Brotherhood of North American Indians

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Brotherhood of North American Indians was an organization founded in Washington, DC in 1911 to be one of the first indigenous associations in the United States to support and preserve Native American cultures. The brotherhood, based in the Bond Building (now the National Historic Site), had a pan-Indian orientation and only accepted Indians as full members . However, non-Indians could become honorary members. The internal office designations took over older titles. So the chairman or president himself was called Great Sachem . He signed countless letters to Congress and courts of law with "The Brotherhood of North American Indians / By Richard C. Adams, Great Sachem".

history

The outstanding head and founder was the above-mentioned Delaware Richard C. Adams († October 4, 1921), who called himself from 1897 for 24 years as the "representative of the Delaware Indians" and represented them in Washington . He brought initiatives in Congress, represented the Delawaren in several lawsuits, for example against the claims of mining companies or in the disputes with the Cherokee . At the same time he wrote poetry, wrote five books and was the keeper of the knowledge of the Delaware. For this purpose he put together a collection of documents comprising several thousand pieces.

He was born on August 23, 1864 in Wyandotte County , Kansas . His father was the three-quarter Delaware Reverend William Adams, who worked as a Baptist priest, his mother Kate Woodfield (or Woodfill, † October 24, 1870) a "white". Adams and his family were forced to move to Cherokee Territory when they were last evicted in 1869 . The family lived there with Alluwe , one of the centers delawarischer political activities in the counties Nowata and Washington in Oklahoma .

Richard Adams' role model was one of his ancestors, Captain White Eyes , who had signed a treaty with the United States in 1778, the aim of which was to unite all the tribes into one state. At that time he was entitled to a representation in Congress. In 1902 Adams was inducted into the Sons of the Revolution . He was self-taught, had only been to school for a few years and had never aimed for a degree. In 1891 he married Carrie F. Meigs, a great-granddaughter of Cherokee chief John Ross . A little later, when he got caught in a bank robbery, he was gunned down. Removal of the bullet was deemed too risky, so it got stuck near the lungs for the rest of his life.

In 1894 he provided an authority with material on the history of the Delaware for the first time. Thereafter, 754 Delawars resided in the Cherokee Nation area and 95 more resided in the Wichita Agency. Of these, 175 were pure Delawars, 95 of them did not speak English; a quarter of the tribe still adhered to the Delaware Big House religion, another 200 belonged to the Delaware Baptist Church. Half the tribe stood apart. When the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan visited the reservation in 1859, Adams' father had given him a great deal of information about the religion and history of the Delawars, which his son was likely to have later available.

The trigger for dealing with the legal situation of the Delawars was probably the dissolution of collective ownership and the break-up as well as the transfer to individual ownership. The Cherokee denied the Delawares the right to the land, so Adams traveled to Washington in the winter of 1896. However, his bill was rejected in Congress .

Together with John Bullette, a relative, he was to represent his claims for the tribe. This was due to the fact that the Delawaren had no chief since 1894, after the death of Chief Charles Journeycake. Two factions each elected a new chief, but they could not agree. The Indian agent then simply dissolved the institution and replaced the chief with a five-person business committee . Its members were selected by the Ministry of the Interior.

Adams used his time in Washington to compile an initial source base for his legal arguments. For this purpose he had 16,000 pages of files that he had picked out in search of entries that might be of importance for the Delawaren, transferred by typewriter and summarized in the form of 32 volumes in book form for 7,000 dollars. This not only gave him an overview of legal processes and processes, but also of the history of his people up to around 1800.

In 1904, the two representatives of the Delawaren in Washington reached that until the dispute with the Cherokee was resolved, 157,600 acres of land remained in their hands and excluded from the division. Adams' brother Horace made a huge list of each land claim. This included the land owned by the ancestors in 1867, and so the 1898 roll was born . It listed the 212 heirs who were still alive, but also the owners of the land that had already been passed on to descendants. However, the Cherokee denied the Delawaren precisely this right to inherit land. On February 23, 1904, the Supreme Court ruled against the Delawars. The owners who were still living received the usual 160 acres per family, the rest were left empty-handed. However, all the upgrades and improvements that had been made to the land could be sold. Adams had been so certain he would win the case that he had bought such improvements for $ 10,000 and leased land to explorers.

