent speaker of his language and steeped in the tradition of the Wabanaki. He died of cancer in 2004 at a relatively young age.

Eunice Bauman-Nelson Ph.D. (Penobscot). Eunice is featured in two of Steven McFadden’s books, Wisdom Keepers, and Native American Wisdom. She was the younger sister of Molly Spotted Elk, the entertainer, and claimed to have been raised by her in her mother's absence. Many anthropologists came to see Molly at home, and Eunice became interested in getting degrees in anthropology, to study how white people lived. She was involved in graduate work in 1954 at NYU, but one day in the fall of 1954 she was crossing Waverly Street and looked up to see a very large old tree beside the path. She had an epiphanal moment, seeing how all people and all beings were like the tree with herself as one of the twigs. She stood frozen in the crosswalk for a long time, seeing how everything in the universe was connected, and in fact a single organism. When she came back to her body, she was a changed woman, and changed her program to study co-housing in indigenous cultures around the world, and also became a "Gandhist" and became a leading spokesperson for a Gandhist movement in the US. Although paved over, the Sapohannikan Trail was under her feet as she had that vision, an ancient Algunkeen trade route, and she never knew until I told her just one year before her death. That tree is still there, in Washington Square Park. Some of her papers are being stored at the Universty of Maine in Orono.

Chief Beaver (Lenape). See Tamaqua.



Charles "Chief" Bender (Chippewa). Born in Crow Wing County, Minnesota in 1884, this early 20th Century Chippewa baseball player pitched his way into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, and is considered one of the all-time greats, although you seldom hear about him today. To correct this situation, I will take this opportunity to give him his due, since no one else has in eighty years.

History remembers Bender as the inventor of the slider, which is a combination curve and fastball, used by every top pitcher today--most of whom learned it from someone who learned it from Bender--who was, for thirty-five years, also one of baseball’s greatest pitching coaches. When he coached for the Giants, Carl Hubbell was one of his students.

Encyclopedia Britannica and many other highly regarded sources credits him with the invention of the slider. The "slider" has been described by both Willy Mays and Hank Aaron as "the toughest pitch to hit." Ted Williams said it was "the greatest pitch in baseball..." and that it "had a big effect on the sport." The slider is one of the greatest offerings to baseball any individual ever gave, perhaps second only to Ruth’s popularization of the long ball. Today it is part of an esoteric oral tradition among major league pitchers, a difficult pitch to throw correctly, or to control, but which can change the outcome of a game or even a season when mastered.

Bender first tried the experimental pitch in a game against the Cleveland Indians on May 12, 1910. He hoped it would give him an edge, but like Alexander Graham Bell, George and Orville Wright, and Guglielmo Marconi of the same era, it is doubtful that even he realized how powerful his invention was, or how it would change the course of history. It was unhittable!

That game turned out to be his only no-hitter, but it was probably one of the most historic games ever pitched, kind of like The Little Big Horn of baseball, like Hiroshima, or any battle where a new weapon is unveiled; it changed the strategy of the game. Some called it ‘The Nickel Curve," due to the fact that the face on the nickel at that time bore a resemblance to Sitting Bull, not the worst insult under the circumstances.

In 1910, his greatest season, Bender won 23 games (including the no-hitter) and allowing only 182 hits and 47 walks in 250 innings, with a 1.58 ERA, and a pathetic opposing team batting average of under .200! The slider still has that effect today on same-handed hitters. No one has ever broken the “handcuffs” forged that day by the Ojibway kid.

But his influence on baseball goes far beyond that. Eddie Collins believed Bender, on a good day, to be just as fast as Walter Johnson. Ty Cobb called Bender "the brainiest pitcher he’d ever faced."

The aspiring pitcher Babe Ruth was fifteen years old at that time and probably saw Bender play, or at least heard him on radio. Ruth followed in his footsteps but never got his ERA as low as 1.58. Bender won the opening game of the World Series that year, throwing a one-hitter through 8 innings against the 104-win Cubs. (They’d actually won 530 games in five years.) The stunned Cubs managed two more singles in the ninth, but the A’s won, and went on to win the Series.

As a league leading pitcher who was not bad at the plate, he may well have been a role model for the young Babe Ruth. Bender had 6 homers lifetime in the dead ball era plus 40 doubles, 10 triples, and smacked 243 total hits. Ruth produced similar stats during his years as a pitcher, 1915 to 1920. Many teams at that time scouted the reservation diamonds for great athletes even before they went to college. Lots of them made it into the majors. In most cases, their native origins were hidden from the public, but not "Chief" Bender. Like Hank Greenberg for Jewish players, and Jackie Robinson for black players, Bender held his temper and his pride in check under the racist tongue-lashings that were heaped upon him so that others could follow his shining example in years to come. He was proud to be Chippewa and America loved him.

How popular was he? When Bender faced off with Christy Mathewson in the first seven-game World Series in 1905, it established a crowd attendance record at a whopping 24,187. Bender pitched a five-hitter but lost 2 to 0 in that one. He faced Mathewson once again in the opening game of the 1911 World Series, and established yet another attendance record, a historic 38,281. (Both were at the Giants’ Polo Grounds. Mathewson facing anyone else always drew a smaller crowd. By the way, the Giants had special uniforms made for that one series.) Again, Bender pitched a five hitter but lost, this time 2 to 1. That attendance figure was broken the day Ruth started for Boston in the 1916 World Series, at home. It was not broken again until 1922 (just barely, with 38,551) in the "no-subway" series where both teams calling the Polo Grounds their home won the pennant. The next year, Yankee Stadium was opened as the first big "stadium," and a whole new era began, starring Babe Ruth.

Bender went on to pitch for the Baltimore Terrapins (Federal League, 1915), the Philadelphia Phillies again (1916-17), and much later, the Chicago White Sox (1925) He pitched in the 1905 World Series, the 1910 World Series, the 1911 World Series, the 1913 World Series, and lastly the 1914 World Series His world series pitching record is one of the best in history, and usually against the greatest opponents of the era; Christie Matthewson. (3x) Joe McGinnity, Mordecai Three Finger Brown, Red Ames, Rube Marquard, etc.

Bender started out at the Carlisle Indian School in 1898, the year Louis Socakalexis was
all the rage. Bender stayed there until 1901, playing football and baseball with equal spirit. Underclassman Jim Thorpe followed in Bender’s footsteps a few years later.

As a college kid at Dickinson College, Bender played semi-pro ball under the name Charles Albert with the Harrisburg Athletic Club to pay his bills. The Chicago Cubs (soon to earn the title "History’s Greatest Baseball Team") faced his ragtag club in an exhibition game in 1902, and when the eighteen-year old "Indian boy" beat them soundly, it sent shock waves throughout baseball. He signed with the hot-pitching Philadelphia A’s the following year at age nineteen (1903), and started 33 games. He won 17 of them, pitching 270 innings. He went on to win over 200 games in 12 years and led the A’s to five World Series contests, contributing to four World Series championships, and winning six World Series games,: #5 on the all-time Series win list.
He is also #6 on the all-time Series strike out list with 59.

Charles Bender (he never called himself "Chief" or signed it as his name) did not get
angry when people ridiculed him or used racist taunts. He just laughed and dismissed them as "foreigners." The outspoken Connie Mack, who described Bender as the best "must-win" pitcher he’d ever managed (he managed Lefty Grove, I might add, and a lot of other Hall of Famers), respectfully called him "Albert," Bender’s middle name, never “Chief.”

Bender kept his ERA under 2.00 for three straight years, from 1908 to 1910. In 1910, 1911 and 1914, he led the league in win-loss percentage in an era of great pitching, 23-5, 17-5, and 17-3 respectively. In 1905, he took part in the World Series called The Shutout Classic in which all five games were shutouts, however his was the only one for his team, and the only victory, a 3-0 four-hitter.

In 1911, Bender turned in one of the greatest World Series pitching performances of all time. He threw a five-hitter to open the Series, but lost the pitchers’ duel to Hall of Famer Mathewson. Bender won 4-2 in game four, and then pitched a four-hitter to win the final game for the A’s, 13-2, and their second straight World Championship. His Series ERA was an unbelievable 1.04 in three complete games. But the most amazing part about this athletic performance, which more than anything else won him a place in the Hall of Fame, was that his brother John had died tragically only three weeks earlier, on September 25th.

A promising minor league pitcher, John Bender had been banned from baseball for getting into a fight with his manager and stabbing him. Sorry for what he’d done, he worked like a dog for years under poor conditions to regain the respect of the players, and earned his way back into the starting rotation only to die of heart failure while on the mound pitching for the Edmonton, Alberta team. I think that Charles’s historic, almost super-human feat was a non-verbal honor song for his fallen brother, John.

In 1913, the A’s other veteran starters were injured, so Bender pioneered in the art of relief pitching to help the subs out, a science still in its infancy then. He won 21 games, six of those out of the bullpen, marking up 13 saves and losing only ten. The 34 victories he contributed to helped the A’s to the pennant in a tight three way race. Bender won two World Series games that year against the Giants, who went down in five. To give you a rough idea of how unusual relief pitching was in those days, of the 112 starting pitchers in all 56 of the World Series games played up to that point in history, a total of only 33 had needed relief pitchers. Bender was a starter again in the Series, but fortunately, the A’s didn’t need any relief, winning in five games. (The use of relievers, like the slider, didn’t really become popular until the 1940’s.)

In 1914, Bender had another great year, and pitched in the World Series against the "Miracle" Boston Braves, but the A’s were swept in four games. It turned out to be his last year in the American League. Earlier that same year, another nineteen-year old minor league fastballer soundly defeated the A’s in an exhibition game. His name was Babe Ruth. Naturally, Ruth was compared to Bender, who was discovered by Connie Mack the same way when he defeated the Cubs. Mack was almost as impressed with Ruth as he had been with Bender, but felt he couldn’t afford the price tag. A pitching fanatic, Mack’s choice to "pass" on Ruth was a turning point in baseball history, and for the A’s. If Ruth had been hired and brought in enough money, Mack would probably have been able to keep Bender and most of the other team members and extended their dynasty a while longer. However, he never would have given Ruth a chance to hit homers, or let him play the outfield. Without Babe’s "drawing card" 58 homers as an outfielder, baseball might have fallen apart after the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Bender pitched the only American League win in the first regulation World Series, a masterful 4 hit shutout over the famed McGinnity of the Giants (who’d pitched an all-time high 434 innings in 1903). His record of pitching 20 strikeouts in the 1911 World Series was unbroken until 1945, when Newhauser hurled 22 for Detroit, but this was in a full seven game series. (Bender’s six game record still stands as far as I know.) Interestingly, Bender pitched against the Giants in the 1913 World Series, the year that Jim Thorpe played outfield for the Giants, but Thorpe never appeared at the plate. Apparently he had other things to do... like playing professional football.

Bender became an oil painter and lived until 1954, just long enough to see his entry into the Hall of Fame in 1953.

Black Hawk (Sac and Fox). When a "fly-by-night" treaty in the 1830s (see Keokuk) gave away virtually all the Sac and Fox land, Black Hawk claimed the treaty was invalid, and in 1832, led a full-scale war against President Jackson called Black Hawk’s War. After his capture, Black Hawk was taken to Washington D.C. where he met with Andrew Jackson in person, all of which made good material for his book, Autobiography of Black Hawk, which became a literary classic in the mid 1800s.


