Student Projects

Written by Hannah Collins

Stories and literature represent more for Native Americans than it does for whites. Stories contain power and meaning for Native Americans. It allows them to know their history and their ancestors. It allows them to be able to connect with the past and bring it into the present. While Native American literature has started to appear in mainstream literature, it’s still massively underappreciated by Western culture because of the lack of understanding whites have of Native American culture. There is also underrepresentation within Native American literature such as a lack of LGBTQ or two-spirited representation. That’s why I’ve decided to focus on the authors of Beth Brant and Chrystos and their work within Native American literature. They both represent the lesbian or two-spirited community and offer a voice for those who don’t have one. While Brant and Chrystos have lived similar lives, both are able to write in completely different ways that capture the Native American culture of old and new while also representing their unique experiences of living in today’s society as two-spirited or lesbian Native American women.

Native Americans have been telling stories long before the Europeans invaded their land. Native American literature is composed of several interconnecting genres. These stories can be classified into the following categories: traditional and contemporary literature. Traditional literature can be divided further into two types: ceremonial or popular varieties. Popular varieties are considered “those that derive from the canon but that are widely told and appeal to audiences gathered on social occasions” (Allen 4). Ceremonial stories hold power in Native American tribes. Ceremonial literature consist of songs for different occasions such as healing, hunting, war songs, etc. Each of these songs “serves to hold the society together, create harmony, restore balance, ensure prosperity and unity, and establish right relations within the social and natural world” (Allen 73). Structurally, ceremonial literature looks similar to Western prose and poetry but its defining characteristic is that it holds real power. The power of storytelling is rooted in their mythology and history which shapes their worldview and beliefs. For example in the book Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, white people are a product of a witch’s storytelling (135-138). This is why ceremonial storytelling is “accompanied by ritual actions and music and that produces mythic states of consciousness and/or conditions”(Allen 72). By performing these ceremonies through actions and music, Native Americans are better able to represent and understand their ancestors.

Contemporary literature can also be broken down into “the classic western categories of poetry, short fiction, the novel, and drama, with the addition of autobiography, as-told-to narrative, and mixed genre works” (Allen 4). Native American authors oftentimes blend the rhythms and structures of oral traditions from their tribes with their contemporary work, creating a unique aesthetic around which Native American literature is centered. This “aesthetic” of Native American literature included themes of genocide, assimilation, and “lost” idenities felt by the Native American community. It also differed from Western writing structures or plot structures reflecting the “hoop” of time rather than a linear timeline; this writing style of time is called polychronic. During the exploding age of literature and print culture, Euro-American people were trying to capture the nostalgic past of oral tales from “traditional” Native American culture. This resulted in an increase of growth and popularity of “folklore” (Parker 4). After failing to do so for years, the United States became more cognizant of minorities and their contributions; this is showcased by Native american literature growing significantly in popularity.

N. Scott Momaday’s 1968 House Made of Dawn allowed for the rise in Native American literature. This sudden rise in Native literature is known as the Native American Renaissance, a term coined by Kenneth Lincoln in his 1983 book Native American Renaissance. But Native American literature has been around long before the Native American Renaissance. The critics were the ones to determine what literature was to be read by consumers. By determining the criteria that made up Native American literature, critics end up implying that to fit the Native American aesthetic and be considered an Indian author one “needs to follow certain prescribed forms, such as nonlinerality, and without the prescribed forms, writing cannot be Indian” (Parker 13). It shouldn’t have been left to critics to define the Native American aesthetic but Native writers, because throughout time the aesthetic changed and didn’t stay static. Native American aesthetic was influenced by the writings of the black aesthetic in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Parker 13). To get the attention of potential publishers, early Native American writers used the theme of the “dying savage” (Allen 78). By using the colonization theme paired with the Western plot structure, Native Americans were able to tell their history and create the Indian identity in their writing, but also have their work appeal to publishers. Another contemporary theme that Native Americans included in their writing was alienation or the message of belonging, which appealed to Americans and Europeans alike. After the writing of Mourning Dove was published in 1927, many Native writers began to focus their work around tribal consciousness in order to better create a positive and accurate image for Native Americans (Allen 82). Allen argues that if Native American men had better representation in the media and pop culture then their actions would change to reflect it, and by doing so this would help improve the lives of Native American women as well. By being able to create a more positive and accurate depiction of Native Americans, Native American authors are able to represent those who suffer intersectionality within their community such as those in the LGBTQ community, Native American women and feminists.

Two authors who explore LGBTQ and feminist themes as Native American women in their literature are Beth Brant and Chrystos. Beth Brant identified as a lesbian and a feminist within the Native American community. She married at the age of 17 and had 3 daughters; after 14 years of an abusive marriage she divorced her husband in 1973, and declared herself part of the feminist movement and identified as a lesbian. She met her partner Denise in 1976 and moved in with her. Within her book, A Gathering of Spirit, she was able to highlight and edit together a collection of Native women’s voices who often go unheard or are oppressed in our society. Brant was encouraged to write A Gathering of Spirit due to the lack of representation for women of color in mainstream feminist movements, “...women lament our lack or participation in feminist events, yet we are either referred to as et ceteras in the naming of women of color, or simply not referred to at all” (11). The lack of representation for Native women in feminist movements stems from colonalism and assmiliation, which as a whole changes our perception of feminist rights for Indigenous peoples. To contradict this perception Native literature plays an important role, and this is shown with one of Brant’s writings within A Gathering of Spirit.

The writing is a series of correspondence between Beth Brant and an inmate named Raven. The main theme that appears within the correspondence is rejection from society and the concept of power that whites exercise over Native Americans. While Beth Brant partially agrees with Raven’s broad assessment that whites are inherently evil, she argues that she can’t fully believe in this broad concept because of her half-white lineage and her lover is white. Brant argues that the reason white men hate them is because they “envy our connections to the spirit, to the earth, to a community, to a people” (223). This ties into the idea of Native feminism and what they were fighting for within the mainstream feminist movement. Native feminists while fighting for their rights as women are also fighting for Native American rights such as tribal sovereignty and their own power in a society dominated by whites. Brant connects this hatred and “extermination” (223) of minorities and their cultures around the globe to “the millions of women burned at the stake centuries ago, because we were women, because we were lesbians” (223). This ties into the overall theme of rejection that Brant and Raven face as Native American women but for Brant she also relates her being a lesbian as a form of rejection from the Native community. In Brant’s other writng called A Long Story in A Gatheirng of Spirits is able to more clearly tie the complexities of being Native American and a lesbian and the rejection that comes from both.

A Long Story switches between two female narratives in different time eras: 1890 and 1978. In both narratives the woman’s children have been taken away by people who claim to know what’s better for the children. In the 1890’s narrative, the children are taken to boarding schools in order to “civilize” them and in the 1978’s narrative the child is taken away by the father because the mother is a lesbian. In both narratives, Brant creates a sense of “otherness” by having the children taken away due to certain “problems” that differ from heterosexual white “normality” such as being Indian or a lesbian. Also within the narratives, Brant places partial blame towards men. In the 1890 narrative, the narrator describes the men as “unbothered” and “changed” (102). In the 1978 narrative, the husband is the one who takes her child because of her being a lesbian regardless of her mothering capabilities. By comparing the two narratives, Brant is able to express how similar the idea of rejection for both Native Americans and lesbians through fictionalized settings. She is not the only author to feel rejected by society because of racial and sexual orientation; Chrystos suffers the same problem and this is expressed within her writing.

Chrystos identifies as a Two-Spirited person and a lesbian. Like Brant, she writes to represent those who don’t have a voice in their society. Chrystos expresses her feelings of rejection within her poetry. Orignially, she supported the feminist movement but as time continued Chrystos felt that Native voices were being ignored or cast aside. She also suffered rejection by her peers and she expresses this within her writing, I Don’t Understand Those Who Have Turned Away From Me. Within this writing, she expresses how she was constantly judged and expected to follow stereotypes to prove her authencity of being a lesbian, of a Native American. She was confined by the “stricture & censorship from lesbians” who expected her to be “a carpenter to prove I was a real dyke” (69). Also the fact that she identified as two-spirited created a sense of complicated rejection from Native American community.

Two-spirited is the modern, pan-Indian term used to describe Native Americans who are part of a third gender that consists of both male and female spirits. Historically there has been a negative stigma placed on this term due to colonization and assimilation. Originally the term was meant in a spiritual sense and these people acted as mediators of the tribe “not only between the sexes but between the psychic and the physical-between the spirit and the flesh” (Williams 41). When white missionaries introduced Western religious ideology, the idea of spiritual identity was misinterpreted since they only saw sexual orientation of two-spirited peoples, many who would have sex with the “same gender” and thus the term has been applied to the neagative views of homosexuality becxause of the missionaries and the assimilation that enforced Western patriarchal gender steretypes. While Brant didn’t identify as two-spirited, in her writing she wrote about two-spirited characters within a modern setting.

Mohawk Trail by Brant is composed of three parts: Native Origins, Detroit Songs, and Long Stories. Within the Detroit Songs section she depicts the lives of other Indians who have come to adapt to urban life. The story of Danny describes the life of a modern two-spirited person living within the city. Danny shares similar aspects to traditional two-spirited people such as cross-dressing and working as a nurse or a healer. Danny reflects on his earlier life and the shame that was forced upon him by society and his father. By placing Danny within a more urban setting, it allows the past and present to be connected within new communities and across cultural boundaries as well as it allows for journeys of self-discovery. This isn’t the only story where Brant is able to incorporate “traditional” Native American ideologies within Mohawk Trail.