In 1912, Adams demanded, in accordance with a treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the United States, signed in November 1785 and ratified in 1835, that his people could send a representative to Congress . He also derived from it the right to be able to reject any resolution of the Congress that did not comply with the treaties after a period of 60 days. In addition, he demanded ten Indian rights and derived a legislative agenda from them. Indian affairs should come into Indian hands and no longer be administered by the government. An advisory board should be set up for this purpose. Complete freedom of movement without any permission from Indian agents should also be granted to them, employee positions for the administration of Indian affairs should primarily be filled with Indians. At last they should have the opportunity to defend their lives, their freedom and their property in American courts. Although he assumed that 100 years of guardianship by the authorities made the possibilities of self-administration more difficult, there must be something wrong with the entire alleged civilization concept of the government.

Chieftain Mason of the Quinault , who had attended one of the meetings, was so inspired by her that he wanted to dedicate his life to the goals of the Brotherhood. He wrote circulars and initiated tribal gatherings in the Northwest, Clallam, and Whatcom Counties . Adams also encouraged the Shoshone to sue the US.

On January 22, 1912, Adams proposed that a museum be built in the capital to represent the cultures of all Indians. It took more than three quarters of a century for this vision to materialize.

In recent years, Adams has been increasingly tormented by the bullet that had stuck in his body since the bank robbery decades ago. A few minutes before his death, he was still dictating the final memos. After Adam's death, the brotherhood disbanded and his collection of documents went to various university libraries. His works were first mentioned in a publication in 1972. In 1995, John Bierhorst published summaries of Adams' Delaware legends.

The brief history of the Delaware merchandise was published in 1995 under the title The Delaware Indians. A Brief History reprinted. A year later, the University of Kansas Libraries and the Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma arranged for the 21 volumes of Adams' government and legal records to be microfilmed . The renewed interest in the Indians as historical subjects who began to defend themselves within the framework of the overarching society ensured that his 1905 work, Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing , was reprinted in 1997.

swell

literature

  • Richard C. Adams: Constitution of the Brotherhood of North American Indians, National Organization , 1911.
  • Steven J. Crum: Almost Invisible: The Brotherhood of North American Indians (1911) and the League of North American Indians (1935) , in: Wicazo Sa Review 21.1 (2006) 43-59.
  • Deborah Nichols (Ed.): Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing. Richard C. Adams , Syracuse University Press 1997.

Remarks

  1. ^ Hazel W. Hertzberg: The Search for an American Indian Identity. Modern Pan-Indian Movements , Syracuse University Press, 1971, p. 103.
  2. ↑ Todd Leahy, Raymond Wilson: The A to Z of Native American Movements , Lanham, Maryland 2008, p. 32.
  3. ↑ Deborah Nichols (Ed.): Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing. Richard C. Adams , Syracuse University Press 1997, p. Xliii.
  4. ↑ Published in the Extra Census Bulletin , US Census Office 1894, 44-50.
  5. ↑ Peter Mancall, Benjamin Heber Johnson: Making of the American West: People and Perspectives , Santa Barbara 2007, p 38f.
  6. ↑ Alexandra Harmon: Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities Around Puget Sound , University of California Press 1998, p. 179.
  7. ↑ Steven James Crum: The Road on which we came , University of Utah Press, 1994, p. 81.
  8. ↑ Clinton Alfred Weslager: The Delaware Indians. A History , 1972; again in Ders .: The Delaware Indian Westward Migration , 1978.
  9. ^ John Bierhorst: Mythology of the Lenape. Guide and Texts .
  10. ↑ Deborah Nichols (Ed.): Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing. Richard C. Adams , Syracuse University Press 1997, p. Xliii.