The following biographic sketch was posted on line at www.madison.k12.wi.us.
The man known to whites as Black Hawk was born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Sparrow Hawk) in the year 1767. Like most of the boys in his tribe, he learned to hunt and fish at an early age.

By the age of fifteen, Black Hawk had become a "brave." To become a "brave" he needed to kill or injure an enemy in battle. It was in later fighting with the Osage Indians that he earned the title of war chief. By the age of forty-five, he had killed thirty of this enemy's warriors.

Black Hawk was strong and independent minded. As a young man, he recognized the dangers of alcohol and decided never to drink the "fire water." He went against another Sauk custom of marrying more than one woman. Black Hawk married young and remained loyal to his wife, Asshewaqua (Singing Bird) throughout his life. Most successful warriors married several women.

In religion and war Black Hawk was a traditional Sauk. He rejected Christianity and continued to practice their ancient religion. Fighting was very important to the Sauk, and the warriors were ever-ready for battle. They relied on the Great Spirit to give them direction in war.

By the end of the 1700s, the Sauk were coming into contact with more and more white settlers and traders. The Sauk decided that for their own protection they would sign the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. It promised that the Sauk would be received with friendship and given protection by the United States.

In 1804, after a fight between whites and Sauk ended in the deaths of three settlers, some Sauk leaders agreed to travel to St. Louis and arrange a permanent peace. The Sauk leaders were given alcohol and asked to sign a treaty. The treaty gave the government fifteen million acres of Sauk land in Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri for the sum of $2,274.50.

Black Hawk and other Sauk chiefs argued that the treaty was not valid because most of the Sauk Nation was not told of the treaty, and those who signed did not represent them. The government insisted the treaty was binding.
Tensions grew between the two sides until, in 1808, the Americans built a fort in the disputed territory. Black Hawk lead a war party to destroy the fort and massacre the troops but withdrew when confronted with loaded cannons.

Three years later the war of 1812 erupted between Great Britain and the United States. Black Hawk who had remained friendly to the English decided to fight on their side. Another broken promise by America strengthened his decision. The Americans said they would furnish the Sauk with supplies to help them survive. No supplies were ever sent by the government.

Saying " I have fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them till they are off our lands," Black Hawk went on attacking the Americans even after the war with Britain was over. Finally a treaty was signed to bring about a temporary peace.

By 1821 lead mining brought floods of white settlers to northwestern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin. By 1828 the Sauk and the Fox tribes were forced from their lands and driven across the Mississippi River. In the spring after a snub by President Andrew Jackson, Black Hawk decided to return across the river and reclaim his land. In 1832 Black Hawk was invited to live in a village of Winnebago Indians led by his good friend White Cloud. Crossing the Mississippi with 400 braves and their families, Black Hawk caused mass hysteria. Although Black Hawk and his braves bothered no one, Governor John Reynolds called out the Militia. Among the 1600 men who volunteered to fight was a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

The Winnebagos and other tribes in the area, fearing the militia, refused to let Black Hawk stay. Reluctantly, he decided to swallow his pride and return to Iowa.
Meanwhile, the militia was approaching. Black Hawk sent five warriors to tell the militia that his people wanted to peacefully retreat across the Mississippi. All of the warriors were immediately taken prisoner. Black Hawk sent more warriors to see what happened. They were attacked and two warriors were killed. The militia set out after the rest of Black Hawk's people. They were ambushed by Black Hawk and forty of his braves. Eleven of the militia and three of the warriors were killed before the militia broke and ran.

The war had begun. Winnebago and Potawatomi warriors joined Black Hawk and the raided villages and farms through northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. At Ottawa, Illinois, they shot, tomahawked and mutilated the bodies of fifteen settlers and kidnaped two teenaged girls. ( The girls were later released ). These attacks created widespread panic among the white settlers and thousands fled the area.

Black Hawk was still trying to get across the Mississippi. He decided to travel through the Wisconsin wilderness. To cover his retreat he sent out war parties to attack white settlements hoping to delay the pursuing soldiers.
On July 21, 1832, the troops finally caught up with Black Hawk's rear guard near present-day Sauk City, Wisconsin. The ensuing battle ( The Battle of Wisconsin Heights ) cost the lives of five warriors and one soldier. The soldiers leery of an ambush let the Sauk slip away an escape.

Black Hawks only hope lay in out running the soldiers and he raced to the Mississippi. When he arrived at the river he found his way blocked by an American steamship loaded with troops and artillery. Black Hawk tried to surrender and sent two warriors under a white flag to the ship. The ship's captain did not understand the request and opened fire on the Sauk. Black Hawk and his followers were trapped.

The next day, August 2, 1832, the soldiers caught up with the Sauk. In what became known as the Bad Axe Massacre, the soldiers killed dozens of the Sauk including women, children and the elderly. Those who made it across the Mississippi were killed by the Sioux, who had joined the Americans. Of the 500 Sauk with Black Hawk, only about 150 survived. The Black Hawk war, now virtually over, had cost the lives of 72 whites and between 450 and 600 Native Americans.

Black Hawk was one of the survivors. He was eventually forced to surrender with his friend, White Cloud, of the Winnebago's. The were sent to the east and were paraded through the eastern cities like captured animals. The public , however, greeted him, "as a brave, romantic symbol of the wild frontier and treated him like a hero.

Black Hawk later was returned to Iowa. In the last few months of his life he found himself the object of admiration among Iowa settlers. He was often invited to the territorial capital to attend sessions of the legislature. His last public appearance was July 4, 1837.

Black Hawk died in his lodge on October 3, 1837. His wife Singing Bird survived him. In his last public appearance he said: " A few summers ago, I was fighting against you. I did wrong, perhaps, but that is past. It is buried. Let it be forgotten. Rock river was beautiful country. I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people. It is yours now. Keep it as we did." Written by - Chuck Pitcel


Black Kettle (Southern Cheyenne). Born in 1803, Black Kettle became one of the famous "Dog Soldiers" as a young man. As chief, his band was constantly attacked by U.S. soldiers, but he was a man of peace and never gave up trying to negotiate. He was known for stopping young warriors from raiding white settlements, and for risking his life to return white captives to their families. Even after two hundred of his band were massacred, Chief Black Kettle continued to attend treaty councils.

His people were promised a large parcel of land lying between western Kansas and eastern Colorado in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, one of the more infamous treaties ever penned. Black Kettle had been living in this territory his whole life. In that treaty, signed by the Cheyenne, Lakota, Crow, and other tribes, the U.S. promised to pay each tribe $50,000 per tribe for fifty years. The agents who negotiated the deal for the U.S. couldn’t support the terms of the treaty, but the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Crow didn’t know that, and ended up not receiving the money they were promised.

In 1859, gold was found at Pike’s Peak in Colorado, triggering a massive gold rush not unlike the one ten years earlier in California, and great masses of white men, some crazed with the lust for gold, invaded the territory and drove off the native people. For two years, Black Kettle’s people wandered homeless around the territory which had been given to them. Finally, in 1861, he signed a new treaty for a smaller piece of land called the Sand Creek Reservation.

It was a sparse terrain, and within a year there weren’t enough buffalo to provide food and clothing for the people. They began to travel up to 200 miles to find a buffalo. In desperation, the rogue Indians among them began killing the squatters’ livestock for food.

In 1864, Black Kettle returned to the reserve to restore the peace between the settlers and the Cheyenne. Colonel John Chivington and his men attacked the camp, killing anyone in their way and sexually mutilating the dead women. Chief Black Kettle and his wife barely escaped with their lives.

Black Kettle and his wife were finally killed by Custer’s 7th Cavalry on November 27, 1868. This was in spite of the fact that the Chief had a white flag flying in plain sight over his teepee, and in spite of his life-long peace-keeping efforts, and his efforts to save the lives of white settlers during his sixty-five years of life. Custer’s cavalrymen shot the great Chief and his wife many times, and continued to shoot their bodies full of bullets long after they were dead. Black Kettle’s story is told at length in Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown.

The following is from the PBS website The West: Black Kettle lived on the vast territory in western Kansas and eastern Colorado that had been guaranteed to the Cheyenne under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Within less than a decade, however, the 1859 Pikes Peak gold rush sparked an enormous population boom in Colorado, and this led to extensive white encroachments on Cheyenne land. Even the U.S. Indian Commissioner admitted that "We have substantially taken possession of the country and deprived the Indians of their accustomed means of support."

Rather than evict white settlers, the government sought to resolve the situation by demanding that the Southern Cheyenne sign a new treaty ceding all their lands save the small Sand Creek reservation in southeastern Colorado. Black Kettle, fearing that overwhelming U.S. military power might result in an even less favorable settlement, agreed to the treaty in 1861 and did what he could to see that the Cheyenne obeyed its provisions.

As it turned out, however, the Sand Creek reservation could not sustain the Indians forced to live there. All but unfit for agriculture, the barren tract of land was little more than a breeding ground for epidemic diseases which soon swept through the Cheyenne encampments. By 1862 the nearest herd of buffalo was over two hundred miles away. Many Cheyennes, especially young men, began to leave the reservation to prey upon the livestock and goods of nearby settlers and passing wagon trains. One such raid in the spring of 1864 so angered white Coloradans that they dispatched their militia, which opened fire on the first band of Cheyenne they happened to meet. None of the Indians in this band had participated in the raid, however, and their leader was actually approaching the militia for a parlay when the shooting began.

This incident touched off an uncoordinated Indian uprising across the Great Plains, as Indian peoples from the Comanche in the South to the Lakota in the North took advantage of the army's involvement in the Civil War by striking back at those who had encroached upon their lands. Black Kettle, however, understood white military supremacy too well to support the cause of war. He spoke with the local military commander at Fort Weld in Colorado and believed he had secured a promise of safety in exchange for leading his band back to the Sand Creek reservation.

But Colonel John Chivington, leader of the Third Colorado Volunteers, had no intention of honoring such a promise. His troops had been unsuccessful in finding a Cheyenne band to fight, so when he learned that Black Kettle had returned to Sand Creek, he attacked the unsuspecting encampment at dawn on November 29, 1864. Some two hundred Cheyenne died in the ensuing massacre, many of them women and children, and after the slaughter, Chivington's men sexually mutilated and scalped many of the dead, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.

Black Kettle miraculously escaped harm at the Sand Creek Massacre, even when he returned to rescue his seriously injured wife. And perhaps more miraculously, he continued to counsel peace when the Cheyenne attempted to strike back with isolated raids on wagon trains and nearby ranches. By October 1865, he and other Indian leaders had arranged an uneasy truce on the plains, signing a new treaty that exchanged the Sand Creek reservation for reservations in southwestern Kansas but deprived the Cheyenne of access to most of their coveted Kansas hunting grounds.

Only a part of the Southern Cheyenne nation followed Black Kettle and the others to these new reservations. Some instead headed north to join the Northern Cheyenne in Lakota territory. Many simply ignored the treaty and continued to range over their ancestral lands. This latter group, consisting mainly of young warriors allied with a Cheyenne war chief named Roman Nose, angered the government by their refusal to obey a treaty they had not signed, and General William Tecumseh Sherman launched a campaign to force them onto their assigned lands. Roman Nose and his followers struck back furiously, and the resulting standoff halted all traffic across western Kansas for a time.