In Native Origins, Brant describes her life story and shares anecdotes about her family adapting to urban life while also combining traditional cultural themes such as rituals and ceremonies that value a maternalistic culture. Within the Native Origins she retells a classic Coyote myth but with a twist. Brant switches the gender of Coyote to a female and has her trying to trick others into thinking she is male. By the end the Coyote is discovered by Fox to be female and they make love. Tara Prince-Hughes uses this example of Brant’s Coyote myth to explain how Brant “transformed Coyote’s gender play and extravagant sexuality into domestic responsibility and lesbian passion” (Prince-Hughes 19). The domestic responsibility in the story would be that Coyote is a mother and that this cross-dressing is allowing her the ability to help support the family. Another Iroquois myth that Brant rewrote is one of creation and the Sky woman. Brant in her retelling describes the Sky Woman as “queer” and that “her behavior doesn’t match the gender expectations for her sex” (Prince-Hughes 18). Later the Sky Woman gives birth to First Woman and together they invent songs and prayers, medicine, sexuality, and love. Prince-Hughes argues that “from Sky Woman’s initial refusal of female gender behavior comes lesbian sexual desire” (19). Brant’s retelling also differs from the more traditional because she chooses to not focus on the birth of the male twins but instead focuses on the death of Sky Woman and the impact this has on First Woman. Brant was able to use traditional Native myths and stories to help her express her identity as a lesbian and a Native American woman within a community that was not always accepting of her. By combining the Native myths and stories and her sexual orientation, Brant was able to create a new narrative that would be more accepting not only for her but also those who were experiencing the same feelings of rejection by society.

Like I mentioned earlier Chrystos like Beth Brant is able to represent through her writing those whose voices go unheard. Unlike Brant, Chrystos focuses on the actual lives of natives and refuses to incorporate Menominee stories (Brehm 74). Chrystos’s poetry often depicts graphic violence and her work often had a political message about classes, race, sex, gender, and urban life. Her work often challenges the idea of hegemony of society and culture (Brehm 80) while allowing the reader to view a realistic lower class Native American, and she uses her poetry to criticize “upper middle class comforts of religion, money, consumerism, and economic security” (Brehm 75). Writings such as Give Me Back, No Rock Scorns Me as Whore, The Real Indian Leans Against, and Interview showcase her feelings of how her Indianness is commercialized and how Native Americans are trapped by the stereotypes and labels forced upon them. These writings also capture her displeasure in the way in which white people believe they are entitled to the environment around them. This is clearly depicted in No Rock Scorns Me as Whore and Dance a Ghost. In Dance a Ghost her friend is murdered outside a bar by a white man; she depicts his body as “black moccasins on white land” (Chrystos 97). She labels the land as “white” which reflects the idea of entitlement for white people that colonization encouraged and also white is often associated with pureness. Then she labels his moccasins as “black”; black is often associated with negative connotations. Chrystos is able to use “black” and “white” to create a juxtaposition of irony of pureness being associated with the land and the white person who killed the Indian and negative connotations from the word black being associated with the Indian who was killed in cold blood. She expresses anger towards whites for the lack of understanding or the lack of trying to understand Native American culture. It’s through her writing that she can express this and in doing so she’s able to express frustrations that others may have. She is able to do so without reverting to Native American stories or myths and instead uses realistic present day examples to represent those who are oppressed by our society.

Beth Brant and Chrystos are able to represent a small subculture within Native American literature. Through two different methods, they are able to capture and represent the struggles of rejection and identity searching within our society. Brant was able to relate her sexual orientation through more “traditional” Native American stories as well as personal anecdotes. Chrytos on the other hand created original poetry and short stories that expressed her viewpoints towards capitalism, class struggles, racial problems, gender based problems and entitlement expressed by white people over land. Their writing allows for those who are non-Native a chance to try to understand our society from a Native American’s perspective through different sociocultural practices and beliefs and by challenging societal norms. Their work is impactful in helping create representation for Native American women who might identify as LGBTQ or femisnist and while their work doesn’t speak for Native American women as a whole, their writings can help amplify the voices who have been silenced for too long in our society.

Works Cited

Allen, Paula Gunn. The Sacred Hoop: Restoring the Feminine in American Indian Traditions.

Beacon Press, 1986.

Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Cherríe Moraga, editors. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by

Radical Women of Color. Persephone Press, 1983.

Brant, Beth, editor. A Gathering of Spirit: a Collection by North American Indian Women. Women's Press, 1988.

Brant, Beth. Mohawk Trail. Firebrand Books, 1985.

Brehm, Victoria. “Urban Survivor Stories: The Poetry of Chrystos.” Studies in American Indian

Literatures, vol. 10, no. 1, 1998, pp. 73–82. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20739440.

Fife, Connie. The Colour of Resistance: a Contemporary Collection of Writing by Aboriginal Women. Sister Vision, 1994.

Lincoln, Kenneth. Native American Renaissance. University of California Press, 1983.

Parker, Robert Dale. The Invention of Native American Literature. Cornell University Press, 2003.

Prince-Hughes, Tara. “Contemporary Two-Spirit Identity in the Fiction of Paula Gunn Allen and Beth Brant.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 10, no. 4, 1998, pp. 9–32. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20739470.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Penguin Publishing Group, 1986.

Williams, Walter L. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.

Beacon Press, 2004.

Written by Rebecca Garbe

Introduction

In 1804, the United States government bought 50 million acres of land East of the Mississippi for $2,234.50 with an annual annuity of $1000. The land was supposedly purchased from a group of individuals who were representative of the Native Nations that lived within this vast area (H.F. Kett & Co. 1877). However, it was later discovered that these same individuals were not chosen by any of the tribes who would be affected by the treaty. Upon purchasing the land, the government issued a statement informing any Native peoples who occupied it that they would eventually be forced to leave once the need to sell that land to white settlers arose. Until this time, any Native American people living in this area were allowed to continue doing so. Unknown to many, the effects of this treaty reached the current Quad Cities area.

Jump ahead about a quarter of a century—between 1825 and 1830—and we start to see the first white settlers arriving in Rock Island County. This meant the forced removal of the Native tribes that were inhabiting the area at the time: the Sauk and Meskwaki (H.F. Kett & Co. 1877; Kurtz, 1991). Forced to cross the Mississippi river into Iowa, the Sauk and Meskwaki would try multiple times to re-enter their land on the Illinois side of the river. It was during the second attempt to re-enter—in order to obtain corn (a necessity that had been promised to them through the Corn Treaty after their first attempt to re-enter)—that the Black Hawk “War” of 1832 took place. While the numbers are inexact, it is estimated that 400-600 Native people were killed. The others were forced back across the river or into other areas of the region (Boggs).

A few years later in 1835, the Brooks family moved to Rock Island County and would be remembered as one of the founding settler families of the area. The Brooks family owned the land that Augustana College currently resides on from 38th Street to 46th Street and 7th Ave to 18th Ave. Decades later, in 1872, a second generation Brooks, William, donated a portion of his land to what is today Augustana College (“William E. Brooks,” 1885). A year later in 1873, Augustana College bought 18 ¾ acres of land from H.P. Hull for $10,000 (Brolander 1985). All of this land had previously been inhabited by Sauk and Meskwaki people.

This is a history that is widely unknown within the Quad Cities area, and is certainly not discussed on the campus of Augustana College. While this is important information, this is only one history that puts into perspective Native and Euroamerican interactions in this part of the country. Furthermore, this history does not center the contemporary Sauk and Meskwaki people, nor does it provide space for Indigenous histories or voices. That is why I chose this history to begin my discussion of Native American Studies (NAS) as incorporating all of these missing elements is key to the discipline.

More particularly, this paper will act as a body of information not only to explore NAS as a discipline—its limitations and benefits—but to develop a base of literature that can be used to develop a NAS program at Augustana College. I have broken down this topic into several categories that seemed to be the most pertinent within the literature surrounding these programs. The first, “Native American Studies as a Discipline”, focuses on discussions surrounding the place that NAS programs have within academia. Are they truly academic? Should Indigenous knowledge be considered scholarly? This section will also discuss the history of the discipline as well as its evolution. Secondly, I will be discussing the importance of “Connecting with Native Communities”. This section seeks to demonstrate the need for NAS programs not only to work directly with Native communities but to be designed in such a way that they are benefiting those communities as well. The third section, “Importance of and Issues surrounding Native Faculty,” looks at the conversation that surrounds the hiring of Native faculty within institutions. “Pedagogy and Curriculum,” the fourth section, takes a deeper look at some suggested curriculum practices within NAS. These might be in the form of pedagogy suggestions, class examples, and overall goals of individual programs. Lastly, I will be examining the most popular NAS programs that are active in the U.S. as well as one in particular that is a peer institution to Augustana College. Doing this should provide a starting point from which the school could begin program building.

Native American Studies as a Discipline

The 1960s marked a major turning point in American history. The Civil Rights Movement paired with the Black Power and Red Power movements and the Vietnam War meant that political activism in various forms increased across the country, especially on college campuses. It was during this tumultuous time for many college and university campuses that ethnic and minority studies programs first arose. These programs often included content surrounding multiple ethnic groups including Africana and African American Studies, Asian Studies, and later Native American Studies (Kidwell 2011). However, as Ward Churchill and Norbert S. Hill Jr. explain in their article “An Historical Survey of Tendencies in Indian Education: Higher Education,” (1979) grouping these minority identities into one program was hardly attainable. Not only would there be an inability to design curricula for a program like this, but it would create an atmosphere of isolation: anything that was not considered minority studies was considered white studies. However, within the decade, and increasingly throughout the last several decades of the 20th century, minority studies programs would be divided into their own fields. With this change came the first Native American Studies programs in institutions around the country (Downing and Willard 1991).

As Native American Studies programs cropped up all over the U.S., many conversations began surrounding what these programs should look like and encompass. With these conversations also came doubt. For many academics (really, white academics) a Native American Studies program, especially one steeped in Indigenous pedagogies, would be unscholarly. As Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (1997) explains, “The intellectual information, the knowledge itself, found in the oral traditions of the indigenes, is grounded in language and geography” (10)—a knowledge base that was not considered credible or important to white academics. In fact, Clara Kidwell (2011) argues that the initial development of NAS programs (as well as other ethnic studies programs) within institutions was less because of a belief in their credibility and rather to meet recruitment requirements. This pushback from many scholars and institutional administrations was supported by the development of post-colonial studies and impeded the growth of many Native American Studies programs. This theoretical system seemed to seep into the mindset of many modern scholars, placing the Native person in such a way that the realities of modern-day colonialism were erased and the goal of developing Native American Studies—to educate students in order to affect policy regarding Indigenous people—was severely diminished (Cook-Lynn 1997).

