traditions of assimilation...

[Richard Smith]

sorry for it's length
but this is a response to those who feel "Christianity" was the best thing
for Native Americans...
this is from my point of view (a Wyandot tribal member)

How Christianity affected the Wyandot people in Ohio in the early
1800's is an interesting story. There are the journals and historical
accounts still available, often kept by missionaries themselves.
With careful reading one can read between the lines, to understand the
conflict of two very different ways of understanding reality.

An African American Methodist missionary (Jonathan Stewart) came from the
east with the call to spread the gospel where he encountered the Wyandots
in central Ohio when they had been backed into small reservations.
Using an interpreter he called meetings and told the story of the cross.
For many Wyandots who were stressed from white settler encroachment,
a black minister was different and revival flooded the whole reservation.
Many traditionalists destroyed their medicine objects and stopped dancing,
bowed their heads to King Jesus Christ as their Savior.

A church was hand built of limestone rock that still stands today in Upper
Sandusky, surrounded by a cemetery of those pious converts.
Hair was cut to the proper length for men and soon the little church was
filled to capacity. European songs were rewritten using Wyandot lyrics and
the people began to learn a different way of singing...and seeing.
When this man spoke the story of Jesus and the message of salvation from
their wicked sins, they were moved to tears and walked the sawdust trail.

They began to see through a very different LENSE for the first time in
their lives...and conversion was widespread through the reservation.
Soon government schools were built and the new stories, Adam and Eve,
the tower of Babel ,the story of Moses in the bulrushes ,the stories of
David fighting the Philistines, the mighty Samson, could be taught to the
children as historical fact . Many felt that if they embraced the settlers
ways, they might be accepted by the encroaching ones who were also
building churches and schools for their children on their old hunting
grounds.Fear drove many Wyandot people into a survival mode of conformity.

 This new paradigm (LENSE) soon began to replace all original paradigms.
Conversion was complete and men began to take more authority over
property and took charge of tribal business, women and family.
Some Wyandot men were buying African slaves to work their fields.
Steel plows were pulled by oxen and mules. Crops were being harvested,
a mill was erected, and every Sunday the men and women would go to the
little stone church and sit on the hand sawn wooden pews, listen to the
gospel and sing new Hymns. More missionaries soon came to teach.
Wyandot men became more patriarchal, became farmers, blacksmiths,
and even disciplined soldiers for the British, or for the Americans, which
ever they preferred. But settlers kept coming
and still Wyandot hunters were being shot for being "Indian" .

 When forced out of Ohio, by the Indian Removal Act, Wyandots left as Bible
believing Christians. We have a copy of the final farewell speech given
before they left. White settlers lined up on the streets of Cincinnati to
see these last Ohio "Indians" passing on their journey to the west.
Settlers might have been disappointed by the "parade" because they saw
only men in common long coats and women who looked like their neighbors.
Wyandots were mixed in race and accounts were they looked like "gypsies".
They held their heads high as they passed these staring crowds.
The ones without livestock boarded new Steamboats and made their trek by
Ohio River to the Mississippi, then the Missouri to be forced off in the
middle of a severe downpour of rain, there where the Kansas river flowed
into the Missouri.

 Some determined to build a new church before they even built their own new
homes in Kansas. These were total converts and believed every word.
They bought the land that is now Kansas City, and after almost half the
nation died of starvation, diseases, they built two Methodist churches and
two towns were formed. One was Quindaro one was Wyandotte City.
Quindaro soon became a safe haven for the Underground Railroad,
was aided by both Wyandots and Whites....This town was razed and destroyed
by pro-slavery groups and the Methodist church was burnt by mobs.
(The ruins still exist today) The other town thrived to become Kansas
City.The KC Methodist church was also burnt to the ground. The Christian
Indians were divided...just like the American nation, family against family.

Did replacing original Wyandot lenses with Christianity help the people?
Did putting aside the old and adopting new foreign paradigms,
Middle Eastern creation stories, blood sacrifice cultural understandings,
give them an advantage in their new Kansas homelands?
Did replacing Spring Seed blessing ceremonies with Easter
give them a better life? Did replacing the Green Corn Ceremonies with
American Thanksgiving help them to better fulfill themselves?
Did replacing Midwinter Ceremonies with Christmas create wholeness?

 ALL of the land allotments (except our cemetery) of Kansas City, were lost
by fraud and poverty. Most Wyandots were reduced to another group of poor
Indians destitute and even dependant on the Fed. Gov. to keep promises.
Traditional Wyandot infrastructure survived when the last vestige of the
traditionals headed to Oklahoma and tried to keep the circle together.
Once again a pipe was passed at monthly meetings and traditional prayers
were prayed, and ceremonies began to have a small comeback.
The Methodist church followed them, and more missionaries came,
and soon the Christian boarding school era began, enforced by the US
Government educating children in service jobs, proper religion and
punishing Wyandot language out of them while rewarding the children who
yielded most to the system.