At this point, government negotiators sought to move the Cheyenne once again, this time onto two smaller reservations in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where they would receive annual provisions of food and supplies. Black Kettle was again among the chiefs who signed this treaty, the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, but after his people had settled on their new reservation, they did not receive the provisions they had been promised, and by year's end, more and more of them were driven to join Roman Nose and his band.

In August 1868, Roman Nose led a series of raids on Kansas farms that provoked another full-scale military response. Under General Philip Sheridan, three columns of troops converged to launch a winter campaign against Cheyenne encampments, with the Seventh Cavalry commanded by George Armstrong Custer selected to take the lead. Setting out in a snowstorm, Custer followed the tracks of a small raiding party to a Cheyenne village on the Washita River, where he ordered an attack at dawn.
It was Black Kettle's village, well within the boundaries of the Cheyenne reservation and with a white flag flying above the chief's own tipi. Nonetheless, on November 27, 1868, nearly four years to the day after Sand Creek, Custer's troops charged, and this time Black Kettle could not escape: "Both the chief and his wife fell at the river bank riddled with bullets," one witness reported, "the soldiers rode right over Black Kettle and his wife and their horse as they lay dead on the ground, and their bodies were all splashed with mud by the charging soldiers." Custer later reported that an Osage guide took Black Kettle's scalp. On the Washita, the Cheyenne's hopes of sustaining themselves as an independent people died as well; by 1869, they had been driven from the plains and confined to reservations.

Blue Jacket (Shawnee). Blue Jacket was one of the Shawnee chiefs temporarily allied under Tecumseh. A child of white settlers, he was born in Virginia as Marmaduke Van Swearingen, then captured at seventeen and adopted into the Shawnee as Wehyehpihehrsehnwah. He came fully Shawnee, but not before undergoing considerable initiation, including "running the gauntlet," having his whole body painted and then scrubbed with sand, and worst of all perhaps, learning to pronounce his name. Finally, he was brought into the msi-kha-miqui house, and all the people gathered. He was painted yet again, and Chief Pucksinwah put his hand on the boy’s shoulders and said, according to Eckert’s realization, "My son, you are now flesh of our flesh. By the ceremony performed this day, every drop of white blood is washed out of your veins. You are taken into the Shawnee Nation and initiated into a warrior sept. You are adopted into a great family and received with great seriousness and solemnity... After what has passed this day, you are now one of us by an old strong law and custom."

In 1790, Blue Jacket, accompanied by Little Turtle of the Miami, ambushed and defeated a mixed force of U.S. Army regulars and militiamen who were in the Native American region now known as Ohio. (The Treaty of 1763 promised Ohio to the natives. But then there was the Jay Treaty, and things were not clear as to who was where.) This action drew the popular General Arthur St. Clair and 2,300 militiamen into the Ohio region to retaliate. Not unlike the Battle of the Little Bighorn, St. Clair’s last stand was an historic setback for the United States, which had just won the war with Britain. His army soundly out-fought, St. Clair, himself seriously wounded and over six hundred of his men killed, including many officers, they retreated to the colonies. This battle halted white migration westward. Later, President Washington would send "Mad Anthony" Wayne to the northwest territory with a new larger group of men, to subdue the natives by any means necessary, which is exactly what Wayne had in mind.

Realizing the grim resolve of the new army, Little Turtle counseled for peace and kept his Miami forces out of battle. It saved the Miami from destruction at the disastrous Battle of Fallen Timbers where Blue Jacket was defeated and forced to retreat. General Wayne followed his footsteps, burning and destroying native villages in his wake.

A former friend of Tecumseh, Blue Jacket was one of many chiefs who signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, setting up a new boundary further west between white settlements and native settlements. Greenville undermined Tecumseh’s efforts for a Native American union in the Ohio valley. However, Tecumseh regrouped, and staged a considerable comeback culminating in the War of 1812, which marked the defeat of the Tecumseh nation.

The following is from ohiohistorycentral.org: Blue Jacket was a chief of the Shawnee Indians. The date of his birth is unknown, but it was probably in the early 1740s. His Native American name was Weyapiersenwah (also spelled Wehyehpiherhsehnwah). Historians know very little of his early years. In 1774, Blue Jacket participated in Lord Dunmore's War. In this conflict, militiamen from Pennsylvania and Virginia hope to force the Ohio Country natives to accept the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768). The major battle in this war was the Battle of Point Pleasant. The English succeeded in defeating a force of Shawnee Indians led by Chief Cornstalk. Blue Jacket participated in the battle. During the American Revolution, Blue Jacket, as did most Shawnees, sided with the British. By the war's conclusion, Blue Jacket had settled along the Maumee River. .
During the early 1790s, Blue Jacket and Chief Little Turtle of the Miami Indians were the major leaders of the natives in the Ohio Country. They led their braves against American settlers in western Ohio as the whites swept into the area. The natives defeated an army led by General Josiah Harmar in 1790 and another one led by Arthur St. Clair in 1791. St. Clair's Defeat was one of the worst defeats for the American military at the hands of the Indians. Following St. Clair's Defeat, Little Turtle called for negotiations between the Indians and the Americans. The natives' British ally had failed to support the Indians fully during the past several years against the Americans. Little Turtle believed that, without England's help, the natives had no serious chance against the Americans. Blue Jacket then assumed control over native attempts to stop the influx of settlers. In 1794, he led the Native Americans against an army led by Anthony Wayne. The two sides met at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Wayne emerged from the battle victorious. Blue Jacket's men fell back to Fort Miamis, a British stronghold. The British refused to assist the natives, and Blue Jacket and his followers agreed to negotiate with the Americans.
In 1795, the Shawnees, represented by Blue Jacket, signed the Treaty of Greenville. The natives agreed to relinquish all claims to land in Ohio except for the northwestern corner. In 1805, Blue Jacket also signed the Treaty of Fort Industry. Under this agreement, many Ohio Country natives agreed to cede parts of northwest Ohio to the United States.Blue Jacket died circa 1810. He probably resided near Detroit.

Ignatia Broker (Ojibway). Born on Valentine’s Day, 1919 at Pine Point on the White Earth Indian Reservation, Broker was a member of the Ottertail Pillager Band of Ojibways, Awasasi Clan. Starting out as a journalist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune immediately after World War II, she became a pioneer in Native American literature in a time and place of great hostility towards the Ojibway. She began a new career at the age of forty-seven with the Minneapolis Public Schools in 1966, and helped develop the Title IV Indian Studies Curriculum, authoring many stories, film strips, and booklets that are still part of the curriculum today.

She founded the Minnesota American Indian Historical Society, and worked for countless other organizations, receiving one of fourteen national awards given by the Wonder Woman Foundation in 1984. Her only novel, Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative, a novel about her great-great-grandmother Oona, which she begun writing in 1969, was not published until 1983. Ignatia died of lung cancer on June 23, 1987. (From the Internet site “Ojibway Role Models.”)

Archie Cheechoo: (Cree) Archie Cheechoo, whose debut CD "Bay Life" paints pictures of life on the shores of James Bay and has earned great reviews. Archie Cheechoo was a great help to me and my family as a spiritual advisor and friend, and shared stories of his amazing family with ours. Archie Cheechoo passed away on February 17th, 2006 . His teachings were quoted in No Word For Time, Native New Yorkers, and elsewhere.

Mrs. Calvin Coolidge aka Grace Anna Goodhue (Wampanoag?). Grace married Calvin in 1905 and got to live in the White House, but according to one source, even as First Lady she was snubbed by Washington society. She was born in 1879 and died in 1957 (during my lifetime!). They had two children. Calvin Coolidge was from Vermont, but had a life-long fascination with Native Americans, and was not totally hush-hush about it. At least once he had a large delegation from the Sioux nation at the White House, and was a champion of native land interests. Interestingly, the nation’s fortunes prospered as never before while Coolidge (and his wife) was in office. Together they served six years. That she was a "New England Indian" I have on grapevine status, however I have not seen it in the written records.

George Copway aka Kahgegagahbowh (Ojibway). Copway was born in 1818. He wrote The Life, History and Travels of Kahgegagahbowh and Young Indian Chief of the Ojebwa Nation, published in 1847, at the age of twenty-nine, and several other books followed. He died in 1869.

George Crum (Mohican/Huron). There seems to be some dispute over which group of indigenous people Lays the best claim to cooking up the first potato chip. But I have been told that the creator of one of my favorite foods (and potatoes were definitely the invention of the Native American) was at least part Mohican. He was a "chief," chief cook at a resort hotel called Moon Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York.

One of the more fussy guests, supposedly a certain Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, ordered a new dish called French Fried Potatoes. When Crum brought it out, Vanderbilt sent it back saying it was too thick. "I know how it’s supposed to be prepared, because I’ve been to France!" he exclaimed.

This happened several times, until George, in exasperation, cut the potatoes razor thin. Much to his surprise, Vanderbilt really liked the new variation on French Fries, and today we call them Potato Chips, and we also eat them, apparently. In 1972, total sales reached the $1 billion mark.


Chief Dark Cloud (Algonquin). A movie actor, Chief Dark Cloud played in some significant silent film roles, specifically “Intolerance” (1916) and several with D.W. Griffith in 1911.

Beulah Dark Cloud (Algonquin). Daughter of the above, she was involved in films and lecturing on Native American issues until her death in 1946. She was highly committed to American Indian organizations in Los Angeles.

Nora Thompson Dean aka Touching Leaves (Unami Delaware). Nora was one of the principle preservers of Lenape culture and language in the 20th Century. I became interested in Lenape ways just about the time she passed away, and it was by listening to several taped interviews of her lectures that I got my first taste of Lenape lifeways and phrases.

Joseph F. Dion (Cree). Dion, born in 1888, was a farmer, school teacher, writer and important political leader among Cree and Metis people. He wrote My Tribe, The Crees, which was published after his death in 1960.

Dull Knife (Cheyenne). He fought alongside the Sioux during the battles for the Black Hills in the 1870s. He and Little Wolf were there when the Sioux and Cheyenne together defeated Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn.

Captain Grey Eyes (Lenape). See White Eyes

Hendrick (Mohawk/Mohican). Although Hendrick was a famed Mohawk Chief, there is documentation that he was part Mohican as well. He allied himself with the British and even visited England in 1710, where he was presented to Queen Anne as "King of the Mohawks." At the age of seventy, Hendrick went to war with the British against the French, and was killed at the Battle of Lake George in 1755.

Langston Hughes (Pamunkey/African-American/Osage). Although Langston Hughes was absorbed most of his life with African-American culture, both sides of his family were from prominent southern Native American lineages, primarily the Pamunkey of Virginia (who are Algonquin), and the Osage of his native Missouri (a Siouxian people).

Hughes was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, the son of abolitionist parents. He was the grandson of James Mercer Langston, the first "black American" to be elected to public office in 1855 (also of mixed Native American heritage). Langston discovered poetry at an early age and was class poet in the eighth grade. His father paid for him to pursue an engineering degree at Columbia, which he attempted, and earned a B+ average. However, he eventually got restless and dropped out to devote himself to poetry. The rest of his life he emphasized individual freedom and being true to oneself, although he never acknowledged his native self in public.

Langston loved jazz and blues and listened to a lot of it, both in the U.S. and abroad. When he returned to Harlem in 1924 after extended travels, he became part of the Harlem Renaissance and was widely published. In 1925, he moved to Washington, D.C., but returned to Harlem late in 1926. He created a character called My Simple Minded Friend after a man he knew from a bar in Harlem. In 1950 he renamed this person Jess B. Simple, and wrote a series of books on him.

