Marie Wilcox Tries to Save the Wukchumni Language

The process of saving or reviving a language is a lot of work. And the work is often tedious. Every so often I become aware of a video that is relevant to saving or re-creating Native languages, but few of them ever make it into my blog, they just don't have enough entertainment value.

However, we can thank Emmanuel Vaughn-Lee of the New York Times for making a remarkable 9 1/2-minute video about Marie Wilcox and her family.

Marie Wilcox is a Yokuts Tribe Native from central California.

Marie spoke the Wukchumni language as a child and decades later began writing Wukchumni words on whatever paper she could find. Later she collected the papers and entered them into a computer. She has worked hard enough to give her people a chance to keep Wukchumni alive.

The title of the video is Who Speaks Wukchumni?

 



 
 

Indian Country Today ran an article summarizing the video. Please don't use the article as an excuse not to watch the video.

Some Native Nicknames and Logos must go

An NFL referee that retired after last season has just revealed that he asked not to officiate at Washington Redskins games in 2006 because he understood that the team's nickname was offensive to many Native Americans. The NFL honored his request. The former ref, Mike Carey, was interviewed by Keith Olbermann on ESPN.

[caption id="attachment_7664" align="alignright" width="294"] Some nicknames and images are more offensive than others.[/caption]

Earlier this year, the NFL franchise based in Washington had six trademarks cancelled because, in the words of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, they were "disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered." (I think the best treatment of this issue in the media was in the New Yorker Magazine.) Despite losing their trademarks, however, the team will still be allowed to use their disrespectful nickname while the ruling is appealed, a process that will probably last a number of years.

In 2012, residents of North Dakota voted to scrap their University's long-held nickname and the mascot that went with it. The team formerly known as "the Fighting Sioux," currently has no nickname and no mascot, according Wikipedia. What happened in North Dakota prompted ESPN columnist Paul Lukas to write "Time to rethink Native American imagery."

I've said many times that Indians don't agree on everything. They are not just Indians, of course, they are individuals. What may be offensive to one Indian isn't always offensive to another. But, in a country with millions of Native Americans, even if only a significant minority of them are offended by a particular nickname, mascot, or image, it still adds up to too many people being hurt.

While few people want a world with language police coercing us into political correctness, and most people recognize the importance of "not taking themselves too seriously," those facts still leave us with plenty of room to condemn many - but not all - nicknames and images associated with Natives.

The argument some make that sports team nicknames were meant to "honor" Natives usually doesn't pass the smell test. But there are tribes, such as the Seminoles, who have made agreements with athletic departments, essentially approving that their names and other associations can be used by the teams. There may be other exceptions where something related to Native culture or history is used with enough respect to grace athletes uniforms. Certainly there are some nicknames and images that are more offensive than others.

Probably the best general article about this topic that I've read is "A Century of Racist Sports Team Names" by Matt Connolly and Ian Gordon (originally published in Mother Jones).

What do you think?

 

Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher

I frequently feature books in my blogposts, but seldom actually recommend them. However, here is a book that I am recommending: Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher should be purchased by all the middle school libraries in Wisconsin. Although the focus is on Electa Quinney, the author does a good job of giving readers the context of the woman's life, which is a remarkable stage. The reality that Native nations like the Stockbridge Mohicans fought amongst themselves is not lost on the author, Karyn Saemann. At the same time, harsh realities like the Indian Removal Act are not sugar-coated. And, of much importance to historians of Native Christianity like myself, religion was not scrubbed out of this portrait. The negative stereotype of missionaries is not reinforced. (Electa Quinney's first husband, Daniel Adams, was a Native preacher.)

Frontier America in the 1800's is broken down into simple enough language for middle schoolers to be able to comprehend Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher. Saemann also encourages students to form their own viewpoints of what Electa Quinney may have thought and felt. I really appreciate how the author admitted up front that history is like a puzzle and there are missing pieces. It appears that most of the letters that Electa wrote were not preserved for posterity. (The discovery of Electa's son's remarkable collection of papers in an old trunk in 1932 was rightfully featured in the book.)