However strong these doubts and setbacks were, Native American Studies still developed into a discipline that exists in America today. Yet, this discipline is not designed to be like others, though it is often lumped in with the social sciences. Instead, NAS programs are meant to disrupt academia—especially with regard to how histories and world views are taught. In the introduction to their edited volume entitled Native American Studies in Higher Education: Models for Collaboration between Universities and Indigenous Nations (2002), Duane Champagne and Jay Stauss examine the need for this role of disruption:

“The problem, we believe, is that Native American studies does not reflect the highly specialized disciplinary stucture of U.S. or Western academia. The specialization of academia reflects the social, cultural, and economic specialization and compartmentalization of U.S. or Western European societies. Mainstream academia reflects the goals, interests, values, and institutions of Western civilization—that is, the community that it studies. Applying the Western intellectual experiences and categories of discourse and analysis to the study of Indigenous Nations puts the prospective scholar of Indian life at an initial disadvantage...Native American studies does not have to and should not reflect the intellectual specializations and categories of U.S. or Western scholarship.” (8)

For Champagne and Stauss, pushing back against a Westernized version of academia is crucial in the development and maintenance of NAS programs. In order to do this, they suggest focusing these programs on contemporary Native groups as well as colonial domination. Favoring only the latter does little to actually abate the problem and does not always center Native narratives. C. Patrick Morris (1986) also touches on this of focusing on contemporary communities but also suggests working directly with them: “NAS is not anthropology, history, comparative sociology, or political science, or any other existing discipline, although it certainly has made use of the methodologies and content of these better known disciplines...Although ‘ethnically’ focused, NAS is more comprehensively defined by the special relationship it promotes between Native people and higher education” (9-10). Not only does connecting with Native Communities tie together an understanding of a colonial past (and present) to a notion of “survivance,” but it can create students who are willing to be active in Native issues.

Connecting with Native Communities

As I started to discuss above, for many Native scholars, NAS as a discipline was created with the goal of connecting with Native communities. Annette Portillo summarizes the need for this objective nicely in her article “Indigenous-Centered Pedagogies: Strategies for Teaching Native American Literature and Culture” (2013): “By actively engaging local communities and foregrounding their voices in class, one can counter the tendencies to essentialize accounts of Native American history that continues to erase contemporary issues” (170). In other words, directly engaging with Native communities can push back against the static, salvage-ethnography-influenced version of a NAS program.

C. Patrick Morris (1986) builds on this subject arguing that NAS should be designed to act as an “Academic-to-Community facilitator”. In taking on this role, Morris says, NAS programs are able to connect the research and teaching done within the university setting to advocacy work that supports ideas such as sovereignty and nation building. This, in his eyes, allows for “Native governance” within NAS programs. Therefore, rather than a body of scholarly work that is done based on the interests of the researcher, NAS programs can design research around the needs and suggestions of real communities (Morris 1986). One way that this can be achieved is through connecting mainstream universities directly with a Tribal College. Engaging directly with Tribal Colleges is a way for NAS programs to remain active, rather than passive, in their curriculum and connect with students and faculty who have different sets of knowledge foundations (Champagne and Strauss 2002).

In his article “More Light Than Heat: The Current State of Native American Studies” (2007), Jason Weaver expresses a similar sentiment, however he argues that current programs are not doing enough of this facilitation work. “Commitment to Native community...means service to Native peoples. But it also means being committed to truth, accuracy, and academic freedom” (239). Here, academia meets and is designed for outside communities whether this is through service projects, educating non-Native folks, providing spaces of solidarity for Native students and faculty, or contributing to political conversations surrounding sovereignty and indigenization. This can be most easily accomplished on a campus through the hiring of Native scholars, Elders, and other Native people (for example, speakers of Native languages) to teach classes within a NAS program.

Importance of and Issues Surrounding Native Faculty and Instructors

The hiring of Native faculty and instructors has been a topic of discussion within NAS as a discipline since it was created. While many scholars believe in the importance of hiring Indigenous people to work within these programs, they are also ready to admit that many institutions do not push for this hiring and have requirements that often impede Native people from having a place within a NAS program (Augustus 2015; Calloway 2002; Cook-Lynn 1997; Newhouse et al. 2002; Portillo 2013; Larson 2009). This section will disect some of the most common issues surrounding Native faculty and instructors.

Within the academic world, there are a lot of setbacks for Native people. As discussed before, Indigenous pedagogies were not considered to be credible, but opportunities for gaining the degrees necessary to participate in academia were not plentiful either. In the article Contemporary American Indian Studies (2009), Sidner Larson examines these realities:

“The requirement that faculty members have doctorates, a requirement based on mainstream ideology, automatically disqualifies Indians in favor of white instructors with little or no knowledge of tribal ways of knowing and being...At the same time, placing tribal individuals without such credentials in position of authority jeopardizes both funding and the possibility of student transfer to mainstream universities.” (Larson 2009, 20)

While this describes a tribal college, a lot of the ideas are also applicable to mainstream universities and colleges. In order to understand part of the difficulty for Native people to obtain the degrees necessary to work in these settings, we need to look at the root of the problem: the government technically owns a lot of the land that Native people possess. What this means is that these communities are not able to use property taxes to support their education. This already puts Native groups at a disadvantage because poor schools make it difficult to get into a mainstream college (if desired) and therefore make it significantly more difficult to get the doctorate that is often required to be a faculty member at the kind of institution where NAS is established (Larson 2009).

To further the issue, NAS programs are frequently, non-departmental. This means that the faculty that teach the courses within the program are pulled from different departments across a campus. While this is beneficial in its interdisciplinary nature, Native faculty that are hired are often spread thin between their home department and the NAS program that they teach in (Larson 2009). Cook-Lynn builds on this idea noting the variety of roles that Native faculty tend to have on campuses across the country. “They [native faculty] were hired to be liaisons to existing departments, contributors to the established disciplines, the “Indian Voice” in anthropology and history, advisors to on campus political action, watchdogs, and authenticators of the university’s frenzied search for grant monies; in other words, they were “all things to all people” in all-white school systems” (12). This “tokenism”, she argues, never allows Native faculty to fully be a part of NAS and therefore does not allow NAS to develop into a full discipline. In a similar fashion, non-departmental NAS programs also have a tendency to be absorbed into other programs such as American Studies. Champagne and Strauss argue that this takes away from full understandings of Native pedagogy and political issues. “The reason,” they say, “for such arrangements are often budgetary or organizational, but such initiatives, combined with a general misunderstanding of Native rights and issues, can lead to administrative structures that may threaten the future of many Indian studies programs” (6). This bleeds into the work and opportunities for Native faculty as well.

In response to these issues, many scholars have proposed solutions. One such solution focuses on making sure that there is a core group of Native faculty that have full control over the hiring and promotion of faculty and instructors within a NAS program (Champagne and Stauss 2002; Larson 2009). This does not mean that non-Native faculty do not have a place in NAS as an academic discipline (quite on the contrary, Cook-Lynn argues that “While it is certain that sovereignty and indigenousness are clearly matters for the Native populations (nations) themselves in collaboration with the U.S. court systems to address, they are, surely, questions for educators and intellectuals of all persuasions to explore” (21).), however, non-Native scholars are not going to be experts in Native ideologies. Camie Augustus, a non-Native scholar teaching Indigenous studies in Australia argues that while she can dispense information for her students, it is not her role to be the expert within the classroom. “It can be difficult not to want to assume the role of ‘expert’ as a university teacher; but maintaining distance between myself and Indigenous knowledge, and not appropriating or taking ownership of it, is, for me, an important aspect of respecting that knowledge and working toward decolonizing education” (Augustus 2015, 9). What this means is that it is crucial that institutions make intentional space for Indigenous people—especially when it comes to NAS programs. This takes the form of hiring not only Native scholars but Native non-scholars who are instead experts in native knowledge such as Elders. Newhouse et al. summarizes this nicely in their article Culture, Tradition, and Evolution: The Department of Native Studies at Trent University (2002):

“This also means that we must create a place within the university for traditional Aboriginal people. The tradition within the university is that one teaches what one is knowledgeable about, and that teaching is based upon one’s own inquiry and its findings. If we wish to bring traditional Aboriginal knowledge into the university then we must also bring in those who are competent to create it and who can also evaluate the level of knowledge of others” (79).

Trent University may be in Canada, but the focus that the school places on Indigenous knowledge can be extended to institutions across the U.S. By placing focus on the hiring of Native faculty and instructors NAS as a discipline would have the opportunity to grow tremendously. As Colin G. Calloway, who worked with the Dartmouth College NAS program at the time his article was written in 2002, said: “Native American Studies...makes no sense without Indians” (25).

Pedagogy and Curriculum

The indigenization of NAS through the hiring and support of Native faculty and instructors should also be directly carried over into the course material and teaching strategies used within a program. The first step in doing this is to break down the European-Indigenous binary that exists not only in the mainstream media but in academia as well. In their article, “Designing an Australian Indigenous Studies Curriculum for the twenty-first century: Nakata’s ‘cultural interface’, standpoints and working beyond binaries” (2014), Michelle Carey and Michael Prince argue that the consistent romanticisation of Indigeneity versus the “demonisation” of the West is what tends to perpetuate a binary within Indigenous studies. According to them,

“This necessitates building and designing curricula that enable students to develop the knowledge, skills, and critical capacity (Nakata, 2007a, p.224) to see beyond binaried understandings of ‘the Indigenous’ and ‘the western’, and recognise the profound inadequacy of valorising ‘the Indigenous’ as an antidote to the apparently ever-present imperialist imperative in western knowledge production.” (272)

In other words, Carey and Prince are saying that through this process of binarization what is considered Indigenous is always a counterpoint to what is considered Western. While it is good to talk about the effects of colonialism (denoted in Carey and Prince’s terms as “demonisation”) the conversations that happen in NAS should be centered beyond that so that what is Indigenous is not erased in an effort to resolve the now-apparent and antiquated views that are so often the focus of the West.

To combat this, as well as promote indigenization, it is imperative that the classes being offered within a NAS program are mainly focused on the Native identity. Camie Augustus discusses in her article some themes that are key to the development of classes within an NAS program. Some of these include place and land, community and kinship, language, holistic teaching pedagogies, and decolonization. Notice, each of these categories can not only be discussed with regard to the past of Native tribes but are also extremely important to their present and future. In placing the focus on current major issues within Native communities and then also focusing on the past, curricula are able to bring a more indigenized understanding of Native people into the classroom.