Langston Hughes wrote steadily for forty years, mostly about the black experience in America. He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of editorial fiction, twenty plays, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts, and works for children. He even wrote musicals and operettas. Hughes died of cancer on May 22, 1967. His home at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, is now a landmark. The street was renamed Langston Hughes Place in his honor.

Mali Keating (Abenaki). Ms. Keating was an outspoken advocate
for preservation of Algonquin culture, and is on the Wabenaki Confederacy Council. She was elder-in-residence at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and was involved with Abenaki self-government and also the Three Fires Midewiwin society. Among many reasons, I honor her for gifting me with traditional Algonquin medicine (tchee-choss or tree medicine) to cure a migrain headache. She lives in Vermont.

Maude Kegg aka Naawakamigookwe/Middle Earth Lady (Ojibway). Best known as a writer, her books are bilingual, written as she speaks them in Ojibway, then translated into English by John D. Nichols. She was born in a birchbark wigwam near a wild rice harvesting camp in Crow Wing County, Minnesota in 1904, around August 26th. Kegg’s mother’s family members were among two hundred and eighty-four of the Chippewa band that refused to relocate to the White Earth Reservation because it was a breach of treaty. They fought for tribal recognition for thirty years, and in 1934 finally won the rights to their own reservation. Maude attended the public school, as the only person of color, until the eighth grade. She married Martin Kegg in 1920 and raised ten children. Kegg worked as an artist, worked outdoors, and during the last thirty years of her life on the Mille Lacs Reservation, acted as mentor to John D. Nichols, who learned much about Ojibway linguistics and history from her. She was also an interpreter of Ojibway culture at the Minnesota Historical Society Museum. August 26, 1986 was declared Maude Kegg Day and in 1990 President George Bush presented her with the National Heritage Fellowship Award. Her best known book is Portage Lake, about her childhood. Another book, What My Grandmother Told Me, deals with more adult-oriented issues. She passed away January 6, 1996 at age ninety-one.

Keokuk (Sauk). Keokuk was so courageous in a difficult battle with the Sioux that he was named Chief of the Sauk. Later, many of Keokuk’s people considered him a traitor for capitulating to the demands of the U.S. Government to divide their lands and denounced him.
He refused to resign. Black Hawk, considered the legitimate chief according to tradition, defied the treaties and led his followers against Keokuk and the American forces. This war escalated and many lives were lost. In the end, the American army won the war which is now remembered as "Black Hawk’s War." Keokuk died in 1848.




Albert Lightning (Cree). For many decades Albert Lightning was the recognized Medicine Chief for a large portion of Algonquian-speaking people. He was also the founder and publisher of The Cree News, a highly successful newspaper. Large crowds flocked to hear him speak whenever he appeared. I heard his teachings through his assistant Grandfather Turtle, and developed a deep interest in this legendary elder who lived in the high northern Rockies. Those Canadian Rockies are to many Algonquin people what the Himalayas are to many Asian Indians, and he was the ancient sage who, like the Masters of the Himalayas, held power in the thoughts and dreams of an entire people. He was an inspiration to thousands until his death at the age of ninety-four.

Although I never met Albert Lightning, I was walking in the woods one day with my infant son, and a tall, impressive-looking full-blooded Native American man walked by with his boy who was playing with a blue ball. Uncharacteristically, my little boy took the ball away from the other boy, and I had to step in and apologize to the seven-foot tall "warrior" (or so he looked to me) and hand him the ball. This led to a conversation in which I quickly learned the crushing news of Albert Lightning’s passing two days after the funeral. The man, whose name was Franco, another great Algonquin, had just come directly from the ceremony, two thousand miles away, and was on his way further eastward. Our meeting was, as they say "mere coincidence."

The following was published online at albertasource.ca “Albert Lightning was a revered old Cree ceremonialist and medicine person from the Ermineskin band in Hobbema. He was a favourite guest at spiritual and official gatherings. Meli followed his career and reports the following:
He spoke of natural law and how the truth will never lead anyone astray, but individuals must be strong enough to hold on to their good decisions. People must not look for physical or material results from everything they do. Instead, they should pay attention to their dreams and develop their spirits, feeling good about helping others and putting themselves last. They must see what is real in life, not the unreal. I remember Albert nodding in agreement with Chief John Snow’s words to the crowd: “Although people think the grandfathers have abandoned us, what with all the bad things that have been going on in the Indian world, these spirits have always been with us. It is we who have forgotten about them.” Albert made it clear he wanted to share his knowledge of the spiritual undercurrents in everyday life with conference delegates and invited them into his magnificently painted tipi to see black-and-white, poster-sized photographs of spiritual images he had collected. One, taken at the top of a mountain in the Kootenay Plains area of the western Rockies, showed the distinct form of what looked like a veiled figure standing out in white against a gray, cloudy sky.

"I show these pictures because so many people need to see proof before they will believe. I show them so people might come closer to believing the spirit world and that the Creator looks out for us," he told the group.

Albert talked a lot about natural law. He said that humans’ inner natures are an exact copy of the nature of the universe, and deep knowledge of the self comes from nature. Western society’s materialism and technology is unnatural to the point that many people are unaware of natural cycles and energies and even fear insects, animals, trees, and birds. As humans become unbalanced, so does their world. Medicine people understand natural laws and work with varying frequencies of energy to accomplish what seems impossible. They know there is a right time and place for everything and what is possible given a certain set of circumstances. They know when to pick herbs and not to waste anything, because waste is unnatural. (Meili, 82f.)

Harry Lincoln (Meskwaki). Lincoln translated the Meskwaki text "How Meskwaki Children Should Be Brought Up," into the English language at the turn of the century. It was then written down by Truman Michelson and published in American Indian Life, in 1922.

Chief Edward Little (Chippewa) was a silent film actor, who lived from 1868 to 1928.


Little Turtle (Miami). Adopted into the Miami Nation as a youth, he was born in 1752 in the Illinois country. Miami war chief Little Turtle fought alongside Tecumseh’s father Punksiweh and later Tecumseh himself in holding the English settlers east of the Ohio.

He defeated U.S. General Josiah Harmar on the Miami River in 1791. Later in 1791, he led a Great Lakes Tribal Confederacy against General Arthur St. Clair. The Confederacy killed six hundred and twenty-three soldiers and lost only twenty-one, but were defeated at Fallen Timbers in 1794. They retreated as planned to the British fort, but were locked out and destroyed.

Little Turtle survived, and in 1797 he met with President George Washington and became an ally of the Americans. He was a moderate dedicated to neutrality whenever possible. He refused to fight with Blue Jacket at the disastrous battle of Fallen Timbers, or with Tecumseh during the Tecumseh’s wars against the whites. He died in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1812.

Little Wolf (Cheyenne) fought alongside the Sioux during the battles for the Black Hills in the 1870s. He and Dull Knife were there when the Sioux and Cheyenne together defeated Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn.

Massasoit (Massachusett/Pocanoket) befriended colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, teaching them how to plant corn, and how to protect themselves from warring tribes. He also acted as their patron saint and step-father, actively preserving a haven of peace for them for over ten years. As the colonists grew in numbers, they soon overran the agreed-upon boundaries and broke their treaties with their benefactor. Soon, neighboring tribes had had all they could stand of this lenient stance, and it resulted eventually in King Phillip’s War. It was Massasoit’s own son Metacomet who unified the Algonquins and led the charge to avenge the cruelties of the Plymouth Colony, including possibly the murder of his older brother.

Henri Membertou (Mi’kmaq). A grand chief of the Mi’kmaq, it was said Membertou would always go half way to negotiate peace. When the Catholic Missionaries were trying to take over, he negotiated with Rome and established what later became known as The Church of Membertou. Even to this day, all services are conducted in Mi’kmaq, without emphasis on books, and usually out of doors. It was one of the first successful missions in the New World, and with the help of the French Catholics and their powerful church, the Mi’kmaqs were able to preserve their language and much of their indigenous culture to this day. Even though surrounded by urban centers, at least 10,000 Mi’kmaqs today still speak their language, 5,000 of these attending the church, which has been recognized by every Pope since the 1500s.

Membertou, born in 1505, was already an ancient chief of the Mi’kmaq of the western valley by the time Pierre de Mont and Samuel de Champlain arrived and built the first French settlement in North America in 1604. This settlement was at the St. Croix River which today is on the U.S. Canadian border, between New Brunswick and Maine. The French had a rough winter and moved to a new location called Port Royal, which was located in Membertou’s Mi’kmaq territory. When younger, Membertou had been a famed war chief. Now at the age of 100, he was a man of peace. Membertou formed strong alliances with these new French settlers and created highly successful trade networks with them, which would become a dominant economic power in the northeast only a few years later. Trappers and traders of all nations would have to learn "Trade Mi’kmaq" language in order to succeed.

Membertou was open-minded to the early teachings of the Jesuit missionaries and in 1610, he and his family were among the first converts, although on the condition that all Mi’kmaq traditions would forever be respected. Many of his kinsmen followed suit. The following year, a major epidemic broke out, and at the age of 107, Membertou succumbed to the disease and died on September 18th, 1611.

Mi’kmaq is one of the more widely spoken Algonquin languages today. By insisting that the church take responsibility for helping to preserve it, Membertou helped to insure the popularity of the Mi’kmaq language.

Metacom aka Metacomet (Wampanoag). The son of Massasoit, a sachem who was friendly to the whites, Metacomet resisted Puritan land seizures and taxes after he became chief in 1662
at the age of twenty-four. He felt that the colonists would eventually bring the extermination of all his people, and formed an army to attack the settlers. He managed to cripple or destroy most of the white settlements of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. His 500 men were soon joined by 20,000 warriors from neighboring tribes, mostly Nipmuc, and their rebellion was called "Prince Philip’s War." The result was an Algonquin Federation, but due to pressure from English troops which eventually numbered 50,000, and with the help of the Mohegan, the Federation was weakened.

In 1676, King Philip was defeated and most of his people killed or sold into slavery and shipped to the Bahamas. The descendants of the Wampanoags and Pequots are still on St. Croix today, speaking their language and still recanting their long history. Their settlement is on the western shore of St. Croix Island, several miles northwest of Christiansted and facing the island of Vieques to the north.

William Mewer (Mi’kmaq). In 1891, at the age of twenty-eight, William Muse covered his Mi’kmaq tracks and immigrated to the United States, changing his name to Mewer. He soon got a job in a sawmill, and so impressed the mill owner and his wife that he ended up marrying their daughter, Hattie, who was to become my great-grandmother. They moved to Old Orchard,Maine and as a couple became a symbol of Downeaster integrity.

Their first child, Clinton was born in 1895, and grew up to run the family businesses. Bill was an inventor, a builder (he built what we now know as Old Orchard Beach, Maine), and a pioneer in the insurance business. A friend of Teddy Roosevelt (he headed the Bullmoose party for Maine, according to his daughter Helen Perley), Bill was elected congressman, serving from 1903 to 1909, and was police chief every year after that.

Mewer distinguished himself as an architect who never used blueprints. Nevertheless, he was among the first to experiment successfully with cement and created the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall, an architectural marvel of the time. He was also a powerful mystic and 33rd degree Mason. At the same time he consistently devoted himself to the preservation of the Algonquin people of Maine during their darkest years, 1890-1920, especially as a Congressman. He died of heart failure in January 1925 on a grim 15° below zero day at the age of sixty-two, apparently while shoveling snow.