The quality of the body of the book makes it worth reading not only for schoolchildren but also adults interested in American history. People like me will be disappointed that the book doesn't have notes or a bibliography that can be used to track down the sources used by the author, but remember, the book was not written for adult scholars.

Factual errors? I think that every book has a few. Let me speak to that.
On pages 10-11, the author repeats the error made by others that John W. Quinney and Austin E. Quinney were brothers. According to the tribe's current enrollment officer, the two men were cousins.
On page 10, the author acknowledges "we can't say for sure who Electa's father was." Then she guesses that Electa probably had the same father as John W. Quinney. (We already know that John W. Quinney and Electa had the same mother.) In minutes of an Indian Party meeting contained in the John C. Adams Papers, I found that John P. Quinney objected to Electa Quinney's membership in the Indian Party because, as John P. put it, "her father was not an Indian."
In a post I wrote before Saemann's book was published, I addressed the question of whether or not Electa Quinney was the first public school teacher in Wisconsin. To summarize that post, Electa Quinney - contrary to what some books say - did not teach school at Statesburg in 1828. Augustus T. Ambler, who Saemann acknowledges on page 41, did teach the Stockbridge school at Statesburg in that year and then, as Saemann notes, Electa Quinney took over for Ambler. So how is E. Quinney still the Wisconsin's first public schoolteacher? Saemann's view is that Augustus T. Ambler's school was private, while Electa Quinney's school was public. Of course, she knows it was the same students being taught in the same building. On pages 38-39 she has a section where she explains the difference between public and private schools - she says it is about where the money comes from. I suppose that is a legitimate definition, but I'm not convinced that the school that was taught by Ambler one term and by Quinney the next was funded by two different sources of money in those two terms. Saemann asserts that public schools are supported by taxes, but the 1794 Treaty of Canadaigua was supposed to support a tribal school. Without Electa Quinney being the first public schoolteacher in Wisconsin, you still have an important biography and a significant role model.

In conclusion, Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher is a good read. While the focus and the intended audiences are different, the subject matter of this book may overlap as much with my own Proud and Determined, as any other book. I recommend that you read both.

The Mormons and the Strangites of Beaver Island

I addressed the beginnings of Mormonism in a previous post.

 

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, was also the mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois (and, according to some, he was even a candidate for President of the US) when he was attacked and killed by an angry mob. He was imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois at the time, but bullets from the mob's firearms reached him. That, by itself, could be the topic of a blogpost, but instead, it is only the opening hook.

After Joseph Smith died, there was a struggle for power between Brigham Young, Sidney Rigdon, and James Strang. All three men (and later a fourth, Joseph Smith III) felt they were entitled to lead the Mormon church. Most Americans don't realize that not all of Joseph Smith's followers got behind Brigham Young and headed west for Salt Lake City. Rigdon and Strang and later Joseph Smith III each had their own followers and their own churches.

 

The Strangites, followers of James Strang, established their community on Beaver Island, in the northern part of Lake Michigan.

[caption id="attachment_7617" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Thanks to Citynoise for making this graphic available via Wikimedia commons:[/caption]

 

James Strang had only been a Mormon for about a year when he claimed to be the rightful leader of the church. He'd actually once declared himself "the perfect atheist"(Gilbert in Smithsonian, August, 1995, page 86). So it would not be unfair to look at Strang's career cynically. He was more than ambitious, he was hungry for power.

 

It was in 1843 that the young James Strang and his new wife, Mary, settled near Burlington, Wisconsin, an area close enough to Illinois to have Mormon settlers at that time. As Bil Gilbert points out in his Smithsonian article, Strang probably looked upon the earnest and zealous Mormons as potential followers. A biography written by James Strang's own grandson, imagines that Stang (the grandfather), when he came upon the credulous Mormons felt

like a prospector who has finally struck it rich[. He] knew that he had found his listening audience.

While Joseph Smith started Mormonism by claiming to have discovered gold plates with divine revelation written in "Egyptian Hieroglyphics," James Strang claimed to have found the same kind of revelation written on brass plates that he found in southern Wisconsin. Strang added to his remnant of Mormons by active recruiting.

