"The greatest drama in Indian life": Experiments in native American identity and resistance at the Haskell Institute homecoming of 1926

Western Historical Quarterly

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 429-450

  Rader, Benjamin G ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61149416423     PISSN: 00433810     EISSN: 19398603     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/25443053     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Kansas City (KS) Journal, 29 October 1926, Haskell Institute Clippings, Vol. 1, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, KS.
2. Newspapers cited from this large and invaluable clipping file of Kansas newspapers are hereafter referred to as HIC. Apart from extensive contemporary newspaper reports, the most complete description of the homecoming is a first-hand account by Frank W. McDonald, John Levi of Haskell (Lawrence, KS, 1972).
3. John Bloom, "'There is Madness in the Air': The 1926 Haskell Homecoming and Popular Representations of Sports in Federal Indian Boarding Schools," in Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture, ed. S. Elizabeth Bird (Boulder, CO, 1996), 97-110
4. and John Bloom, To Show What an Indian Can Do: Sports at Native American Boarding Schools (Minneapolis, 2000), 37-50, provide an interpretation mainly from the standpoint of how whites - not Native Americans - may have understood the celebration.
5. th Anniversary Celebration Committee, Haskell Institute U.S.A. 1884-1959 (Lawrence, KS, n.d.), 77.
6. Harlan Fiske, Chief Indian Inspector, asserted that 1,600 Indians officially registered for the homecoming but that it was "probable that a good many came who did not register." Harlan F. Fiske to Charles H. Burke, 11 November 1926, CCF 1907-1930, Haskell 2380-1924-750, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, DC. (Hereafter NARA.)
7. As quoted in Lawrence (KS) Journal-Herald, 24 November 1992.
8. See also Muskogee (OK) Daily Phoenix, 31 October 1926.
9. My starting point for much of this essay is anthropologist Victor Turner's statement that "man is a self-performing animal - his performances are, in a way, reflexive, in performing he reveals himself to himself. This can be in two ways: the actor may come to know himself better through acting or enactment; or one set of human beings may come to know themselves better through observing and/or participating in performances generated and presented by another set of human beings." Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York, 1986), 81.
10. Hence, performances, such at those at Haskell by either Native Americans or Euro-Americans, may be seen, among other ways, as texts that explicate quests for social identity or solidarity, communicate stories, reflect social hierarchy, legitimate or reinforce authority, and challenge authority. Both the theoretical and historical literature on performance, festivals, and ritual is immense. For the theoretical, see also Allesandro Falassi, "Festival: Definition and Morphology," in Time Out of Time: Essays on Festival, ed. Falassi (Albuquerque, 1987), 1-10
11. and Mikhail Bahkitin's classic, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, MA, 1968). See also notes 4 and 5 following.
12. Clyde Ellis, "'We Don't Want Your Rations, We Want This Dance': The Changing Use of Song and Dance on the Southern Plains," Western Historical Quarterly 30 (Summer 1999): 135.
13. Also see Clyde Ellis, A Dancing People: Powwow Culture on the Southern Plains (Lawrence, KS, 2003);
14. William C. Meadows, Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche Military Societies: Enduring Veterans, 1800 to the Present (Austin, TX, 1999);
15. Dennis Zotig, Moving History: The Evolution of the Powwow (Oklahoma City, OK, 1991);
16. Gloria A. Young, "Powwow Power: Perspectives on Historic and Contemporary Intertribalism" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1981);
17. Benjamin R. Kracht, "Kiowa Powwows: Continuity in Ritual Practice," American Indian Quarterly 18 (Summer 1994): 321-48;
18. Mark Mattern, "The Powwow as a Public Arena for Negotiating Unity and Diversity in American Indian Life," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 20, no. 4 (1996): 183-201;
19. and Daniel J. Gelo, "Powwow Patter: Indian Emcee Discourse on Power and Identity," Journal of American Folklore 112 (Winter 1999): 40-57.
20. For resistance of subordinate peoples at public gatherings in other societies and times, see Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1997);
21. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978);
22. Richard D.E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca, NY, 1997);
23. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French, eds., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (Wilmington, DE, 1994);
24. and Sam Kinser, Carnival, American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile (Chicago, 1990).