Larry Cloud Morgan (Ojibway). Confined to a wheelchair for many years, Larry passed away in 1999, but first was able to pass on much of his linguistic knowledge to the younger people of his Ojibway nation, and to linguists at Harvard and other prominent universities around the country. I had a pleasant chat with him in Washington D.C. at the Prayer Vigil in front of the White House in 1998.

Chief Francis Joseph Neptune (Passamaquoddy) is a famous name in Algonquin history. A portrait of his daughter Denny Sockabasin was made in 1817. There were a long line of Neptunes who maintained some of the Midewiwin traditions long after the Lodge Chiefs went west.

Nesouaquoit (Fox). Son of Chief Chimakassee of the Fox, Nesouaqouit became chief after his father. Like most Fox leaders, he was of the bear clan. He visited Washington, D.C. with Keokuk and Black Hawk in 1833 to meet President Andrew Jackson.

Netawatwees (Lenape). This influential nonagenarian at the time of the Declaration of Independence became head of the Delaware Great Council at a critical time in their history. He invited the help of the Moravian Missionaries, and allowed them to be honorary Delaware. In return, they acted as effective scribes and messengers to speed up interaction between the Delawares and the Continental Congress. As the American Revolution developed, Congress used these communication lines to convince the native population that the British would lose the war, and to win their support.

Netawatwees also founded the town of Newcomerstown, Ohio in 1771, and it became the largest settlement of non-Christians in the New World. He lived there himself, in a two-story log cabin, with a staircase and a stone chimney, and made it the capital city of the Delaware for a period of time. By 1776, the population exceeded 700.

Netawatwees was of the Unami or Turtle Nation of the Delaware Confederacy, located in central New Jersey. There had always been a tendency for the grand sachem to be of the Unami, but with Netawatwees this became institutionalized, and whether the practice was ever considered "law" before, it now was because of him. Strongly associated with the Turtle, the first of all creatures in the Creation tales, Netawatwees was clearly the first of leaders above all other Lenape leaders at the time of the Revolution.

At Fort Pitt on October 31, 1776, as he lay dying, Netawatwees gave his last great speech, urging his people to heed the advice and teachings of the pacifist Moravians. White Eyes later delivered his speech to the Great Council.

If his advice had been followed, a new Pro-American Christian Delaware Commonwealth might have been born, a separate country (or state) where converted Delaware people could live in peace. In the end, there were too many who felt the move towards Christianity and American politics betrayed their own ways of life and independence. Anti-American sentiment and an understandable lack of trust of Europeans broke up the alliance. The American side won the war, and the Delaware were driven from the land, many seeking refuge in Canada, where a large group now reside today.

Daniel Ninham (Wappingers). Grand Chief of the Wappingers, Ninham fought in the Revolutionary War on the American side, and was shot while mounting his horse near the end of the war. Ninham’s life was marked by great deeds and profound sorrow and loss. He was one of the most widely respected native leaders of his time.

Also called "David Ninham," he worked to recover the lands lying along the eastern shore of the Hudson River that had been taken by the English. This resulted in a Wappingers’ reservation whose borders are now marked by the borders of modern-day Putnam County. He was made a chief in 1740, and in spite of his feelings against the English, he entered into their service in 1755 under the influence of the likable British diplomat Sir William Johnson. Ninham brought with him most of his fighting men to fight against the French. Later, in 1762, he went to England to fight for tribal land claims with a few Mohegan chiefs. The claims reached the court, but with the outbreak of the American Revolution, they were pushed aside.

Ninham fought valiantly with the Americans during the Revolution. He and seventeen Stockbridge Indians, with forty men in all, put up a desperate resistance against the British Legion Dragons in the Battle of Kingsbridge. Ninham wounded British Commander Simcoe, but was killed by Simcoe’s orderly in the process. Ninham’s Stockbridge troop were wiped out by vastly superior numbers and were buried where they fell, near Tibbet's Brook (Moshulu Seepu). There is a monument on that site which is now called "Indian Field," a plot of land in Van Cortland Park.

Okeemaquid (Ojibway). He was a leader among the warriors of the Chippewa/Ojibway during the wars with the Sioux in the early 1800s (Minnesota). The wars ended in 1825, and a peace treaty was signed, with gifts exchanged. He was given a feathered headdress by the Sioux, which he wore when posing for a portrait by an American artist, which helped to insure his place in the English history books.

Helen D. Perley (Mi’kmaq). Owner and operator of The White Animal Farm on Seavee Landing Road in Scarboro, Maine, "Aunt Helen" was an American institution and symbol of salty old Maine culture who exchanged letters with several U.S. Presidents. Her knowledge of animals and plants was simply phenomenal, and she was often sought after by Walt Disney and Hollywood animal trainers for her great animal knowledge and compassionate animal-human communication skills. Helen was a champion clam digger, survivalist, and herbalist. My book Aunt Helen’s Little Herb Book, preserves some of her knowledge and stories, and Bob Noonan has written two articles for Readers’ Digest about Helen’s magical ways with animals.

Pocahontas (Chickahominy/Cherokee). The daughter of Powhatan and the subject of a cartoon movie, her real name was Matoakah and she lived from 1595 to 1617. Her mother was a Cherokee named Amastayi. The nickname Pocahontas has been translated "She is frisky," "Spoiled Child," or "Naughty One." If she did rescue John Smith, she would have been ten or eleven years old at the time. This is unlikely. What probably happened is this: Pocahontas was treacherously taken prisoner by the English while on a social visit, and was held hostage at Jamestown for over a year. During her captivity, a twenty-eight-year old widower named John Rolfe took a special interest in the attractive young prisoner. As a condition of her release, she had to marry Rolfe (who later became famous for commercializing tobacco). In April of 1614, Pocahontas became Rebecca Rolfe. Soon they had a son whom they named Thomas Rolfe. The descendants of Pocahontas and Rolfe were known as "The Red Rolfes."

In the spring of 1616, John Rolfe took her back to London where the Virginia Company of London used her in a propaganda campaign to support the new colony. She was wined and dined and taken to theaters. The experience weakened her health and made her ill.

John Smith was also in London, and apparently had a habit of telling stories of being rescued by beautiful women. Three such stories have been recorded, none of them likely. Now that Pocahontas was famous, he apparently made up a similar story about her. Upon a chance encounter with Smith, she was so furious at him that she turned her back to him, hid her face, and went off by herself for several hours. Later in a second chance encounter, she called him a liar and showed him the door.

Rolfe and his young family set off for Virginia again in March of 1617, but Matoaka was very ill and was let off at Gravesend, a name which proved prophetic for her. She died there on March 21, 1617, only twenty-one years of age. Her grave was destroyed in a reconstruction

of the church. [Singer Wayne Newton, who is of Powhatan ancestry, announced in April 2000 that he would cover expenses to find the remains of Pocahontas. (See Wayne Newton)]

"Pocahontas" became much more famous in London after her death, and John Smith apparently elaborated on the "rescue" yarn to no end. According to Chief Roy Crazy Horse, a descendant of Powhatan, and the source for much of this material, John Smith’s own men described him as "an abrasive, ambitious, self-promoting mercenary soldier." Not someone you’d want to buy a used legend from.

Powhatan died one year after his daughter, in the spring of 1618. Throughout her short life (she died at the age of 22), . Pocahontas tried to promote peace between the Powhatans and the English colonists. She even converted to Christianity and married John Rolfe, a Jamestown colonist, a union which helped bring the two groups together. Her untimely death in England hurt the chance for continued peace in Virginia between the Algonquians and the colonists


Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi). Born in Indiana in 1830, he moved to Michigan while young and ended up at Notre Dame for three years. He became Chief of the Potawatomi in Michigan and became well known as part of a delegation to Washington, D.C. His article “The Future of the Red Man” is very eloquent and insightful about the future, demonstrating an uncommon knowledge of history. His books include Algonquin Legends of South Haven (1900), Birch Bark Booklets (6 volumes) (1899), Pattawattamie Book of Genesis: Legend of the Creation of Man (1901), Red Man’s Greeting (1893), and The Red Man’s Rebuke (1893). He died in 1899.

Joseph Polis (Penobscot). Joseph Polis is quoted at length in Henry David Thoreau’s seminal book The Maine Woods. This partially educated hunting guide related to Thoreau the stories and teachings of Penobscot non-violence and civil disobedience. Thoreau was later asked to give a speech to a local club in Concord, and spoke about these techniques as ways that Americans could protest the various wars that were going on. The speech was later published in a newsletter, and then in a book, which did not do well. The book was republished by Oxford University Press in the late 1800s and was spotted by Mohandas Gandhi, then a student at Oxford. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were very moved by Thoreau’s writings on the subject, but apparently never read The Maine Woods. Thoreau described Polis as "one of the most enlightened men he’d ever met," and that coming from a friend of Emerson.

Thoreau tells us Polis could make a spruce-bark canoe in a single day, and that he learned new skills with remarkable speed. He was incredibly observant, and once found a cache of hunting traps buried under a log just before nightfall. He showed Thoreau many Algonquin skills, such as writing on the back of birchbark with the twig of a black spruce, which leaves a clear mark. Polis was not only amazingly agile in an athletic sense, he was agile with a canoe, forging his way up streams and small waterfalls with ease. But his knowledge of traditional Algonquin diplomacy touched the life of everyone reading this maskweedayg’n (birchbark writing) today.

Pontiac aka Wandeeak (Ottawa). Pontiac was a great leader and Ottawa Chief who created the "Great Lakes" confederacy in 1762, sometimes called the "Ottawa Confederacy," although it was not the first one. “Pontiac’s War” lasted from 1762 to 1764, and his leadership united native nations from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, including the Seneca, Delaware, Shawnee, Ottawa, Ojibway, Potawatomi and Huron. In the spring of 1763, his warriors attacked every British fort and installation simultaneously, with great success, capturing nine out of eleven forts along the Great Lakes.

Pontiac was involved with planning the famous siege of Michilimackinack, in which his men were playing LaCross or "Bigattaway," outside the fort, then tossed the ball over the stockade wall, ran inside and killed twenty-one of the thirty-five soldiers there. Later, he planned the siege of the fort at Detroit, but was betrayed, probably by the wife of a white trader who overheard the plan. By the time he arrived for the diplomatic meeting, the sentries had been doubled. He called off the attack, and for the first time, lost a lot of the momentum and confidence of his war party. His second attempt failed as well. He decided to hang tough to preserve the unity of his men, but Amherst held tougher. War escalated quickly from there. In the end, two thousand settlers were killed, and an untold number of natives.

The main focus of Pontiac’s Rebellion was the British fort at Detroit, an important site spiritually for the Algonquin people. The siege went on until October 30th, nearly six months. The French never came to his aid as promised, and when the news of the Treaty of Paris of February 10th, ending the French and Indian war, finally made it to America, Pontiac was left high and dry. However, the battle gained him a great victory. A new proclamation from the English in 1763 declared all land west of the Appalachian/ Allegheny Mountains to be Indian land, and the anti-Indian Sir Jeffrey Amherst was recalled to England.