That is how it began. The things that actually happened on Beaver Island during the short time that it was James Strang's kingdom are covered well in Bil Gilbert's 1995 article in Smithsonian Magazine.

The "teaser" for Smithsonian's website reads

About 145 years ago, a former attorney and future polygamist named James Strang had himself crowned the King of Beaver Island, Michigan. His reign was short and ended violently but while he ruled he did so the old-fashioned way: by divine right as the ultimate lawgiver, political authority and arbiter of morals.

Like Joseph Smith before him, you might say that James Strang had bitten off more than any American can safely chew.

Near the end of Gilbert's article he tells us that Strang's devoted followers scattered after his death.

During the next several weeks, hundreds of destitute Strangites were deposited haphazardly on the docks of Chicago, Detroit, Racine, and Green Bay.... Without [Strang] his flock was incapable of taking determined action.

Nevertheless, Strang's "original" Church of Latter-Day Saints still exists to this day. They have their own website, in which the Book of the Law of the Lord... first translated from the brass plates onto paper, is now displayed in digital format:


Checkout the Strangites website.

Daniel Whitney and Daniel M. Whitney

[caption id="attachment_7594" align="aligncenter" width="423"] Daniel Whitney (1795-1862). Image credit: FC Pierce (Descendants of John Whitney (genealogy)) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons[/caption]Genealogists and historians of all stripes have found out the hard way that two people with the same name (or roughly the same name) can cause problems in their research. When you come upon a name in a document there is rarely any indication that the name belongs to more than one possible person. You might be reading about two different people and not realize it. So it has been with Daniel Whitney and his nephew Daniel M. Whitney. (And by the way, Daniel also had a son named Daniel, but the son is of no importance to us here.)

Both Daniel Whitney and Daniel M. Whitney were important actors in the lives of the Stockbridge Mohicans. The Daniel that was born in 1795 was, by anybody's standards, an ambitious, enterprising captain of industry. It probably would be no exaggeration to say that Daniel Whitney brought capitalism to present-day Wisconsin. What we now call Wisconsin and northeast Minnesota were part of the Michigan Territory in 1820, which was when Daniel Whitney started supplying Green Bay residents and small-time traders with the things they needed. Prior to that time, the so-called "factory system" was in place. In other words, there were "factors" at forts who represented the United States and supplied Indians and "frontiersmen" with goods at a regulated price. You might call it benign patriarchy; it was the federal government's way of protecting the Indians and frontiersmen from being cheated by unscrupulous traders.

Whitney (the uncle) started off his career by embarking on trade expeditions, including one trip from what is now Minneapolis to Detroit in which he hauled goods on a toboggan. The successful trade expeditions led to the establishment of general stores, one of them being at Statesburg, the first settlement of the Stockbridge Mohicans in present-day Wisconsin (the Stockbridges began settling at Statesburg in 1822, twenty-six years before Wisconsin became a state).

Daniel M. Whitney was born in New York State in 1815. He came west to Green Bay in 1833, and was employed by his uncle for many years, in a number of capacities, but most notably, Daniel M. ran the general store at Statesburg and moved with the Stockbridge Mohicans to their settlement on the eastern shores of Lake Winnebago (aka Stockbridge, Wisconsin).

When an 1843 act of Congress made the Stockbridges citizens, the land that had once belonged to the whole tribe was allotted into private parcels. And the Indians began selling their land. Daniel Whitney (the uncle) was the biggest buyer of Stockbridge land between February 1844 and February 1846. According to historian Alice E. Smith, he acquired "nearly 2,500 acres, mostly in 60-acre tracts"(Wisconsin Magazine of History, March, 1941, page 294).

The interaction between the Whitneys and the Stockbridges, I suspect, is a complicated one. Within a politically correct mindset, it would be difficult to think of Daniel Whitney (the uncle) as a positive factor in the lives of the Stockbridge Indians. However, he is said to have employed a lot of them in his business ventures. Meanwhile, Daniel M. Whitney, the storekeeper, was said to be a great friend to the Indians - at least in his obituary where people always say good things about you.

Clearly the topic of the Whitneys and the Stockbridge Indians has great potential for more historical research.