Following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 his Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, assumed the Presidency and completed Lincoln’s term. Johnson, who is best known as the first American president to survive impeachment, is generally ranked by historians with James Buchanan and George W. Bush as among the country’s worst presidents. With regard to American … Continued
While the popular image of Plains Indians is that of the horse-mounted warrior and buffalo hunter, the horse as we know it today only came to this continent with the Europeans. It reached the Plains Indians and dramatically changed their ways of life several generations before the Americans invaded the area. It should be … Continued
Since there is going to be a meet up in Glacier Park in June, I thought it might be interesting to do a tour of the park from west to east along today’s traditional tourist trail, commenting on some of the Indian names and heritage along the way. As with many national parks, the names … Continued
There is a common lie, told over and over again by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church– including the previous Pope–that when the Catholic missionaries landed in South America they were met by people eagerly awaiting the Christian faith. According to this lie, the indigenous people, who had no religion from the Catholic viewpoint, were … Continued
While Washington was named for an American President who was not known for his love of Indians, many of the town names in Washington reflect the many different Indian nations which originally inhabited the state. Asotin: this was originally a Nez Perce winter camp site. The Nez Perce called the nearby creek Has-shu-tin which … Continued
The etymology of Oregon begins in 1765 with a petition to the British King regarding Ouragon, the mythical River of the West. According to the petition, Ouragon was the name given by the Indians to this great river. By 1778, the spelling had shifted to Oregon. While the 1765 petition seems to imply that Oregon … Continued
American government policies regarding American Indians, particularly during the nineteenth century, were primarily focused on “civilizing” the Indians. This meant that Indians were to change their language (they were to speak only English), their religion (they were to become Christians, preferably Protestants), their houses, their clothes, their history (they were to embrace European history as … Continued
Long before the arrival of Europeans, the Pacific Ocean provided the Indian Nations of California with an abundance of shellfish: clam, abalone, mussel, olivella, and dentalium. These provided not only food, but the shells were the raw material for beads, jewelry, currency, and fishhooks. Archaeology has found that clamshells – Saxidomus nuttalli and Tivela stultorum … Continued
In American Indian cultures, art is not separate from daily life. Traditionally, the things people used in their everyday life-clothing, tools, housing, containers-were often decorated to enhance their beauty and their spirituality. Prior to the European invasion, the Indian people of the Plateau area-roughly the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascade Mountains in … Continued
The Genoa Industrial Indian School was started in 1884 in a one-room school that had been originally built for the Pawnee before the tribe was removed from Nebraska to Oklahoma. The school had an initial enrollment of 74 students. Over time, the school would grow to have an enrollment of nearly 600 students from 10 … Continued