Pontiac wandered five years throughout the mid-west. He was assassinated in Kohokia in 1769 at a trading post by a Peoria of the Illinois Confederacy, who was presumably hired to do so. It is believed the man was the nephew of Peoria Chief Black Dog.

Pontiac was a supporter of The Delaware Prophet (who has no other name) who had a vision in which the Creator said, "Tell the native people to take back the land I have created for them, and let the English go back to theirs." Pontiac realized part of that vision through the treaty of 1763. In the end, however, many of the results of the war were not what the Prairie nations had in mind. Many of his own best men, including many of his best friends and relatives, were dead, and the retribution of the whites was extensive. The Prairie nations remained disunifed for a generation until Tecumseh, who was one year old when Pontiac was killed, rose to take his place and in many ways, outshine him.

Powhatan aka Wahunsonacook (Chickahominy). 1550-1618. Powhatan’s father had formed a great confederacy of Virginia Algonquins which included the local Shawnee, the Mataponi, and at least thirty other tribes, spanning over 200 villages. Wahunsonacook, or Powhatan, after the name of his village, meaning "Falls of the River," was one of the most king-like figures in Algonquin history, and was at one time crowned by John Smith as "King Powhatan." He reveled in power and used it wisely to defend his people from attacks from their Iroquois and Siouxan enemies, which were very militant in that time and place.

The English colony of Virginia was one of the more ambitious, and even declared war on the Maryland colony, who were Catholic, and on French colonies further north. Apparently, they were not good neighbors to Powhatan either. The Virginians were constantly demanding free food from Powhatan, so in 1607 he had John Smith captured and brought to him. Nonetheless, they formed a wary alliance out of mutual displays of mistrust, power and authority. Over time they became friendly rivals. He is the founder of the city of Richmond, Virginia.

Powhatan’s brother Opechancanough did not hold the same gift for diplomacy, and though he remained "King" until over a hundred years old (he was assassinated in 1646 as a centenarian) he was only able to hold the Great Peace for four years. Unable to forgive the offenses of the colonists, a huge series of bloody "Powhatan" wars broke out that weakened both sides. Powhatan’s son could not hold the far-flung empire together for long.

Joe Pye (Stockbridge Mohican). The herb Eupatorium fistulosum of the Aster family is named after this herbalist doctor of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

Queen Allaquippa (Lenape/Seneca). According to author Peter Copeland, "Queen Allaquippa" was a Delaware woman, but most sources say she was Seneca (including George Washington), and her children became leaders of the Seneca, unlikely offspring for a Delaware mother, though not out of the question. On New Year’s Day of 1754 the elderly woman accepted gifts from a young British officer named George Washington at Delaware Village in western Pennsylvania. They had dined together in 1848. Washington had accidentally "snubbed" her on his ride through the area the month before. This time he brought her a matchcoat and a bottle of rum, which were well received.

The British were eager to prevent her people from forming an alliance with the French. However, during the ensuing war, the English, with the exception perhaps of William Johnson, treated the native people with such contempt that no alliance could be maintained for long. When the Revolution was ending, George Washington, now an American officer, led the charge to destroy Seneca, Mohawk, and other Iroquoian villages. He became known thereafter to native people as "Lenatagadeaas," a Mohawk word that means "He wrecks the town."

The town of Aliquippa, in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, was named after Queen Allaquippa, a great community builder in a time of war.


James Lone Bear Revey (Lenape) was a great 20th century Chief. It was his father who was the last chief of the Delawares who stayed behind in New Jersey. The Sand Hill Lenape, based near Neptune, New Jersey dissolved their tribal council in 1953 after outmigration and assimilation had dwindled their numbers.

Roy Rogers aka Leonard Slye (Meskwakee). A Native American from Ohio, Roy Rogers was from the Meskwakee (also spelled Mesquakie and otherwise) people. He is known for his cowboy movies and a lot of fast food. His wife Dale Evans is also a major talent, but she has never announced a tribal affiliation as far as I know. Two of the other members of Roy’s “Sons of the Pioneers" musical group, Carl and Hugh Farr, were also Native American.

Slow Turtle (Pequot). A controversial chief and leader of the Pequots, Slow Turtle helped lead them to establishing the Foxwoods Casino, creating a financial base which helped fund a large Native American museum and research library.
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Smoking Star (Blackfoot). This elder’s teachings were partly preserved in writing by Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural History. At that time, Smoking Star was ninety, and the eldest of the Blackfoot. His name refers to what the white man calls the planet Mars.

Andrew Sockalexis (Penobscot). Brother of Louis Sockalexis, Andrew was a champion long distance runner. He took second place in the Boston marathon in 1912, the year before Louis died.

Louis Sockalexis (Penobscot), an outfielder for the Cleveland Spiders baseball team, had developed an extraordinary arm hurling rocks across a lake on the Indian Island Reserve near Old Town Maine. He became a college star at Holy Cross and then with the famed Notre Dame. He and a classmate were expelled from Notre Dame in 1897 due to drinking problems. Apparently, they smashed up a local bordello. Patsy Tebeau, manager of the Cleveland Spiders, bailed them out and hurried Sockalexis onto the team.

Sockelexis started well and so impressed the legendary successful manager John McGraw that he pronounced Louis the greatest natural talent he had ever seen. But drinking was his downfall. He was soon sidelined after injuring his ankle; rumor said it was from leaping from the second story window of a brothel.

Sockalexis played parts of two more seasons and hit .313 before alcohol and the aggravated injury forced him from the majors. (I believe 1900 was his last season.) Until his death in 1913 at age forty-two, he taught Native American boys on the Penobscot Reservation how to play ball. When Sockalexus was found dead, yellowed press clippings from his brief career were found in his shirt pocket.

There is much controversy surrounding the actual date when the team name was changed and why. According to some sources, sportswriters named Sockalexis "The Cleveland Indian" while he played ball. According to other sources, Cleveland fans voted to rename their team The Cleveland Indians "in his honor," as they claimed, within two years after his early retirement, so that Nap LaJoie led the American League in its first year in existence, 1903, batting .355 as a "Cleveland Indian." The Sporting News Baseball Chronicles report this as the name of the team that year (page 12) According to other sources, the name was The Naps (after Nap LaJoie) from 1903 until LaJoie’s trade to another team a few years later. According to other sources, the team was never called The Cleveland Indians until two years after Sockalexis’ death.

Although poor, saddened, and with no future in baseball, Louis enjoyed ten years as the living namesake of the Cleveland Indians, that is, depending on who you believe.

I doubt that during those years there was much "Tomahawking," and the unfortunate logo of the "screaming Indian" (Chief Wahoo, who in 2006 was finally removed as a “mascot” from all logos) came much later. If they really want to "honor" the "Indians," they should have an actual picture of Louis Sockalexis on their caps. It would add to the public’s knowledge, rather than distort it.

Squanto aka Tisquantum (Patuxet). The Patuxet were the Algonquins living in the area later called Plymouth by the colonists. Most of them were wiped out by disease before 1620 with the notable exception of Squanto, who had been captured by the English sea captain Thomas Hunt and taken first to Newfoundland and then England, where he learned to speak fluent English. Squanto returned in 1619 to find all of his kinsmen dead.



In 1620, when the Pilgrims arrived, Squanto was able to greet them in perfect English, although he chose to add a bit of Algonkeen he thought would be understandable to them.
His actual words were: "What cheer, Needap?" ("Needap" means "friend.")

He befriended the colonists and made it possible for them to survive that first cold winter.
He later had to remove himself to the Wampanoag territory because of their rowdy and ungrateful behavior. “Squanto, A Warrior’s Tale” is a new movie based on his life, featuring Irene Bedard.

John Stands In Timber (Cheyenne). A founding member of the American Indian Historical Society, he was the tribal historian for the Northern Cheyenne (which Ben Nighthorse Campbell belongs to) until his death in 1967, at the age of eighty-three. He wrote his autobiographical thoughts in Cheyenne Memories.

Sun Bear aka Gheezis Mokwa aka. Vernon LaDuke (Chippewa). Sun Bear was born on the White Earth Reservation in Bemidji, Minnesota where he attended the La Duke School. He wrote a number of books in the 1970s that sought to popularize Native American culture, including Black Dawn, Bright Day, Dreaming Within The Wheel, Earth Astrology, The Path of Power, and Walk In Balance. Sun Bear was the founder of The Bear Tribe of Spokane, WA, which still continues today, although he passed away in June of 1992. He was editor/publisher of Many Smokes magazine, worked as an extra in motion pictures, and was technical director for many television series. According to the Internet Public Library, Sun Bear was a member of the Midewiwin Society at one time and the National Congress of American Indians. His life’s work was highly expansive and dynamic, but was plagued by constant controversy and disruption.

Tamanend (Lenni-Lenape). Known to many today as "Tammany", this great peacemaker Chief was perhaps the most famous of all coastal chiefs of the Algonquin, but was not in fact the most respected among the Lenni-Lenape. To counter the British use of "St. George," the Americans used "St. Tammany" in creating Tammany Hall in New York City, and the name stuck. Tamanend is still known today as The Patron Saint of America, and a huge statue of him bearing that title stands at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia (near Route 95) where the council elm once stood.

The following description is adapted from The Delawares, A Brief History, by Richard Adams, which seems to quote some earlier source:

The most pleasant memories that the Delawares had of their early dealings with the whites was when the treaty was made with William Penn under the spreading elm tree at Shackamaxon, on the banks of the Delaware River in 1682. It was under that elm that Penn and Tammany shook hands, and Shakamaxon was opened to European settlement in the spirit of peace and brotherhood. A historical fresco recalling that event can be seen in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. Penn’s settlement came to be called Philadelphia, Greek for The City of Brotherly Love

When the time arrived at which William Penn and the Indians had agreed to meet personally to confirm the treaty of peace and the purchase of the land, Penn came, accompanied by friends of both sexes, to the place where Philadelphia now stands. Upon his arrival, Penn found Tamanend and his chiefs and their people all assembled there. They were seen as far as the eye could reach, up the river, down the river, and in the forest far beyond, and looked frightful, both on account of their numbers and their arms. The Quakers were but a handful in comparison with the Indians, and were unarmed, but confidence in the justice of their cause prevented dismay and terror from seizing them. William Penn appeared in his usual clothes, and was distinguished only by wearing a sky-blue sash of silk network around his waist. He had a roll of parchment containing a confirmation of the purchase and amity in his hands.

Tamanend, who was the head chief, put upon his own head a kind of chaplet, in which appeared a small horn. This, as among the primitive nations and according to scriptural language, was an emblem of kingly power and whenever the chief who had the right to wear it put on it was understood that the place was made sacred and the persons of all present inviolable. Upon putting on this horn the Indians threw down their bows and arrows and seated themselves around the chiefs, in the form of a half moon, upon the ground. Tamanend then announced to William Penn, by means of an interpreter, that the Indians were ready to hear him. The treaty was ratified with all due solemnity, and is known to this day as the treaty that never was sworn to and never was broken.

Chief Tamaqua (Lenape). Known to the English as Chief Beaver (tamaqua is a word for “beaver” in Lenape), he addressed the council of the Iroquois Six Nations to refute the claim that they had "made women of the Delaware," but softened it by thanking them for their protection.

It was his brother Shingas who was appointed chief and king by the English and Iroquois in 1752, and who later regretted it, as he used his power against them. Beaver stood proxy for his brother in the so-called coronation, and received the crown and vestments of office virtually at gun-point.