25. Lawrence Journal-Herald, 24 November 1992.
26. Referring to the same speech, the Topeka Capital, 31 October 1926, HIC, asserted that Jacobs "assured Secretary [Hubert] Work of the interior department, and other white fathers that the new generation of Indians will ever strive to be useful Americans tomorrow."
27. For football at Haskell, see (apart from McDonald, John Levi of Haskell) Raymond Schmidt, "Lords of the Prairie: Haskell Indian School Football, 1919-1930," Journal of Sport History 28 (Fall 2001): 403-26
28. and Keith A. Sculle, "'The New Carlisle of the West': Haskell Institute and Big-Time Sports, 1920-1932," Kansas History 17 (Autumn 1994): 192-208.
29. Via an examination of the contemporary press reports, Michael Oriard, King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly & the Daily Press (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 285-91, offers a provocative interpretation of how whites understood the Haskell football team.
30. For Native Americans and sports, see also David Wallace Adams, "More Than a Game: The Carlisle Indians Take to the Gridiron, 1893-1917," Western Historical Quarterly 32 (Spring 2001): 25-53
31. and Philip Deloria, "'I Am of the Body': Thoughts on My Grandfather, Culture, and Sports," South Atlantic Quarterly 95 (Spring 1996): 321-38.
32. As quoted in McDonald, John Levi of Haskell, 35, 36.
33. Indian Leader 21 (December 1923): 7.
34. As quoted in Myriam Vuckovic, "'Onward Ever, Backward Never': Student Life and Students' Lives at Haskell Institute, 1884-1920s" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1996), 310.
35. "Football with a Haskell War Whoop," Kansas City (Missouri) Star Magazine, 20 September 1970.
36. As quoted in McDonald, John Levi of Haskell, 41-2.
37. Indeed, neither he nor anyone else, insofar as I can determine, gave any public account of the game until 1970. See "Football with a Haskell War Whoop."
38. Frank W. McDonald, "Unusual Background for Beer Distributor," unpublished manuscript, 1976, 10, in the possession of Clifford McDonald, Lawrence, KS. Initially, according to Frank McDonald, J. George Wright, the superintendent of the Osage Agency, opposed the fund-raising campaign, but changed his mind after the intervention of Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas.
39. The total stadium contributions are according to McDonald, John Levi of Haskell, 46. However, a typescript document in the National Archives entitled "The Haskell Stadium: Schedule of Contributions Received" reveals a total contribution of $97,229.09. See CFF 1907-1930, Haskell-2380-1924, RG 75, NARA. From other sources, it appears that this document does not include all contributions. For example, the "Official Program" reports $185,000, of which "every dollar came from Indians," while "The History Behind the Haskell Arch and Stadium," apparently published in 2000, and located in the Haskell archives puts the total cost of the arch and stadium at $250,000. It is also noteworthy that some of the money came from the "restricted funds" of the Five Civilized Tribes residing in Oklahoma. Contributions from these funds had to be approved by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
40. See, for example, Charles H. Burke to Charles L. Ellis, 8 February 1927, CCF 1907-1930, Haskell-2380-1924-750, RG 75, NARA.
41. Ellis, A Dancing People, 14.
42. As quoted in Keith A. Sculle, "Roadside Business: Frank W. McDonald and the Origins of 'Indian Village,'" Kansas History 14 (Spring 1991): 17.
43. See also Oriard, King Football, 286. Oriard concludes, in a survey of white press coverage of Haskell's games, that more emphasis was given to "the encounter with the exotic" than to the football contests per se.
44. In his formulation of the morphology of festival,' Falassi observes that "ritual food is . . . a means to communicate with gods and ancestors. . . ." See Falassi, "Festival," 4.
45. Kansas City Times, 27 October 1926, HIC.
46. Kansas City Star, 27 October 1926.
47. See also Hollis Stabler, interview by Victoria Smith and Benjamin Rader, 11 November 2002 (audiotape in possession of Victoria Smith). (Hereafter Hollis Stabler interview).
48. Hollis Stabler interview.
49. Quoted in Topeka Journal, 29 October 1926, HIC. Other newspapers offer slightly different versions of the same incident.
50. Friedrich Nietzsche observed in 1887 that "[t]he lordly right of giving names extends so far that one should allow oneself to conceive the origin of language itself as an expression of power on the part of the rulers: they say 'this is this and this,' they seal every thing and event with a sound and, as it were, take possession of it." Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1969), 26. A similar point is at the heart of much of the postmodernist analysis of language.