 There exists not far from here a circle of old weathered cedar trees
where native kids during school would secretly gather to speak their
language. But on weekends they'd be sitting on pews in starched outfits
singing hymns about fountains filled with blood, King Jesus, the Good
Shepherd, America the Beautiful, and gold crowns awaiting them at a
Throne.They would learn to make Pilgrim hats with big buckles of paper in
class during Thanksgiving, and make paper cut outs of Santa Claus and
reindeer in school, and learn the art of dyeing eggs and making Easter
baskets. Any traditional thanks giving ceremonies were taught as pagan
ritual.Ceremonies were still held in secret and shared with the
Seneca/Cayuga and Shawnee. Less and less attended as Christianity took
control and spread its fear of a devil lurking everywhere.

Today, few Wyandots are active in traditional ceremonies, though a Wyandot
presence survives among those intermarried with the Seneca/Cayuga.
Most Wyandots are totally assimilated ,Some participate in Intertribal
Pow-wows and find connection , a shared pride among other Native
Americans. There is a small but growing presence of Wyandots attending
traditional ceremonies shared with the Seneca/Cayuga, and I'm proud
to join them in the longhouse every ceremony I can attend.
Today many of the elders who preside over traditional ceremonies are
also Baptists, Pentecostals and Methodists as well, feeling no
contradiction,never giving in to the notion that these things were evil.

This is our Wyandot Christian conversion history
and someday our own people will awaken to see what happened to them.
This is my hope anyway,and with this awakening will come the hunger
for language and culture - distinctly Wyandot.

Richard Zane Smith
Wyandotte, Oklahoma






On 2/16/08 9:29 AM, "MJ Hardman" <hardman at UFL.EDU> wrote:

> "Assimilation" is a mild way to say it.  And as to Republican candidates --
> the drop-out -- that religion does indeed hold as a dogma that the US was
> founded in order for the true church to be reestablished & thus, yes, the US
> belongs to white people, who have come to bring the Native Americans back
> into the fold, after they transgressed (explained in one of their sacred
> books) and thus were made dark -- the fold of the white folks, of course.
> The Native Americans aren't as dark as blacks, whose transgression was
> worse, being descendants of Cain, though they have now been forgiven and can
> be brought into the fold.  Since Native Americans are all from the lost
> tribes of Israel, they have been rapidly welcomed into the fold, including
> by adoptions whenever possible.
> 
> And if what I wrote above sounds psychotic -- well, Mia, it's what they do
> indeed believe.  They soft-pedal a lot of it for outsiders, they are *very*
> concerned about 'image' -- they are, after all, selling a religion.  It was
> scary.  And what scares me now is the vice-presidency.
> 
> MJ
> 
> On 2/14/08 3:08 PM, "Mia Kalish" <MiaKalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US> wrote:
> 
>> There IS a tradition of "assimilation," usually no matter what it takes to
>> get there. There was a story . . . Carolyn, Harrington's ex-wife, found
>> papers in California that demonstrated the Indians were being "baptized" by
>> 1st, clubbing them over the head until they were senseless and couldn't
>> protest, and 2nd, being carried to the baptismal ceremony by their guards,
>> who also functioned as the witnesses or whatever they call them.
>> The whole purpose of the boarding schools was to take children away from the
>> influence of their families and cultures so they would grow up "white."
>> I think the fact that they wrote this is very Freudian: People are
>> admitting, albeit subconsciously, that they are deliberately interfering
>> with the lives of others.
>> 
>> I heard a speech the other day by one of those Republicans who dropped out
>> of the presidential race, and he actually seemed to believe that this
>> country "belongs" to white people. He had no understanding or recognition of
>> the fact that colonizers engaged in active and sustained genocide to kill
>> the people who were living here originally. And by the way, he had all these
>> statistics of the number of "out of wedlock" births by people of color.
>> Implicit in this is the cultural moré that womens' only function in life is
>> to take care of men. (NOT.)
>> 
>> Mia  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
>> On Behalf Of Richard Smith
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:40 PM
>> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: [ILAT] traditions of assimilation...
>> 
>> yeah,
>> did you catch that....?   "a Tradition of Assimilation"
>> wow...amazing... we have traditionalists in office!
>> By the way...who's "tradition of assimilation?"
>> 
>> richard zane smith
>> Wyandotte, Oklahoma
>> 
>> 
>> On 2/11/08 8:55 AM, "phil cash cash" <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:
>> 
>>> Momentum Building for Oklahoma Official English Bill
>>> 
>> http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-11
>> -2
>>> 008/0004753576&EDATE=
>>> 
>>> ~~~
>>> 
>>> While there seems to be  respect for Native American languages, these are
>> the
>>> words of legislators behind the English-only bill in the Oklahoma state
>>> legislature:
>>> 
>>> "...maintain a tradition of assimilation through our
>>> common language of English."
>>> 
>>> It seems hard to reconcile this position with Native American language
>>> preservation.  Though I imagine the architects of such legislation view NA
>>> languages as "preservation at a distance".
>>> 
>>> l8ter,
>>> 
>>> Phil
>>> UofA
>>