He was described at the time as "a steady, quiet, middle-aged man of cheerful disposition, but low stature." By the time his brother "Shingas The Terrible" had captured several hundred white settlers and killed hundreds of others, a bounty was put on Shingas’ scalp for seven hundred pieces of eight by the colony of Pennsylvania, and a similar bounty of one hundred pistols was offered by the Virginia Commonwealth. Shingas saw it wise to hand the scepter to his brother and run. The English were pleased to pass the kingship to the pacifist Tamaqua, who was a man of reason, though perhaps lacking in toughness by Lenape standards of the day.

On July 9, 1759, King Beaver, as he was then known, along with Delaware and Shawnee associates, entered into a peace treaty at Fort Pitt with the Irish-born "Blanketman" George Croghan. Beaver was living in the area at the time. In the autumn of 1762, King Beaver was also involved in a peace treaty in which all white prisoners were to be released.

In 1763, Beaver was among a group that urged the Englishman Ecuyer to vacate Fort Pitt to avoid bloodshed, since the Native forces intended to attack and capture it regardless. Ecuyer thanked them for warning him, and gave them blankets and handkerchiefs as tokens of his esteem, all highly infected with smallpox for which the native men had little immunity. King Beaver apparently escaped infection. The forts were indeed attacked and many English lives were lost, however the combined Delaware and Shawnee forces were not sufficient to take the well-protected Fort Pitt.

A long war ensued, and General Bouquet was victorious in the end. At the treaty council, attended by “The Beaver" (as he was called, two hundred years before the television show starring Jerry Mathers), Bouquet announced that he would take back all white prisoners and their children. This is one of several times in history in which the "freed captives" had to be watched day and night by armed guards for fear they would run back to the Indian villages where the women were treated as equal and the children allowed to grow up according to their own nature.

When the Lenape were under attack in eastern Pennsylvania, The Beaver led his people out of danger and founded a settlement near what is now New Philadelphia, Ohio, where they were safe. This village was later re-established by Netawatwees, head chief of the Delawares, in 1772, in partnership with the Moravian missionaries. One of these missionaries was Zeisberger, whose phrasebook helped preserve the Lenape language to this day.The borough of Tamaqua in New Jersey is named for Tamaqua stream aka Little Schuykill and also from “King Beaver himself.”


Gladys Tantaquidgeon (Mohegan).
Gladys held an honorary degree from Yale University for her achievements in the field of herbal medicine and was a highly respected elder of the Mohegan Nation. She turned 102 on June 15, 2000, and passed away in October of 2005 at the age of 107. Gladys and her sister Ruth (who was 91 in 2000) ran the nation’s oldest Indian-operated Native American museum near Uncasville, CT. which is still in existence. Her book on Native American folk medicine was published in 1970. A BIA historian commented that the store, started by herself and her father sixty years ago, has played an important role in gaining national recognition for the Mohegans as a tribe. I attended her funeral ceremony in the autumn of 2005, and it was an unforgettable experience beyond description. She lived in three different centuries, and changed all of them!

Henry Tantaquidgeon (Mohegan). As a boy, Henry became close friends with a young man named Frank Speck, who was interested in native history and anthropology, and who helped Henry realize the value of some of his family heirlooms. These conversations eventually led to the idea of a Tantaquidgeon Museum, which still stands. Speck later became the head of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and his books on Native American anthropology are still in every public library.

When Tantaquidgeon joined the Navy, the ship he was assigned to ironically, was the
Pequot II. Upon returning to the U.S., he worked extensively with the Boy Scouts, training hundreds of young men in native survival techniques.

In the 1930’s a movie version of James Fennimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans” was released, and Harold was signed as a publicity representative, to go around and give out tickets and do what today would be called "photo-ops." A rare autographed copy of the first edition was found and auctioned off in New York City about the time of the picture’s release. The studio backed him to go into the posh confines of the Manhattan auction salon in full regalia and outbid everyone for the book. He did so, and thoroughly enjoyed it, especially since the auctioneer had made derisive remarks at his opening bid concerning him and his probable means of exchange.

Tantaquidgeon had adventures in the swamps of New Guinea, and served in Japan in
World War II. A highly decorated soldier, he remained stationed in the area for several years after the war. In the spring of 1952, while still in Japan, he received word that his uncle, the beloved Chief Matahga, had died, and that he had been named Chief of the Mohegan nation.

In 1955, he and his sister Gladys created the Mohegan Indian Museum, which had been their dream since childhood. One book about his life, Mohegan Chief, was written for children by Virginia Frances Voight, who also wrote about his controversial great, great, great grandfather Uncas, in her book Uncas, Sachem of the Wolf People.

Tecumseh (Shawnee). Many books and movies have been made about this greatest of heroes, and an excellent play is performed each year throughout the summer near his birthplace in Chillicothe, Ohio. Born March 9, 1768, he united Algonquin and Iroquoian nations together around the end of the 1700s to hold the land west of the Ohio for native peoples. A man of high principles, he forbid torture of any kind towards prisoners, even though the gesture was seldom returned. Some historians have identified Tecumseh as one of the five most admirable characters in world history.

Tecumseh’s father was the Shawnee war chief Pucksinwah. He was born in the Scioto River Valley. His father and two brothers were killed in battles with American frontiersmen and colonists. He and his brother formed an alliance to prevent settlers from stealing the Ohio valley from the native people. He traveled to almost every tribe in the midwest to lead the native people back to traditional ways, using his impressive power of oratory and leadership.


Trained by his father never to sign a treaty, Tecumseh condemned the Greenville Treaty made with William Henry Harrison, which led directly to the battle at Tippecanoe in 1811. He was already at war with the Americans when war broke out in 1812 between the colonials and the British, and so joined the British and soon became Brigadier General in charge of Indian Allies.

Tecumseh fought against impossible odds and nearly won, but was, according to the most reliable sources, betrayed by his own brother, the one-eyed Tenskwatawa, who some called "The Prophet." Tecumseh survived the defeats of 1812, to lead his men to one more victory at the Battle of Lake Erie. However, he knew by then that the tide had turned; it was only a matter of time before all of his people would be removed to the western territories or assimilated. Tecumseh died in battle on October 5, 1813 at the age of forty-five, feared and admired around the world for his genius and character. His comrades had to hide his body so that the Americans didn’t disfigure him or put his remains in a museum.

A Sorrow In Our Heart by Allan W. Eckert is probably the most complete source of information on Tecumseh, although other books have come out since 1998.

Teedyeskung (Lenape). The greatest Peacemaker of the Algonquins of colonial times, Teedyeskung called some of the largest peace councils ever held between British and Native Americans. In 1756-57, "Honest John," as he was called, pushed for a council at his home in Lancaster, PA with Sir William Johnson of the English, and got it. Speaking on behalf of all Lenapes, Munsees, Mahicans, Shawnees, and Nanticokes and "fully empowered by them," he confronted the English with their numerous land frauds and firmly insisted on compensation, all without resorting to further warfare. He also represented each of the Iroquois Nations of the Confederacy. He demanded a pro-Indian secretary to write down everything he said, and after much resistance, Charles Thompson was appointed. The next year he negotiated peacefully with the British, adding Wappingers, Conoy, Tutelos, Chugnuts, and Susquehannas to the growing list of his constituents, which continued to expand until his death in 1762,

Charles Thompson (Lenape, adopted). Secretary to the Continental Congress, Thompson was one of the real brains behind the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Much of it was based on his brilliant Appendix to Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia.

Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox). The greatest all around athlete of the 20th Century, Thorpe was born May 22, 1887 in a one room cabin in Oklahoma to parents of Sac and Fox (with some French and Irish) ancestry. His legal name at birth was Wa-tho-huk, Bright Path. He died on March 28, 1953. By the time he passed away, Thorpe had mastered baseball, football, track and field, and several other sports. He starred on the Carlisle Indian School Football team in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, helping to make it famous, won the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics, then played minor and major league baseball for twenty years, including stints with the Cleveland Indians (around the time of the passing of Cleveland’s namesake Louis Sockalexis), Cincinnati Reds, Boston Braves, and New York Giants. He also played for the other New York Giants, the football ones, and several other football teams. He ended up as the first president of the NFL. Thorpe was also the first of only two men to play professional baseball and football in the same town. In addition, he was a movie actor, best known for his role in “Behold My Wife.”

But Thorpe’s most unusual claim to fame is hitting homers in three different states in one game. As a minor leaguer, he was playing at a stadium in Texas, but right on the border with Arkansas and his home state of Oklahoma. He hit his first homer over the left field wall and it landed well into the state of Oklahoma. Then he hit his second home run of the day over the right field wall, sending it well on its way towards Little Rock, in Arkansas. On his third trip to the plate, Thorpe - an incredibly swift runner - ran out an inside the park homer to make it three states in one day. You see, the playing field was entirely within the boundaries of Texas.


Chief Thunder Cloud (Ottawa) was an actor in silent films who lived from 1898 to 1967. Born Scott T. Williams in Cedar, Michigan, he claimed to be the great, great, great, grandson of Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa. He performed in many western films, as well as in vaudeville, rodeos and Indian productions. During World War I, Thunder Cloud earned the distinction of being the first Native American to enlist in the U.S. Army, breaking a ban on Native Americans joining the armed forces. (At that time, most Native Americans were not citizens.)

After World War I, Chief Thunder Cloud was the voice of Tonto on the famous Lone Ranger radio series between 1936 and 1939.

Chief Uncas (Mohegan). The controversial Chief helped white settlers attack the Pequot village in present-day Mystic, Connecticut, and over three hundred men, women, and children were killed. Naturally, the white man has written the name Uncas in large letters across the pages of history, so most whites have heard of him. However, he is not a popular figure among all Algonquins. I honor him as the ancestor of Henry Tantaquidgeon.

Wabaunnsee (Potawatomi). Born 1780, Wabaunnsee became the war chief for the Potawatomi, and sided with the United States in the War of 1812, against the urgings of Tecumseh and others to resist. This controversial leader, torn between an ability to lead in war and a desire for peace, survived an assassination attempt in 1835, and later gave away the rest of his people’s land in exchange for land further west. I believe that this land must have been near present-day Aurora, Illinois.

Ingrid Washinawatok, aka O’Peqtaw-Metamoh/Flying Eagle Woman (Menominee).
A freedom fighter in both North and South America, Ingrid, a member of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge, was assassinated in South America late on March 4, 1999, after being held captive nine days by FARC rebels. She had been working peacefully for political justice for indigenous South Americans. Her death made headlines worldwide.

Born on July 31, 1957 on the Menominee Reservation, the daughter of the late Honorable James Washinawatok (Menominee Nation Supreme Court Justice) and Gwendolyn Dodge Washinawatok, Ingrid was director of the New York-based Fund for the Four Directions, which focuses on American Indian issues such as language revitalization, and sat on the boards of several groups working to help indigenous people. She was also the first chair of the United Nations Committee for the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples (1995-2004). In 1998, she received an award from the Northstar Foundation. Ingrid was co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, and an active member of the Indigenous Initiative for Peace, convened by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberto Menchu. She was a translator for the International Indigenous Conference and a delegate for the Commission on Human Rights and the Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Ingrid was also an award-winning lecturer and she co-produced the documentary film ‘Warrior." Her other accomplishments are too numerous
to mention here, but I remember that she was a good mother and community team worker
within the Midewiwin.