51. See, for example, the discussion in Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York, 1994), 214-7.
52. Irene Stewart, A Voice in Her Tribe: A Navajo Woman's Own Story, ed. Doris Ostrander Dawdy (Socorro, NM, 1980), 29-30.
53. From Stewart's recollection, it is not clear that Haskell even had a dress code, but Esther Burnett Home in Home and Sally McBeth, Essie's Story: The Life and Legacy of a Shoshone Teacher (Lincoln, NE, 1998), 37, provides a specific description of the school's dress requirements. Having more money and when permitted by school authorities, the girls from the Osage tribe, both Home and Stewart reported, dressed more fashionably than the other female students.
54. For an insightful discussion of how Indian students "contested" the clothing requirements of the boarding schools, see K. Tsianina Lomawaima, "Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools: The Power of Authority over Mind and Body," American Ethnologist 21 (May 1993): 227-40.
55. Topeka Capital, 31 and 28 October 1926, HIC.
56. Literary Digest (New York City), 27 November 1926, 63.
57. See also Stewart, Voice in Her Tribe, 29-30.
58. Literary Digest, 27 November 1926, 64.
59. "People who are part of orally centered cultures," observes Sam Kinser, "construct their lives and their cultural activity with interchangeable parts, parts which one can make do in many different situations. Since resources are so limited, everything must serve six purposes." Kinser, Carnival, 70-1.
60. Philip J. Deloria, in Playing Indian (New Haven, CT, 1998), 184, makes a similar point when discussing whites "playing" at being Indians.
61. Mike McAndrew, "Buffalo Dollar Reopens Mystery," http://www.syracuse.com/newstories/20011067_rpfcoij.html, 3. My thanks to Roger Blomquist for providing me with the results of his research on the origins of the buffalo head nickel. At Glacier National Park, Two Guns White Calf sold visitors an autographed picture of himself, but I found no evidence that he did so at the Haskell celebration.
62. In the 1920s the Great Northern Railroad hired Blackfeet families to camp outside of the East Glacier and Many Glacier lodges in Glacier National Park where they greeted and entertained incoming tourists. Indian-costumed, chauffeur-driven busses also provided tours to the nearby Blackfoot village of Browning, Montana. William E. Farr, The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882-1945: A Photographic History of Cultural Survival (Seattle, 1984), 196-7.
63. On Indians performing as Indians there is now a large body of scholarly literature. See, for example, Vine Deloria, Jr., "The Indians," in Buffalo Bill and the Wild West, ed. Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY, 1981), 45-56;
64. L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of the American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque, NM, 1996);
65. Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York, 2000).
66. New York Times, 3 November 1926, 22.
67. Quote from Leon Boutwell, a player on Jim Thorpe's all-Indian team that played in the National Football League in 1922. See Bulldogs on Sunday (Canton, OH, n.d.), 20-1 (author unknown).
68. For a careful study of mockery as a form of resistance to outsiders by Native Americans, see Keith Basso, Portraits of "The Whiteman": Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache (Cambridge, MA, 1979).
69. James M. Pyle to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 6 November 1926, CCF 1907-1930, Haskell 2380-1924-750, RG 75, NARA
70. and Topeka Capital, 31 October 1926, HIC.
71. I found only one newspaper report of drunkenness. "A chief who arrived today slightly ebrious [sic] was ingloriously ushered to a back-row tepee until he was more presentable." Topeka Capital, 28 October 1926, HIC. The chief may have been Bacon Rind. Hollis Stabler does not remember any drinking at the powwow but suspects that there was some. Hollis Stabler interview.
72. Kansas City Journal, 29 October 1926
73. For similar behavior by another oppressed group - Africans - at cricket matches in the West Indies, see Burton, Afro-Creole, 183.
74. Harry H. Treat to Charles Burke, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 23 October 1926, CCF 1907-1930, Haskell-2380-1924-750, RG 75, NARA.
75. For other objections, see E.D. Mossman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 14 September 1926, ibid.;
76. Kansas City Post, 29 October 1926, HIC.
77. and Frank Turley, "Ponca Fair and Powwow," American Indian Tradition 7, no. 5 (1961): 180.
78. Young, "Powwow Power," 270.