Many scholars within NAS have developed or spoken to different class ideas that have worked within programs they have taught in. Colin G. Calloway (2002) discusses some of the classes that are included at Dartmouth College, one of the leading NAS programs in the country. Dartmouth teaches classes such as “Indian Country Today,” “North American Indian History,” “Peoples and Cultures of Native North America,” “Native American Literature,” and “Intro to Native American Religious Systems” (Calloway 2002). While these class titles do not explicitly suggest any of the themes that Augustus listed above, it is easy to pick some of them out. For example, a class called “Indian Country Today” might discuss place and land issues in Native communities and “People and Cultures of Native North America” could bring up communities and kinship. Annette Portillo also gives suggestions as to what kinds of classes should be taught within a NAS program. Some of these classes include an introductory course with a focus on an indigenized history of the U.S., a course on Indigenous women, a course on Indigenous environmentalism, and a class on survivance and sovereignty (Portillo 2013). Within these ideas it is also possible to see Augustus’s themes. In an indigenized history of the U.S. not only would there be discussion of colonization but decolonization as well. A course on survivance and sovereignty would point toward holistic teaching pedagogies as well as community and kinship. Beyond that, we see that Carey and Prince actually design a working model for a four year Indigenous studies program (while this focus is not on Native American people, the focus on indigeneity from these authors is still fruitful to consider). In the first year, students would get situated with Indigenous issues and ideas. Year two would bring into specifics what these kinds of issues and ideas actually look like. By the third year, students will be able to actually begin applying theory to what they have learned. And after four years students are out working in Indigenous communities (Carey and Prince 2014).

Currently within the discipline, some scholars are openly discussing issues that they are having within their pedagogies and the designed curriculum at their institutions. One of the biggest issues described has to do with the increase in diversity requirements among all disciplines in higher education institutions and the amount of racism that many students come in with. Bruce E. Johansen discusses this issue in his article “Trials and Triumphs of Teaching Introduction to Native American Studies” (2003). For Johansen, teaching Introduction to Native American Studies can be difficult because so many students come in with extremely racist world views. To dismantle that in one introductory course, he explains, is nearly impossible. Johansen’s response is to be completely honest with them. “Many of these students arrived expecting lightweight fare about arrowheads and rain dances. What they got was an opening description...of a smallpox-wracked Native American man in Massachusetts, circa 1636, trying to turn over on a straw mat as his bleeding pustules snagged in its reeds” (265). However, Johansen goes on to say, this often leads to students questioning personal responsibility in the atrocities that occured between European settlers and Native tribes. Colleen McGloin discusses a similar idea in her article “Listening to Hear: Critical Allies in Indigenous Studies” (2015). While McGloin does not describe explicit racism in the classroom, it becomes apparent that students are not fully considering the role that racism plays in Native-U.S. history. “Racism in the classroom,” she says, “was scripted as outside, not here, not present; it was the practice of others, not us” (270). In response to this, McGloin proposes a pedagogy of discomfort as a way for students to come to terms with the realities of Native identity and Euroamerican-Native interactions.

While it is clear that the path to developing pedagogy and curricula for a NAS program in the United State has many road bumps, it is also clear that scholars within the discipline are actively trying to find ways to push-back against the major issues. In the next section, we will take a look at information regarding current NAS programs and break down one in particular.

Current Native American Studies Programs

In general, the most prominent NAS programs in the United States are either large, public institutions or ivy league schools. This means that the schools have more money (aside from donors) to support the hiring of Native faculty, recruit Native students, and pay for the necessities of the development and maintenance of a NAS department. According to a university ranking website, the top 5 schools for NAS programs in the United States are as follows: Stanford University, Dartmouth College, University of California - Los Angeles, University of California - Berkeley, and University of California - Davis (“Best Colleges with American India/Native American Studies Degrees in the U.S.). However, not all schools have the resources that those on this list do. This makes it more difficult to develop NAS programs, and even more difficult to develop NAS departments.

Yearly, Augustana College releases a list of peer institutions that it is similar to, or that it strives to be like. Many of these schools are in a position where they do not have enough resources to support a full NAS program. This year, out of nine listed schools, only one school has a NAS degree; this school is Illinois Wesleyan University. To give some background information, Illinois Wesleyan University is a private, liberal arts college located in Bloomington, Illinois. With a total enrollment of 1,693, it is on the small end. The majority of students attending this college are White (69%) followed by Hispanic students (9%) and Black/Non-hispanic and International (both at 6%). This school has no Native American students according to the statistics presented on their website. In terms of financing, Illinois Wesleyan budgets $61 million annually with supplemental resources alongside that (“Facts”). Its NAS program is located within its American Culture Studies major.

The American Culture Studies major, according to the school’s website, is designed so that students can “understand the multiplicity of the social and cultural lives of people in the United States, and in relation to it” (“About American Culture Studies”). Students with this major may choose a concentration in American Studies, Afrian-American Studies, Native-American Studies, or Latinx Studies. This program is rooted in disciplines such as literature, history, and anthropology and functions as an interdisciplinary major sequence. The Native American Studies concentration follows this model as well. The courses that explicitly denote a focus on Native American people are: “Native Americans and the Environment,” “Native-American Literature,” and “Native American and Afrian Religions.” These are only three of 21 classes listed within the concentration. Some other classes include: “World Music,” “Cultural Appropriation,” “Manifest Destinies: American Literature to 1865,” “Colonial America,” “Migration, Ethnicity, and Race,” and “Myth and Ritual” (“Curriculum”).

Now it is time to apply some of what scholars and theorists mentioned in previous sections to the Illinois Wesleyan model. Many of the scholars who are positioned within the literature surrounding NAS argue against a conglomerative program (Cook-Lynn 1997; Champagne and Stauss 2002; Larson 2009; Weaver 2007) . That is to say, these scholars are aware that a NAS program built into a different degree may not have the resources it needs to function properly. That being said, these same scholars do identify that it is also important that NAS just have a place on campuses around the country. The Illinois Wesleyan model of an NAS program is a good example of one of these conglomerative programs. In terms of this school, what this seems to do is dissolve the actual Native focus of the program. Notice that within the Native American Studies concentration, there are only three classes that explicitly deal with Native issues and identities. While the other classes within the degree may deal with ideas surrounding colonialism, racial identity, and cultural appropriation, without a specific focus on Native American people and communities, much of the goal (As Cook-Lynn mentioned, to educate students to affect policy change regarding Indigenous people) of NAS is lost.

Conclusion: Native American Studies and Augustana College

As a discipline, Native American Studies has come a long way from where it started, and continues to grow and build upon its foundations. However, it is clear that there is a resounding agreement among scholars, Native and non-Native, as to how a NAS program should look: indigenized. By focusing on working directly with contemporary Native communities, NAS programs are able to do work that is not research for the sake of the researcher, but that actually teaches students how to be active within these communities. Hiring Native faculty and instructors brings in a Native perspective as the head of the classroom rather than relying on interpretations through only non-Native scholars. And working to center Indigenous issues of importance such as sovereignty and survivance within the curriculum of a program centers actual Indigenous voices within the program as well. Doing all of this achieves the initial goals of those scholars who began developing NAS programs in the 60s and 70s.

So, what does this mean for Augustana College as a small liberal arts institution? What is clear is that by developing a Native American Studies program at the college, Augustana would be a leader among its peer institutions. It would be very easy to take what Illinois Wesleyan has started and grow it into something more. The land that the college is on is full of Native histories that are often untold—including the stories of the current day tribes who once lived here. Even if the college started small with a conglomerative program working to combine the Native focused classes we already have on campus, that would be a first step in the right direction. As time went on and the program grew, Native faculty could be hired, a chair could be developed to be held by one of these Native faculty members, and perhaps Augustana College could have its own NAS department. The body of literature is here, and it has many solutions to the problems that may arise during this process. All that needs to happen now is a decision to get things started.

Works Cited

“About American Culture Studies (Illinois Wesleyan University).” Illinois Wesleyan University

website. [Accessed October 16, 2019]. https://www.iwu.edu/american-studies/.

Augustus, Camie. 2015. “Knowledge Liaisons: Negotiating Multiple Pedagogies in Global

Indigenous Studies Courses.” Canadian Journal of Higher Education 45 (4): 1-17.

“Best Colleges with American Indian/Native American Studies Degrees in the U.S. (Prospex).”

Universities.com website. [Accessed October 16, 2019]. https://www.universities.com/programs/american-indian-native-american-studies-degrees

Boggs, Christina. “Black Hawk War of 1832: Summary and Facts.” Study.com. [Accessed May

13, 2019]. https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-black-hawk-war-of-1832-summary-facts.htmlhttps://study.com/academy/lesson/the-black-hawk-war-of-1832-summary-facts.html

Brolander, Glen E. 1985. An historical survey of the Augustana College campus. Augustana

Historical Society: Rock Island, Illinois.

Calloway, Colin G. 2002. “Eleazar Wheelock Meets Luther Standing Bear: Native American

Studies at Dartmouth College.” Native American Studies in Higher Education:

Models for Collaboration between Universities and Indigenous Nations. Edited by Duane Champagne & Jay Stauss, 17-27. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Carey, Michelle, and Michael Prince. 2015. “Designing an Australian Indigenous Studies

curriculum for the twenty-first century: Nakata’s ‘cultural interface’, standpoints and working beyond binaries.” Higher Education Research and Development 34 (2): 270-283.

Champagne, Duane & Jay Stauss, ed. 2002. “Introduction: Defining Indian Studies through

Stories and Nation Building.” In Native American Studies in Higher Education:

Models for Collaboration between Universities and Indigenous Nations. Edited by Duane Champagne & Jay Stauss, 1-15. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. 1997. “Who Stole Native American Studies?” Wicazo Sa Review, 12 (1):

9-28.

“Curriculum (Illinois Wesleyan University).” Illinois Wesleyan University website. [Accessed

October 16, 2019]. https://www.iwu.edu/american-studies/MajorsMinors.html.

“Facts (Illinois Wesleyan University).” Illinois Wesleyan University website. [Accessed October

16, 2019]. https://www.iwu.edu/about/facts.html.

H.F. Kett & Co. 1877. The Past and Present of Rock Island County, Illinois Chicago, IL: H.F.

Kett & Co. pp. 110-115.

Johannsen, Bruce E. 2003. “Trials and Triumphs of Teaching Introduction to Native American

Studies.” American Indian Quarterly 27 (1&2): 264-266.

