Υποσχέσεις φούλφιλντ

The Long Walk

My dear wife, this is a terrible place; it is intended to make it the final home of all the Indians in this country; there are about fifteen hundred here now,-- Navajos and Apaches, and as many more are expected here during the next three months; there are five small companies, including mine, of soldiers here, and it requires our constant attention to took out for them, As fast as any Indians are taken in any part of the country, they are sent here. The Rio Pecos is a little stream winding through an immense plain, and the water is terrible, and it is all that can be had within 50 miles; it is full of alkali and operates on a person like castor oil,-- take the water, heat it a little, and the more you wash yourself with common soap, the dirtier you will get. We are one and all looking very anxiously for the 16th of August, when we will be allowed to go to our homes. Captain Cremony is here with his company; he is in very good health.

Letter from Lieut. George Pettis

National Anthropological Archives at National Museum of Natural History

White Buffalo Head pictographic letter to Minimic, ca. 1877
From White Buffalo Head and family to his father, Minimic, then imprisoned at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. The letter, which spans two sheets of paper, is annotated with explanations provided by Richard H. Pratt. Shows White Buffalo, his father Minimic, members of Minimic's family and other Cheyennes. Also included is a map showing the North Canadian River and tributaries and neighboring trails, camps (identified by chief's name), the Cheyenne and Arapaho agency, fields identified by owners, etc. A legend, and a note, in the hand of Richard H. Pratt identifies elements of the drawing and its provenance. One leaf of paper has letterhead of Cheyenne and Arapaho, etc.

Native American History and Cultures

Wohaw Between Two Worlds

Wohaw, c.1876-77

(Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society)

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Plains Indians were defeated. Their traditional ways of life were shattered. Many warriors such as Wohaw, the Kiowa artist who drew this self portrait, were imprisoned. The Plains Indians found themselves unable to live as they had in the past, and at the same time unable to live as the white men did. In this ledger drawing,Wohaw portrays himself between the world of his past and the world that was to become his future. Beneath the sun, the moon, and the morning star, all powerful celestial beings in Kiowa thought, he offers the sacred pipe both to the buffalo (sacred animal of his people's past) and tentatively, it seems, to the beef cow (meat resource of his people's future). Beside the buffalo is a plains tipi with the lodge poles protruding from the top. To Wohaw's other side, paralleling the symbolism of the tipi as the traditional home of Wohaw's people, we see a farm house in the distance, complete with a tilled field. He has drawn the sort of home the white man has in mind for him. Both the buffalo and the bull breathe power toward Wohaw (whose Kiowa name means "beef cow."). An empty sky hangs over the future the white man has planed for this Kiowa man. Wohaw has given us one of the great images of the American Indian at the end of the 1800's. At this time all Indians found themselves in a social and psychological place that was neither their own world nor fully the white man's world. In this drawing we find Wohaw in a liminal place, honoring the values of his past and at the same time attempting to make peace with with his inevitible future. A foot in each world, he was at home in neither.

Pictures of Indians in the United States

Little girls praying beside their beds, Phoenix Indian School, Arizona.
Photographed by Messinger, June 1900.


Uinta Ute warrior and his bride on horseback, northwest Utah. Photographed by John K. Hillers, 1874.