Quapaw
The Quapaw are a North American Indian tribe from the Dhegiha branch of the Sioux language family . The traditional residential area of the Quapaw was in what is now the US state of Arkansas west of the Mississippi . The tribe was federally recognized under the name Quapaw Tribe of Indians and the majority of its members live in a 53 km² tribal area in Ottawa County in Oklahoma (Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area OTSA).
residential area
Like the other members of this subgroup, the Kansa , Omaha , Osage and Ponca , the Quapaw migrated westward from the Atlantic coast , through the Ohio Valley , further down the Mississippi River into what is now Arkansas , and expelled the tunic and Illinois that lived there . They settled in the fertile area where the Arkansas River flows into the Mississippi and founded four villages at the mouth of the Arkansas. The majority of the tribe members now live in northeast Oklahoma .
Language and culture
Linguistically, the Quapaw are assigned to the Dhegiha branch of the Sioux language family . The language, which is no longer spoken today, was scientifically examined and documented by the linguists James Owen Dorsey and Robert Rankin. There are recent attempts to revive the Quapaw language as well as the closely related idioms of Kansa, Osage, Omaha and Ponca. For this purpose, a language program and suitable learning techniques are developed.
Like the Osage closely related to them, the Quapaw had a system of clans and ceremonies with intricate rituals . Each quapaw belonged to one of two moieties that embodied heaven and earth. The tribe was divided into twenty-one clans, and each clan consisted of several families related by the male line. In contrast to many southern tribes, the Quapaw were organized in a patrilineal manner, which means that some or all of the resources were passed on from the father to his sons. A Quapaw couldn't marry a woman from his own moiety.
The Quapaw lived mainly from agriculture and their culture was considered to be more advanced than that of the northern tribes. They built Maisiere, wild turkeys and waterfowl were hunted together.
In the warm months of the year, Quapaw women worked bare-chested or wore deerskin shirts. Married women wore their hair loose, while unmarried girls wore braids that were decorated with ribbons and rolled up behind both ears. Men were undressed or wore loincloths in the summer. In winter, leggings, moccasins and coat-like fur capes were worn by both sexes.
Their villages were protected by palisades and the public buildings consisted of interlocking tree trunks and roofs made of tree bark. They were often located on artificial elevations, the so-called mounds , to protect against frequent flooding. The normal houses were rectangular and large enough to accommodate several families.
The Quapaw were known to be excellent potters . Their dead were usually buried in the ground, but sometimes they were leaned against a stake in a sitting position and then covered with earth. Many Quapaws converted to the peyote religion introduced by a caddo named John Wilson . The peyote religion also contains Christian rituals and symbols and later came to be known as the Native American Church .
history
When Hernando de Soto met the Quapaw in 1541, he referred to them as Capaha or Pacaha . Their main town was heavily fortified, surrounded by palisades and a deep moat. It was between the Mississippi and a lake west of Arkansas, probably in what is now Phillips County. They had their next contact with white people about 130 years later, when the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette made his famous trip down the Mississippi and named it Akansea . In 1682 Robert Cavelier de La Salle visited the Quapaw, made them his allies, and formally took their land for France .
Like many other tribes, the Quapaw suffered a severe population decline from diseases introduced by Europeans. In 1699 they were hit by an epidemic of smallpox , which most of the tribe did not survive. In a period of only 80 years, the Quapaw population was reduced from 5000 to about 700 members. Even today there aren't as many Quapaws as there were in the early 17th century.
After England's victory over France in the seven-year French-Indian War , France lost the land west of the Mississippi to the Spanish in 1762 . The Spanish and English, like the French before, recognized that the Quapaw were important allies. The British tried successfully to win the Quapaw's favor with gifts and high-quality commercial goods. In 1784 the traditional enmity between Quapaw and Chickasaw ended .
In 1801, control of the area in which the Quapaw lived changed again to the French under Napoleon . But only two years later his dream of an American empire ended and he sold Louisiana to the United States under President Thomas Jefferson . The Quapaw, too, had their Trail of Tears when they were relocated to the Caddo Reservation along the Red River in northwestern Louisiana in January 1826 .
In 1834 the Quapaws were forced to leave their Arkansas land and move to northeast Indian territory. Your neighbors were now the Shawnee , Seneca and Cayuga . The twentieth century began very promisingly for the Quapaws, with lead and zinc found in abundance on their land and some Quapaw prosperous.
Current situation
In 1919, large deposits of lead and zinc were discovered in the Quapaw area. The mining of heavy metals flourished here until the 1970s, leaving a 100 km² ecological disaster area designated by the US authorities, known as the Tar Creek Superfund Site . The main town of Picher was abandoned due to heavy metal pollution and around 1,000 residents were resettled. Around 16,000 people worked in the mines here during the Second World War . Picher is the subject of an episode in the television series Future Without People .
Most Quapaws live in Ottawa County with the main town Quapaw (near Picher) in northeastern Oklahoma. The tribe is ruled by a seven-member tribal council, which is composed of a chairman, a deputy, a treasurer and four other council members. The members of the tribal council are elected every year in July. According to the US census from 2000, 2,183 tribesmen were counted.
Known Quapaw
- Louis W. Ballard (composer)
See also
literature
- Raymond J. DeMallie (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 13 Plains, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 2001, ISBN 0-16-050400-7 .
Web links
- Homepage of the Quapaw
- Quapaw , Oklahoma Historical Society: Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
- The Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma and The Tar Creek Project , EPA
- Quapaw Indian Tribe History , Access Genealogy
- Tar Creek , Tar Creek documentary website
Individual evidence
- ↑ Osage Nation Language ( Memento of the original from November 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 20, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e f g The Encyclopedia of Arkansas , accessed December 20, 2011.
- ↑ a b The Quapaw Indians , accessed December 20, 2011.
- ^ Pollution brings end to Oklahoma mining town , accessed December 20, 2011.
- ^ Picher, Oklahoma - The End of a Small Town , accessed December 21, 2011
- ↑ US Census 2000 , accessed December 19, 2011.