Kidwell, Clara Sue. 2011. “American Indian Studies as an Academic Discipline.” American

Indian Culture and Research Journal 35 (1): 27-31.

Kidwell, Clara Sue. 2001. “The Native American Studies Program at the University of

Oklahoma.” Indigenous Nations Studies Journal 2 (1): 71-75.

Larson, Sidner. 2009. “Contemporary American Indian Studies.” American Indian Quarterly 33

(1): 18-32.

McGloin, Colleen. 2015. “Listening to hear: Critical allies in Indigenous Studies.” Australian

Journal of Adult Learning 55 (2): 267-282.

Morris, Patrick C. 1986. “Native American Studies: A Personal Overview.” Wicazo Sa Review 2

(2): 9-16.

Newhouse, David et al. 2002. “Culture, Tradition, and Evolution: The Department of Native

Studies at Trent University.” In Native American Studies in Higher Education:

Models for Collaboration between Universities and Indigenous Nations. Edited by Duane Champagne & Jay Stauss, 61-81. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Portillo, Annette. 2013. “Indigenous-Centered Pedagogies: Strategies for Teaching Native

American Literature and Culture.” The CEA Forum Winter/Spring: 155-178.

Royce, Kurtz. 1991. “Timber and Treaties: The Sauk and Mesquakie Decision to Sell Iowa

Territory.” Conservation History 35 (2): 56-64.

Weaver, Jace. 2007. “More Light Than Heat: The Current State of Native American Studies.”

American Indian Quarterly 31 (2): 233-255.

Willard, William, and Mary Kay Downing. 1991. “American Indian Studies and Inter-Cultural

Education.” Wicazo Sa Review 7 (2): 1-8.

“William E. Brooks.” 1885. Portrait and Biography. pp 264.

Written By Rebecca Garbe, Monica Thompson,

Caitlin Wheeler, and Maria Wood

Project Summary

Our project is about the Sauk and Meskwaki Lands on which Augustana now stands and the institution’s role in perpetuating colonization by not acknowledging these histories. Our goal for this project is to start the process of decolonization on campus by informing the college community about the history of the land on campus now sits upon. Currently the only form of recognition of Native history on Augustana's campus is the poorly kept Indian Boundary Line marker near the Slough. We believe Augustana needs to publicly and collaboratively acknowledge these histories. To do this, we will be orchestrating a project through two mediums. One is a mural and one is a video. The video would be displayed in proximity to mural and/or online for the public to view, and will contextualize the mural. The mural will be designed and painted by one or more Native American artists from the either the Sac, Fox or Mesquakee tribes. The video will also contain Native American narratives provided by Native American peoples from the previously mentioned tribes.

Both mediums will feature collaboration between the school and Native peoples, the focus on which will be the Native narratives which have long been forgotten and overlooked by Augustana and the larger community. Our video will give a history of how Augustana purchased the land and how by its purchasing of the land without recognition of the Native peoples who lived here, Augustana has contributed and benefited from the effects of colonization. The video will also feature one or more Native American speakers who will talk about the land and cultures before Augustana and colonization as well as in the present. This video will help contextualize the mural next to it as the mural will be created by Native peoples and inspired by the effect of colonization.

The mural will be located in either the Gerber Center or as a part of Sorenson bridge (See Appendix 1). The location was recently voted on by Augustana students who preferred Sorenson Bridge as the location. This voting acted as a way to create interaction between the students and the project. However, we would not include students in the creation of the mural because it would take away from the voices of the Native artists. The histories that should be present in the mural are not representative of the current student body, therefore, their voices are not those that should be highlighted. The video will be displayed next to mural and/or on the Augustana website for all patrons to see. By creating these public displays, the college can begin the process of decolonization and teach students about the peoples who land was forcibly taken from them and the hard truths of colonization. Placing these displays in places where students and faculty of the college traffic most guarantees they will be seen by all students and faculty and will provide communication between the community and the Native tribes involved.

Why Does This Matter?

Augustana College is a colonial institution that exists on land that was taken from the Sauk and Meskwaki peoples in an invalid treaty that was also broken by the United States Government. Even though the Swedish immigrants who founded this college did not take the land from the Native Americans themselves, the college has reaped the benefits. In order to right the wrongs of the past and allow true healing to begin it is important to acknowledge what happened.

We also recognize the presence of the Indian Boundary Marker on campus. However, we feel that the marker does not go far enough. The marker is also not in an obvious part of campus, and many people do not even realize that it is marker. We think that with our plan there is a much more obvious recognition of indigenous presence. Acknowledging that the land Augustana College is now on once belonged to The Sauk and Meskwaki is the first step in the process of decolonizing Augustana College. Hopefully with this first step, more will be taken and eventually, Augustana will become a decolonized institution on the Mississippi River Valley.

Project Learning Objectives

After engaging with our project, visitors should have knowledge of the effects of colonization on Native American people and culture, and an understanding of the history of the land their college campus stands on. They will have a stronger sense of ethical citizenship by placing themselves into other people’s shoes through interpretation of the mural and viewing of the video. Encountering our project will give students and faculty a better understanding of how they as individuals have a role in spreading decolonization through the acknowledgement of the effects of colonization and how institutions like Augustana and individuals like themselves are still benefiting from them. We hope that our project can inspire students and faculty to educate themselves more about colonization and the history of the area they live in. We also hope that by collaborating with Native peoples we can give them a larger audience for their voices to be heard.

Stakeholders

The major stakeholders in this project are the community at Augustana College including its board of trustees, faculty and especially students. The Board of Trustees will have a lot to say about the project because it involves the physical marking of property that they have invested in. Wherever the mural is placed, the donors of that space will play a major role as stakeholders and will have a say in the size and location of the mural. The faculty and the students are the target audience of this project so their feedback is extremely valuable and their say is important. Our most important/most major stakeholders are the tribes who used to occupy the lands. The intention of our project is to give these people a voice in the community so they can teach their history and inform the students about the effects of colonization and their persistence today. The tribes say in the project is the most important because without them there is no project.

Audience

Our audience are the Augustana Students here at the college, prospective students, and their parents. This a diverse student body who come from all around the United States and the world. 25% of Augustana students are students of color, 15% are international students, and 27% of students are first generation college students. With this diverse category of people it is important for us to have a display that will appeal to a broad group of people. Most will be entirely ignorant of the history of Native Americans in the United States. Some might believe that the Black Hawk War gave the United States Government the right to these lands, and most will not even know that the Black Hawk War happened in the Quad Cities. Some may be very passionate about this subject and want us to publicly condemn the actions of the Swedish immigrants who founded the college while other students will not think there is a point to publicly acknowledging that this land used to be inhabited by the Meskwaki and Sauk peoples. It is through understanding this wide range of viewpoints that we can create a better and more effective project.

Even though our main audience are the students at Augustana College, we also want to reach out to the public of the Quad Cities in general. The Quad Cities have an area of over 400,000 people and crosses state lines. There is also a growing immigrant population. The cities are diverse just like Augustana’s student body is. This means that all of the same stakes and issues that exist in Augustana’s student body exist in the Quad Cities as well. The Quad Cities might even have a more strong stake in the development of the project because a lot of different businesses are named after Black Hawk, but they give no context into who Black Hawk was or why he is important to the area. There is also Black Hawk State Park which is a large public park with a museum people attend. With this lack of awareness Quad citizens most likely do not realize their contribution to the erasure of indigenous presence in the Quad Cities even though several buildings, roads, and landmarks are named after them. By understanding this, we can use the project to change the narrative and help the Quad Cities realize and reckon with the difficulties of their past.

The Project

Broadly, the content of this project is a reflection of multiple histories of Rock Island County, and the land that Augustana College currently resides on. The histories that will take precedence in our video and mural, are the oral histories of the Sauk and Meskwaki people who previously occupied the land that the college is on. Secondarily, and comparatively, we will be utilizing historical information regarding this land as maintained by the Rock Island County Recorder’s Office and the Rock Island County Historical Society. While the information gained from both of these locations is important for our understanding and the contextualization of the colonial role in the removal of Sauk and Meskwaki people from the land Augustana is on, we hope that the voices of the Sauk and Meskwaki will drive this project. In this proposal, we can only discuss in-depth the historical evidence that will be included based on our findings. However, discussion of how Native voices will be framed and given space in our project will also be given thorough explanation.

Based on our findings, the cession of the land that Augustana is on from Sauk and Meskwaki tribes began in 1804 with the creation of a treaty in St. Louis that would sell 50 million acres of land East of the Mississippi River to the U.S. government. The government paid $2,234.50 with an annual annuity of $1000 for this land, and notified any Native groups living within these 50 million acres, that their removal would be imminent but not enforced until white settlers bought the land ceded from the government . While some of the sources we found to conflict, one book, The Past and Present of Rock Island County, Illinois, suggested that Colonel George Davenport was the first settler to buy land in Rock Island county in 1829. However, based on maps provided in Royce Kurtz’s article Timber and Treaties: The Sauk and Mesquakie Decision to Sell Iowa Territory it seems as though Native people in Rock Island County were forced to move across the river into Iowa in 1825. That being said, we suspect that it was sometime within the timespan of 1825-1829 that Sauk and Meskwaki people were removed from the County. This corresponds with the beginning of the Black Hawk war which commenced in 1832. Black Hawk believed that the Treaty of 1804 was invalid because it was signed under dubious means, by people who did not represent that tribes. So when settlers started to move into the area, he refused to leave. In 1830, he followed Sauk leader Keokuk across the Mississippi. In 1831, he and a group of 1,000 Native people returned to Illinois with the goal of harvesting food for the tribe. The white settlers were not happy about this, however, and made him sign the Corn Treaty. This treaty stated that Black Hawk would no longer enter Illinois, that he would submit to Keokuk, and in exchange his people would be given all the corn that they needed. So, he and his people returned to Iowa. However, upon realizing that the corn was never going to come in 1832, and that the Corn Treaty had also been broken, Black Hawk led another 1,000 people into Illinois to try to harvest corn again. This time when the settlers asked him to leave he refused, arguing that the land belonged to his people. In retaliation, the settlers attacked killing 400-600 Native people and forcing the others across the river and into various states in the region.