I met Ingrid at the Midewiwin Lodge the day before she left for South America, and noticed how pure in spirit she seemed, how filled with light, and I shook her hand in hopes of receiving some of her wisdom. Although I knew her only as someone named "Ingrid," I was so deeply impressed by her quiet dignity I was at a loss for words. I was sure she was full Midewiwin and a great elder, although she was several years younger than me and dressed in plain clothes. Less than one month later, after her martyrdom (as the Indigenous press called it), she was initiated as a full Midewiwin elder. Ingrid was buried on the site where she was to have built her home.

Thomas S. Whitecloud (Chippewa). Born in 1914, Whitecloud was a poet, short story writer, and doctor. His story “Blue Winds Dancing” is required reading in many college literature classes. Whitecloud was also a founding member of the American Association of Indian Physicians. His poetry book An Indian Prayer has been widely read. Many of his short stories describe contemporary wanderers, hobos, and loners.

Captain White Eyes (Lenape). The name "White Eyes" or "Grey Eyes" appears on several important treaties in the early years of the Pennsylvania Colony, including a peace treaty with Colonel Bouquet. They are probably the same person. His Lenape name is Koquethagecthon, "That Which Is Put Near The Head," also pronounced Koquataginta, He was described as a "conservative" Delaware who hung around with Heckewelder at Beaver Creek near present-day Pittsburgh.

In 1775 White Eyes met with the commissioners of the Continental Congress as the representative for a new union of nations including the Wyandot, Shawnee, Delaware, and Ottawas. Of the "Turtle Tribe," he succeeded Chief Shingiss in 1775 as their chief. He was dedicated to keeping peace with the Continental Congress, and to follow their advice to remain neutral in the pending war against Britain. Fifteen miles away, Chief Pipe, who was head of the "Wolf Tribe," leaned on the side of the British. He was overcome with anger at the atrocities certain white colonists had perpetrated upon his people, and could not forgive. In the words of Richard Adams, "His soul panted for revenge."

"White Eyes," according to Adams, "was a sensible, upright man, and never was deficient in means to support his own measures and extricate himself from the snares with which he was on all sides surrounded by Captain Pipe. Thus they went on for upward to two years, Pipe working clandestinely and keeping his spies continually on the watch upon the other, while Captain White Eyes acted openly and publicly, as though he knew nothing of what was machinating against him."

White Eyes was one of the most successful of all Algonquin leaders in forging peace between natives and colonists. He proposed a fourteenth "Indian" state with the Delawares at its head, which was never realized. His rival Chief Pipe joined forces with the British, polarizing the Delawares between those who were loyal to White Eyes, and those who joined Pipe, which prevented such a Native American state from being formed.

On December 16th, 1776, White Eyes came to address Congress. The President of the Continental Congress addressed him as follows:

"Brother Captain White Eyes, we are glad to see you and we bid you welcome to this council fire, kindled for all the United Colonies. We have heard of your friendship for your brethren the white people, and how useful you have been in preserving peace and harmony between your nation and us, and we thank you for those services. We are pleased that the Delawares intend to embrace Christianity. We will send you, according to your desire, a minister and a schoolmaster to instruct you in the principles of religion and other part of useful knowledge. We shall be happy in improving every opportunity that shall offer for convincing your nation and all other nations of Indians of our friendly disposition towards them. Before you leave this city we will give you some particular testimony of our regard for you."

White Eyes was appointed chief of all Delawares in 1778 but resigned after Colonel Morgan and many other Delawares set about to create a Lenape city-state in Ohio, which he felt represented an abandonment of their cherished way of life. No one wanted him to resign. He had been their choice to replace the aging Netawatwees. White Eyes continued to be regarded as a leader, and influenced the Delaware to befriend the Americans, and eventually for many of them joined the Continental Army.

While accompanying General McIntosh’s army to Tuscorawas where a fort was to be
built for the protection of the peaceful Indians, White Eyes contracted smallpox and died.
The Delawares received messages of condolence from hundreds of miles in every direction.

It should be noted that germ warfare was already widely used by the Americans, specifically in the Pittsburgh region, where White Eyes was then living. Allan Eckert, in his book A Sorrow In Our Hearts, describes some of the biological warfare tactics used in the region.

Incidentally, in retaliation to Captain Pipe’s continued alliance with the British, in 1782 Colonel David Williamson went on an expedition to punish the Delawares, couldn’t find any warriors and ended up destroying the Gnadenhutten Mission and killing ninety innocent people, one of the most infamous massacres in North American history.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for White Eyes: White Eyes (c.1730–November 1778), was a leader of the Delaware (Lenape) people in the Ohio Country during the era of the American Revolution. Sometimes known as George White Eyes, his given name was something like Koquethagechton, which was rendered in many spelling variations. White Eyes was a tireless mediator in turbulent times, negotiating the first Indian treaties with the fledgling United States, always working towards his ultimate of goal of establishing a secure Indian territory. His death under mysterious circumstances during the American Revolutionary War may have been an act of murder covered up by United States officials.

Nothing is known about White Eyes's early life. He first enters the historical record near the end of the French and Indian War as a messenger during treaty negotiations. By 1766, he was apparently a tavern keeper and trader in a Delaware town on the Beaver River, a tributary of the Ohio River in present-day western Pennsylvania. This occupation suggests he may have been well suited for interaction between Indians and whites, though he could not read or write, and probably did not speak English—at least not well.
After the French and Indian War, white colonists began settling near the Delaware villages around Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania, and so the Delawares removed to the Muskingum River valley in present-day eastern Ohio. By this time, many Delawares had converted to Christianity and were living in villages run by Moravian missionaries. The missionary towns also moved to the Muskingum, so that the Delaware people, both Christian and non-Christian, could stay together. Though not a Christian himself, White Eyes made certain that the Christian Delawares remained members of the Delaware nation.

White Eyes established his own town, White Eyes's Town, near the Delaware capital of Coshocton. In 1774, White Eyes was named principal chief of the nation by the Delaware Grand Council. In the early 1770s, violence on the frontier between whites and Indians threatened to escalate into open warfare. White Eyes unsuccessfully attempted to prevent what would become Lord Dunmore's War in 1774, fought primarily between Shawnee Indians and Virginia. White Eyes served as a peace emissary between the two armies, helping to arrange the treaty that ended the war.

When the American Revolutionary War erupted soon after Dunmore's War had ended, White Eyes was in the midst of negotiating a royal grant with Lord Dunmore that was intended to secure the Delaware territory in the Ohio Country. Dunmore was forced out of Virginia by American revolutionaries, and so White Eyes had to begin anew with the Americans. In April of 1776, he addressed the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on behalf of the Delawares, and eventually negotiated an alliance with the United States in 1778 at Fort Pitt. This treaty called for the establishment of a Delaware Indian state, with representation in the American Congress, provided that the Congress approved. As it turned out, White Eyes would be dead before the matter proceeded further, and the possibility of a Delaware Indian state died with him.

An article of the treaty called for Delawares to serve as guides for the Americans when they moved through the Ohio Country to strike at their British and Indian enemies to the north (in and around Detroit). Accordingly, in early November of 1778, White Eyes joined an American expedition as a guide and negotiator. Soon after, the Americans reported to the shocked Delawares of Coshocton that White Eyes had contracted smallpox and died during the expedition. After the death of White Eyes, the Delaware alliance with the Americans eventually collapsed.

Years later, George Morgan, Congressional agent and close associate of White Eyes, revealed in a letter to Congress that White Eyes had been "treacherously put to death" by American militiamen, and his murder had been covered up in order to prevent the Delawares from immediately abandoning the United States. No other details of what happened have survived; historians generally accept Morgan's claim that White Eyes had been murdered, though the reasons remain obscure. White Eyes had placed himself in harm's way during Dunmore's War to prevent bloodshed; a similar effort during the Revolution may have cost him his life.

White Eyes was married; his wife was reportedly murdered by white men in 1788. White Eyes's son, George Morgan White Eyes (1770?–1798) was educated at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) at the expense of the American government.


Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (Powhatan). The only First Lady to be titled "Mrs. President," she was indeed the closest the United States ever came to having a woman President. For eighteen crucial months in America’s history, as President Woodrow Wilson lay incapacitated, it was this Algonquin descendant who ran the government from the White House, and was fairly popular as well. When a reporter was able to speak to Mr. Wilson, and said, "We have all been praying for you," the ailing Prez retorted, "Which way?"

(Photo of Edith Galt Wilson) The only President to date to become engaged and marry while in the Oval Office, Mr. Wilson (and his widowed fiancee) was under intense public scrutiny from the start. She made no secret of her documented "Old Virginia" Bolling lineage from the "Red Rolfes," of Pocahontas’ children. She herself was the seventh of eleven children, a 5’9" beauty and inheritor of Galt’s Jewelry store, which she ran until her marriage to Wilson. She then sold it to the employees "at cost."

It was Woodrow Wilson who acknowledged the one and a half million women who entered the workforce during World War I and decided to support women’s suffrage in 1917. Ironic, because he later supported one of America’s greatest working women, Edith Galt Wilson. Her eighteen month "regency" was without major flaws.

Mrs. Wilson died on December 28, 1961, the day of the opening of The Wilson Bridge, which spans the Potomac, and connects her Old Virginia to President Wilson’s Washington. Her former home is now the Wilson Museum in Washington, D.C.

Wubekeniew (Ojibway/Chippewa). Born in 1928 at Red Lake in his grandfather’s log cabin to the people of the bear Dodem, Wubekeniew lost his mother and father at an early age. His grandfather raised him until his death. Now orphans, Wubekeniew and his brother were put in a government boarding school. He was drafted into the Army as soon as he was old enough, and was sent to Germany to fight the Nazis. Wubekeniew was an AIM activist for many years until his death in 1997. Black Thistle Press published a translation of his thoughts called We Have The Right To Exist.


In A Category by Herself


Clara Barton (Wampanoag?). Any native scholar who looks at a full face photo of Clara Barton will see that she is no English woman. Her raven black hair, dark, sloping eyes, broad face and high cheekbones are distinctly native. Her genealogical records show no native blood, but her mother looked quite "native," and her father was an "Indian Fighter" with Mad Anthony Wayne. Her mother’s father was born David Haven, but was adopted at an early age. Could he be the missing link? I’m still looking into this little mystery (with the cooperation of the Clara Barton Museum in Glen Echo, MD).Clara was extremely quiet and shy as a child, and even ran away from school because the others teased her about being "different." Even though she never knew her own people, whoever they were, she felt called by the Creator to be a healer, a traditional role for women in Wampanoag society, a nation that prides itself in its nobility of character, and skillful means in applying it. Clara learned basic First Aid and although she volunteered with the Union, she looked after the wounded on both sides of the Civil War, both Confederate prisoners and Yankee casualties. This in itself suggests Clara was not your average New England society girl.
This completes the first edition of Eagle Song, my informal “Honor Roll” of Algonquin people. If you have any comments, additions, nominees, questions, or corrections, please mail them to Center for Algonquin Culture, P.O. Box 1028, Woodstock, NY 12498, and I will try to incorporate them into the next edition if possible.

Many of the works by authors mentioned on these pages are available through the North American Native Authors Catalog. Write to 2 Middle Grove Road, Greenfield Center, NY 12833, or visit the website at www.nativeauthors.com