Following the cession of the land by the government and the forced removal of Sauk and Meskwaki people into enemy territory, there were an increasing amount of white settlers entering Rock Island County to purchase land. We found in Glen E. Brolander’s book about Augustana’s campus An Historical Survey of the Campus that the first portion of land that was bought by the college in Rock Island County was purchased from Henry P. Hull for $10,000. Upon further investigation, we discovered that an acre of land was donated to Augustana by W. E. Brooks whose family moved to Rock Island County in 1835. The Brooks family owned the land that Augustana currently is on from 38th Street to 46th Street and 7th Ave to 18th Ave.

We are currently unsure of several factors. The first is how Hull obtained the land to sell to Augustana College. We found records that show that he was the pallbearer at the funeral of W. E. Brooks’s wife. This suggests they might have been friends, and that Hull could have bought land from Brooks as well and later sold it to Augustana. However, we found out that Hull also was the husband of the widow of Welcome Robins who owned land near where Augustana is located as well. If Hull did not obtain land from Brooks, we think that it was possible that he gained ownership of the Robins’ land through his marriage to Welcome’s widow.

Our interpretation of this archival information will bring focus largely on the fact that Augustana is located on land that was stolen from the Sauk and Meskwaki people who lived here. Furthermore, that Augustana has since then profited from this stolen land and the forced removal of the Native people who lived here. While we did do in-depth research into the histories of certain white settlers to identify how the land Augustana is on was obtained, their stories will not be the center of our video or mural.

Instead, the overarching narrative will be provided by Sauk and Meskwaki people with their willing participation. The removal of Native people is only something that a Native person can truly comment on and understand. In developing this narrative, the Sauk and Meskwaki would essentially be able to lead the project. We want to make sure that their oral histories regarding their removal, as well as their relationship to this land, and any other things they deem important, are documented. We would most likely obtain these oral histories through semi-structured interviewing. We want to be sure that anyone participating in the interviewing is comfortable, so we will be traveling to Tama, Iowa, for the Meskwaki and various regions (Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma) for the Sauk. But before interviewing can happen, we need to spend time among the native communities to build rapport and trust. This will probably require multiple trips to these communities.

The stakeholders involved in this project largely include the Sauk and Meskwaki and Augustana as a whole (students, staff and faculty, administration, donors). The best way that we can ensure that we are being accountable to our stakeholders at Augustana will be to make sure that the information we provide regarding our part of the history of Rock Island County is as historically accurate as possible. In order to remain accountable to the Sauk and Meskwaki, it will be important that we truly do give them the narrative voice in the video and hire artists for the mural who are part of both groups. Furthermore, it is going to be necessary to ensure that the people working with the Sauk and Meskwaki to create the film and mural are students or faculty who specialize in inter-cultural understanding (including disciplines like history, anthropology, sociology, women and gender studies, and religion). While we believe Augustana would try to do a good job in facilitating collaboration to create these videos, making sure that those involved have experience in this will be the biggest way that we can ensure Native voices are heard.

Storyboard Ideas for Part of the Film

Our idea for a storyboard includes a history of the Augustana lands and the Sauk and Meskwaki who lived here originally. We also want to include oral histories of the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes of the area to let them share their voices and not maintain a white narrative by narrating it for them.

(Note: to view the images of the storyboard, please click here)

Image #1 of Augustana College: “Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois is now currently home to the Vikings. However, before the cession of the land that Augustana is on, Sauk and Meskwaki tribes called this place home.”

Image #2 of Mississippi River: “The creation of the 1804 treaty in St. Louis would sell 50 million acres of land East of the Mississippi River to the U.S. government and thus pushed the Sauk and Meskwaki people West. The government notified any Native groups, living within these 50 million acres, that their removal would be imminent but not enforced until white settlers bought the land ceded from the government.

Image #3 of Black Hawk: Sometime during 1825-1829, Sauk and Meskwaki people were removed from the County. This corresponds with the beginning of the Black Hawk war which commenced in 1832. We believe that the 1804 treaty in St. Louis is the treaty that Black Hawk historically believed was broken leading to his protest to his and other Sauk people’s right to land in Rock Island County.

Image #4 of land deed: With the disparities surrounding Augustana’s land, the original keeper of the land is being called into question. The US landowner was H.P. Hull and he acquired the land through purchase or marriage inheritance. The land at this point had already been settled by the Sauk and Meskwaki therefore, this land was not theirs for the settling. The Augustana land was Sauk and Meskwaki territory that was forcibly taken.

Image #5 of symbol of Sauk and Meskwaki: To stop the white narrative, we wish to collaborate with Sauk and Meskwaki people to give their tribal recollection and opinions surrounding the loss of this land and how it affects them. This image is only being used for our proposal; this is subject to change after collaboration.

We are not the first to acknowledge Native American history and communities. Lawrence University of Appleton, Wisconsin unveiled a Native American mural this year in 2019. It is an effort to recognize Indigenous communities and to raise awareness that they are not gone. It is not permanent however and is only expected to remain for 5 years. Unlike Lawrence University, we are hoping to maintain a permanent mural.

Collaboration

There would most likely be multiple groups involved in this collaboration on this project. Broadly these groups include members of the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes, members of the Augustana community, and members of the Quad City community. We will examine each of these groups separately to address the many moving pieces that would be involved in our project.

As our goal is to center the Sauk and Meskwaki voice in our project, we believe it would be important to incorporate the work of historians, elders, artists, historical voices, and other community members into our project. Currently, there is a historic preservationist, and a conservator at the Meskwaki Cultural Center in Tama, Iowa. We would like to be in touch with these two people, Jonathan L. Buffalo and Mary Young Bear, to develop more historical material that goes beyond the records that Rock Island County currently has. As for the Sauk nation, we would like to meet with historians from their tribe as well. However, we were unable to find the names of historians that currently work with the tribe. The Sauk does have an Elder committee as well as a repatriation/culture committee that we think would be important to get in contact with. As a bridge between Native communities and Augustana, we would also like to be in contact with Juaquin Hamilton who has brought his Sauk dance troupe, Youngbird Dance Troupe, to campus. He is a representative of the Sauk people outside of their governmental system, and would be helpful in creating and maintaining relationships with the Sauk and Fox.

We would also like to get in contact with Sauk and Meskwaki artists who could help us with this project. Because there are multiple groups of Sauk and Fox people, we are going to go through the Sauk Nation Board of Elders to establish a committee made of members from each community. We would like both the Sauk and Fox committee and the Meskwaki to nominate an artist from their tribes to paint the mural on campus. An example artist is Dawson Davenport, a member of the Meskwaki tribe who has created visual art for different places in Iowa to demonstrate where different areas of land started. While he is focused on graphic design and not painting, we think that he would be helpful to have at least on the video crew. Another artist to is April Holder, a member of the Sauk and Fox Nation. Holder specifically works with paint and frequently paints images of Native people. A recent artist statement by her reads: “There is an uncomfortable reason why I make art. It is like breathing. My work is the resemblance of memories, the narrative of family and friends, and the continuous development of the collective consciousness.” In regard to these artists, we would provide them with the oral histories that we obtained while creating the video, and allow them to have creative reign from there.

As for the Augustana Community, we would want to enlist the help of faculty on campus who have had previous experience working with Native people or an interest in decolonizing the campus. If our goal is to create space for Native people on campus then we need to make sure the faculty members we involve are going to actively take part in that. Some potential professors that we would be interested involving due to their efforts to already begin decolonizing the campus are Dr. Adam Kaul in the anthropology department, and Dr. Claire Kovacs, the director of the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art. Dr. Fockler has done work in uncovering the history of Augustana’s land, we would like to collaborate with him as well to develop a fuller understanding of that history. We would want to also include Native faculty who may be a part of Augustana, though we are unaware of any that the college currently hires. Also, we would work with the Marketing Department on campus and Black Squirrel Productions to produce the actual video content.

Outside of Augustana, the Quad Cities community has some people/organizations that would be useful to our project. For example, Black Hawk State Historic Site and the staff there has historical information regarding the removal of Sauk and Meskwaki people. Also, historians at the site would hopefully be able to put us in contact with Sauk and Meskwaki people who would be willing to collaborate to create this project. Furthermore, keeping in contact with the Rundles who have made films about Native people in the past would be a good resource for us to consult. Their knowledge about how to create a film that centers the Native voice would be very useful to a project such as this.

In general, we expect that collaborations with anyone involved would include having conversations with each group both separately and then together. However, individual collaborations might look different. For example, with the Sauk and Meskwaki historians we would hold semi-structured interviews to get information regarding oral histories to begin with. As for the Sauk and Meskwaki artist(s), we would bring them to the space that we were thinking of using for the mural, give them some ideas of what we would hope the mural would include, and then give them creative control otherwise. When it comes to Augustana faculty and other members of the Quad Cities, we would initiate conversations with them facilitate collaboration. In the end, we would invite each member who collaborated in this project to see the mural, watch the video, and discuss what changes, if any, should be made.

Resources Needed

The estimate of the mural pricing will vary depending on size, location, wall conditions, length of time, and supplies. An average size of the mural, to potentially fit for both locations, would be 12ft x 5ft. The estimated cost of each square footage would be between $20-$30, roughly overall cost of $1,200-$1,800. This is for only one artist, so if we could be in collaboration with another from the other tribe we would request a beginning budget of $4,000. The wall conditions are factors to beginning and maintaining the mural. The mural above 7th street has not been treated and will be affected by weather, thus resulting in a fee(s) promptly and gradually for maintenance. The potential mural location within the Gerber Center has already been painted and has proper conditions to begin a mural. The only additional costs for this location would be paid time for the removal of pictures and the temporary removal of the railing along the wall. The length of completion will be discussed with the Sauk and Meskwaki artist(s), preferably completed within a sensibly priced 3 week time period, however if it needs to be extended for whatever reason we will adjust the potential budget.

Reproduction rights and copyright will go to to the selected artist(s) of the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes. To maintain a mutually beneficial relationship, if and when any merchandise is created to support the mural and its artists that could be sold at Augustana College’s bookstore, 60% of the profits will be given to the tribes or artist(s) to use for their discretion.

Paints and supplies (brushes, mediums, paint thinner, plaster etc) will have a cap of $2,000, this includes potential scaffolding. Paint costs are averaging around the estimated fact that 1 gallon of paint is needed for 400 square feet. Our mural will be around 60 square feet. The paints provided by us will be water resistant and moisture resistant perfect for outdoor and indoor murals. For 16 ounces of paint, from our desired company, the costs estimate around $9.00 - $13.00 depending on the number of paint colors used. The rented scaffolding used, at the artists preference, varies between $40.00 - $150.00 a week.

If the mural on 7th street is accepted for collaboration with the Sauk and Meskwaki people, we will need to send in an application, free of charge, to the City Clerk's Office of Rock Island, Illinois. A two weeks in advance notice is required for the particular date concerning completion of the mural. This particular application we are looking at concerns block parties, so further investigation and enquiry is needed for an extended period of closure on this high traffic street.

If the chosen location of the mural is within Gerber Center at Augustana College, we would suggest a date for completion within summer vacation. The likelihood of student or faculty traffic would be null. We are looking at a 3 week deadline to remain relatively cost efficient. This is subject to change during collaboration discussions and what grants are accepted.

To give this mural dialogue, we wanted to compose a short video, 3 to 5 minutes long, to be displayed on Augustana College’s webpage. Within this video, we wanted to provide the historical facts surrounding present Augustana land and past ancestral land of the Sauk and Meskwaki, to give context and understanding to Augustana students, alumni, faculty, the surrounding community, and to give recognition to Sauk and Meskwaki tribes. The production of this video will require additional costs. The United States copyright standard application fee costs $55. We also want to have Sauk and Meskwaki voices heard on this video to provide recognition, and additional fees may be required from this action and that will be discussed in future formal consultations. An estimate of the cost would be $250 per Indigenous person volunteering their voice to the project. We would collaborate with Black Squirrel Productions, one of the Augustana film club on campus, for producing, filming and editing our video. The team will be paid $8.25/hr with an estimate working hours of 200 hours. The overall video production cost is an estimated $5,000.

Transportation and accommodations of the Sauk and Meskwaki artists will also need to be considered. For initial talks with the tribes councils, we will need to consider the costs of gas going to and from Meskwaki Settlement in Tama, Iowa and wherever the Sauk tribes would like to meet, considering they are spread out over states. We have an estimated amount of $6,000 for transportation, not including the 3 week time period. A level of trust be established between Augustana, Sauk and Meskwaki and that would require multiple trips, possible frequent air travel and hotel stays when in initial talks. Once we have the artists here, we will need to supply room and board. The costs of hotels in this area are around $100/day which is $2,200 for 3 weeks. For two artists, the costs would be $4,400. The extra $2,600 will be used for food, which is about $60/day for each person.

Other Sources of Funding

Art Works Grant

(https://www.arts.gov/grants/apply-grant/grants-organizations)

This grant is provided the United States Government in order to celebrate the U.S’s cultural diversity and heritage. We would qualify for this grant because of the mural that we want to paint on Augustana’s campus. It would promote the heritage of Native Americans and invite mutual respect for the Native Americans by having them collaborate on the project. This grant will provide anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000, depending on need, for the project.

Cultural Awareness Grant

(https://iltf.org/grants/cultural-awareness/)

This grant is provided by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation to “revitalize cultural and spiritual values related to Indian land.” We qualify for this grant because the goal is to renew the Sauk and Meskwaki ties to this land through both the video and the mural. Recent grantees have received between $25,000 and $40,000.

Media Projects: Production Grants (https://www.neh.gov/grants/public/media-projects-production-grants)

This grant is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It supports documentary film, television, radio, and podcast projects that are centered around the humanities. Our project centers around this history of the land Augustana College stands on and is grounded in the history discipline. The grant has no minimum award and a maximum award of $1 million.

Filmmaking Grants

(http://filmmakerswithoutborders.org/grants/)

There are a variety of the grants that we can utilize that are sponsored by Filmmakers Without Borders depending on which part of the filmmaking process we want to use the grant money for. We qualify for this grant because we fit one of the categories that the grants sponsored for topics the films need to address: social justice. Our project qualifies as a social justice project because decolonization practices can be seen as social justice work by reinserting Native Americans into the narrative of American history. The awards for these grants range from $100 to $5000.

Sources

Augustana College, Augustana Viewbook, , 2018, accessed May 7, 2019, https://www.augustana.edu/files/2019- 03/2018_Viewbook_sm.pdf.

"Rock Island and The Quad Cities," Augustana College, , accessed May 07, 2019, https://augustana.edu/about- us/quad-cities.

H.F. Kett & Co., The Past and Present of Rock Island County, Illinois (Chicago,H.F. Kett & Co., 1877) 110-115.

Royce Kurtz, “Timber and Treaties: The Sauk and Mesquakie Decision to Sell Iowa Territory,” Conservation HIstory 35, no. 2 (1991): 56-64.

Boggs, Christina. “Black Hawk War of 1832: Summary and Facts.” Study.com https://study.com/academy/lesson/the- black-hawk-war-of-1832-summary-facts.htmlhttps://study.com/academy/lesson/the-black-hawk-war-of-1832 summary-facts.html (accessed May 13, 2019).

“William E. Brooks”, Portrait and Biography (1885): 264.

“Funeral of Mrs. Brooks”

Image. Meskwaki Nation: Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa. Accessed May 13, 2019. https://meskwaki.org/about-us/history/

Pafoua Yang. “Lawrence University unveils Native American mural.” Fox11News. Accessed May 9, 2019 https://fox11online.com/news/local/lawrence-university-unveil-native-american-mural

“Meskwaki Cultural Center and Museum.” Meskwaki Nation. https://meskwaki.org/about-us/museum/. (April 2019).

“Leadership.” Sauk and Fox Nation. http://sacandfoxnation-nsn.gov/government/leadership/. (April 2019).

“Artist’s Statement.” The Art Hall OKC. https://www.arthallokc.com/april-holder. (April 2019).

“Square Footage Calculator.” Calculator Soup. https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/construction/square- footage-calculator.php. (accessed April 28, 2019)

“How Much Paint Do I Need?” Glidden. https://www.glidden.com/how-much-paint-do-i-need. (accessed April 28, 2019)

McArdle, Thaneeya. “Mural Techniques.” Art is Fun. https://www.art-is-fun.com/mural-techniques. (accessed April 28, 2019)

“Chroma Acrylic Mural Paint.” Blick. https://www.dickblick.com/products/chroma-acrylic-mural-paint/. (accessed April 28, 2019)

“Scaffolding Cost.” Costhelper Home and Garden. https://home.costhelper.com/scaffold.html. (accessed April 28, 2019)

“Street Closing/Block Party.” Rock Island Illinois. https://www.rigov.org/743/Street-Closing-Block-Party. (accessed April 28, 2019)

“Fees.” Copyright.gov. https://www.copyright.gov/about/fees.html. (accessed April 28, 2019)

"Home," ILTF, , accessed April 24, 2019, https://iltf.org/grants/cultural-awareness/.

Written by Monica Thompson

Introduction

Imagine you are a white settler during the middle of the 1800s’. You are settling in uncharted territory that is now the Midwest and are afraid of what your new home will hold. Before you head West, you pick up a newspaper, published in the nearest city, and read about the native peoples you will meet. You read stories about rebellious native leaders, war and violence. Fear is what you expect to encounter as you settle into your new home. Instead, to your surprise, you meet native peoples who are not violent but are friendly and you build a relationship with them. This portion of history is forgotten in stories we hear about settlers and both their and native narratives.

One native narrative that is commonly cited among scholars is Blackhawks autobiography. In the historiography of Blackhawk's autobiography, scholars focus on how his voice has been manipulated by white voices. They analyze the extent to which readers can trust the book as being true to Blackhawk's word. However, they fail to acknowledge the book was written in an atmosphere were race relations between whites and natives were changing. Race relations during the time of Blackhawk were different in urban and rural portions of the Midwest. Blackhawks autobiography was published in an atmosphere where white urban newspapers perpetuated the general public's fear and negative perceptions of natives, while individual white accounts show that many settlers developed generated respectful, friendly and even trusting relationships. These newspapers perpetuated these ideas through stories of violence, by grouping native leaders and judging natives by American ideals. Their ultimate goal was to generalize Native Americans in order induce fear in whites and reduce rebellion amongst Natives. However, rural settlers were having friendly relations with natives, and native leaders had vastly different aspirations to the contrast of popular opinion expressed in newspapers.

How Newspapers Characterize and Compare Native American Leaders

Urban newspapers were very popular during the 1800s’ as they wrote about different contemporary issues that interested readers. A popular subject of white urban newspapers was Native Americans. They were seen as the ‘other’ and a fascinating subject for white readers, especially for those who were moving West and never engaged with Native Americans before. Settlers were afraid of the unknown and wild lands they were ‘discovering’ and who they would meet on these journeys. Newspapers were the only way they could gain information about these newly charted territories and the violent, foreign people who occupied them. As white settlers moved further west, they encountered the Natives they had read about in newspapers and approached these encounters with expectations from what they had read. Stories of vicious war chiefs littered the pages of newspapers and perpetuated settlers already fearful views of the unknown peoples they were to encounter. Meanwhile, stories of individual interactions with Natives aren’t to be found. By focusing on violent war stories, newspapers enforced the idea of all Native Americans being violent and aggressive in order to achieve their goal of oppressing Natives.

Newspapers also compare Native leaders to generalize Native Americans into a few simple categories: rebellious, violent, and defeated. They focus on stories of Native leaders who rebel against the United States by fighting for their lands, which then leads to them either joining forces with the British or creating their army, and finally the last thing all the leaders have in common is that they have been defeated. By generalizing these Native leaders into these 3 categories, newspapers taught their readers that Native Americans all had the same goals in mind and behaved the same way, as violent rebels who would do anything to regain their land.

One such newspaper was The National Register. In 1817, The National Register published an article titled The Death of Tecumseh. The article describes the battle between American battalion and British troops aided by Native Americans led by Tecumseh. Tecumseh was the chief of the Shawnee people in the Ohio Valley during the late 1700s’. He famously sided with the British during the War of 1812. This article was written after the war ,and relays the surprise the soldiers felt at seeing the British and Native battalions organized and ready to fight. But the article’s main goal is to figure out once and for all who killed Tecumseh. The article describes killing Tecumseh as in honor for whomever accomplished the feat. This topic was popular for readers as he was seen a formidable chief. By stating the honor in killing a Native chief, the author assures readers that killing Natives is justifiable, and in war is honorable. While this article doesn’t directly speak to the violence of Natives, it implies that Native Americans, specifically Tecumseh, were an honor to kill because of how they fought. Other articles are more direct in describing the violence of Native Americans.

The Circular published an article in 1864 about violence of Native Americans during war. This article was entitled The Early History of Wallingford, and describes the lives of early settlers in Wallingford, Connecticut. The article describes Natives during King Philip’s War in 1675 as being “...numerous, very ferocious and warlike, and exasperated by the alleged encroachment on their rights”. The article also states that Native Americans during the war murdered many whites and pillaged and burned their homes. The article fails to mention the deaths of any Natives during the war and they way natives were treating implying that the natives were more violent than whites and were cold-blooded when it came to killing and pillaging. The article was also published almost a hundred years after the war, yet makes the violence the Native Americans committed seem fresh and recent adding to the idea that Natives are violent beings.

Both articles focus on wars raged by the infamous chiefs Tecumseh and King Philip. Tecumseh was a popular individual in newspaper discussions of Native Americans. He had impressively unified multiple tribes and fought to reclaim his lands, and was deemed an honorable chief. Of course, he only became honorable after his defeat in battle. After his defeat, Tecumseh was given celebrity status and his story was told around the country. Similarly, King Philip, the chief of the Pokunoket in 1675, was also popular in newspaper discussions of Native chiefs after he was defeated. Both chiefs gained popularity with their defeats in battle as the general public was no longer afraid of them. Instead, they were novelties that the general public wanted to learn as much about as they could. They symbolized the honorable savage with their commitments to their causes but the main reason they were upheld was as a reminder of their defeats. Blackhawk, the chief of the Sauk people during the middle 1800s’, received the same treatment later after he was defeated and paraded around the United States. Newspaper articles used Native chiefs common defeats to compare them to other defeated Native chiefs in order to generalize all Native Americans.

The Hesperian newspaper published an article about Blackhawk after his death in 1838. This article epitomizes the generalizations of Native leaders and uses them to analyze Blackhawk’s life. The writer begins his illustration of “...the most remarkable incidents of [Blackhawk’s] somewhat eventful career” by comparing him to King Philip, Red-Jacket and Tecumseh. He is described as lesser than other chiefs in greatness ”...yet far superior in intellect and courage…”. The writer may have held Blackhawk in a higher regard of intellect and courage because his death did not result from his defeat in battle, but instead was a result of old age. Blackhawk may also have been regarded as having a higher intellect because he was attached to the publication of his autobiography and would’ve been considered an author which was not a common feat for Native Americans to achieve. However, the author cannot directly compliment Blackhawk and instead gives a backhanded compliment to both Blackhawk and the other chiefs by comparing them. By comparing them, he undermines the memory and success of every chief in their individual goals.

When reading more information about the leaders that the author compares Blackhawk to, it is easy to see how the newspaper made the connections between them. Both Blackhawk and King Philip had their names attributed to the wars they fought in and both fought for the use of their lands. Blackhawk and Tecumseh both united Native groups. Unification was more important to Tecumseh as it was his ultimate goal while Blackhawk had created alliances for trade, but both were seen as being very successful in doing so. Finally, the comparison between Blackhawk and Red-Jacket is clear as they were both seen as men of words. Red-Jacket gave many inspiring and formidable speeches about the spaces Native Americans occupy outside of the United States government while Blackhawk verbally dictated his own autobiography. In this way, both Red-Jacket and Blackhawk would’ve been viewed as more intellectual leaders as they engaged in the arts of speaking and dictating, Comparing Native leaders against each other was not the only comparisons that newspapers made, they also compared and judged Native American actions by American and Christian values.

Judging Native Americans by White Values

Whites had little experience with Native American values and traditions, and didn’t care to learn about what different tribes valued as they saw their own values as being superior to Natives. In newspapers, whites compare Native actions to their own Christian values, and judge Natives based on these values. Meanwhile, Native American values were not the same as Christian values, and the actions they engage in were seen as morally correct for their own upbringings. Native values were not taken into account by white newspaper writers who instead condemned non-Christian Native Americans while placing Christian Native Americans on a pedestal and using them an example for how all Natives should act.

In 1819, the Weekly Recorder published an article called the Christian Indian Martyr which tells the story of elder Native American who had converted to Christianity. Throughout the article, the elder sings the praises of Christianity and exclaims that all Natives should convert to Christianity. The elder is then sentenced to execution by Tecumseh for preaching Christianity, and is held up as a martyr by the whites around him. The newspaper used this story to show readers an example of a good and noble Native American by giving the example of a Native who died for his Christian beliefs. By defining the Native who was executed as a Christian martyr, the newspaper places him on a pedestal which lowers the status of Natives who did not convert to Christianity, and portraying them as being violent by focusing on the execution ordered by Tecumseh. By publishing a story where non-Christian Natives execute a Christian Native, the newspaper defines non-Christian Native Americans as being violent to Christians, both Native and non-Native a like.

Another newspaper from 1825 published a story that holds Christian Natives to a higher status than non-Christian natives. The Western Recorder printed an article supposedly written and submitted by an educated Native boy who explains the plight of the Native Americans, while also praising the strengths and values of American citizens. He proclaims that his people have been wronged by whites, but the only thing he asks for recompense for his people is that Christianity be extended to all Native Americans. His proclamation on the wrongdoings of whites was common among Native Narratives as it addresses issues of stolen land and war between Natives and whites. However, the boys plight changes when it comes to compensation he wants from whites. While most Natives fought to regain their lands or to be outside the control of the United States, the boy only asks for Christianity to be given to all. The newspaper publishes this request because to readers it would have seemed like the boy was being level-headed and staying within his sphere as a Native by not arguing over who should own land, but instead asking to be able to practice Christianity. This plea would’ve been seen as more honorable and moral, and also doesn’t force feelings of guilt onto white readers. Conscious of not wanting its readers to feel guilty, the newspaper published this story to show that the most moral of Native Americans were Christians.

Quad Cities Settlers’ Accounts of Relations with Natives

While white newspapers were publishing stories of non-Christian Native Americans being violent and morally corrupt, individual settlers in the Quad Cities were setting forth and developing, to their own surprise, respectful and trusting relationships with Native Americans. New settlers coming to the Midwest were arriving with preconceived notions of life on the frontier that were forged and kept alive by stories they read in newspapers, as newspapers were their only source of information about new lands. Families were packing up and moving into a new landscape to give their try at cultivating and taming the new ‘wild’ lands of the Midwest. While settling into their new lives, they interacted with natives they had read about in newspapers and found them to be completely different than they had previously thought.

In interviews conducted with settlers from the Quad Cities and their children during the early 1900s’, many interviewees described encounters with Native Americans that did not line up with the stories portrayed in newspapers. In one story, a man named John Moody describes how he and his wife settled in the Quad Cities near the auction house. He explains that his wife was deathly scared of Native Americans and one day when he came home he saw that his wife had barricaded the house because a group of Natives had visited. He talked to one of the Native men, who explained that they were not there to do any harm but just wanted some tobacco. The settler gave the group of Natives some tobacco and they were on their way.The group of Natives returned a few more times, and the settler finally told them they couldn’t come back again as he had no more to give. The Natives respected the mans wishes and never returned to his house again. This story may seem insignificant in the span of Native and white relations, but for settlers who were afraid of Native Americans and what they might do to them, like the interviewees wife. these respectful interactions would have assured them they had nothing to fear.

Figure 1: Photo of John Moody attached to Hauberg Interview

(To view figure please click here)

Interview between John Henry Hauberg and John Moody, Folder 48-2, Box 48, MSS-27 John Henry Hauberg Papers, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Another interviewee named Sam Calloway tells of how he grew up around Native Americans and how he enjoyed spending most of his time with them.He tells of how they used to travel to the swamps together and that he liked “their wild life”. Later in his life, he tells another story of how a group of Natives on their annual trip were passing through and looked to be in bad shape and in need of ammunition. Against the advice of other settlers, the interviewee gave the group his rifle and all the ammunition he had on him. Other settlers told him it was a mistake and that he would never see that gun again, but half a year or so later the group returned with “[his] gun, and lots of ammunition, and wanted to give [the interviewee] a couple of ponies for accomodation”. This story contrasts greatly with the stories in newspapers of violent Native Americans, and shows how different life for settlers actually was than in newspapers. This settler in particular had many kind and respectful interactions with Native Americans throughout his life yet stories like his are left out of newspaper narratives of Native Americans.

Among this collection of interviews is another interview with a settler named David Sears who grew up neighbors with a white man who married and had a family with a Native American woman. The family consisted of the man, his wife, and their 4 children and the interviewee describes them all positively. He describes the head of the household, the white man, as being friends with George Davenport and trusted to run the trade post when he was gone.The interviewee also talks about how the wife was “different from the ordinary [Native American]. She was very pleasant and very sociable… she’d laugh and joke with [him] and [his] father… she dressed like pioneer white women and made soap just like [white] pioneer women”. He discusses how the two young daughters would canoe expertly across the river and sell gooseberries in Davenport and Rock Island. He also mentions the oldest son was good-looking and helped his father out, and the younger son was “...tall, straight and active, springy and very dignified”. All of this descriptions of the family are quite positive, and it seems their Native blood had no effect on how the settler formed relationships with them. The mans marriage to a native woman also didn’t seem to affect his friendship with prominent figures, such as George Davenport, or his place in society. His children seem to have been accepted in society and his daughters were even able to cross the river without danger. This story is particularly important to understand because it so starkly contrasts the negative outlook on Native and settler relationships. Not only was a white man in the Quad Cities able to marry and have children with a Native women, he was also able to keep his position in society and his family was accepted, not feared, by his neighbors. Even his 6 foot 2 inch half-native son was seen as dignified and not feared by the interviewee as a child.

Interviews are not the only way to glimpse into what real interactions between settlers and Native Americans were like; there are also ledgers. In a ledger from 1826, possibly belonging to the infamous Antoine Leclair who translated the autobiography of Blackhawk and who was half-native himself, there are transactions between the shopkeeper and Native shoppers. When skimming through the purchases, or debits, of Natives a few items continuously pop up, the more expensive one being a rifle. By itself this debit transaction doesn’t mean much besides Natives were buying guns and Leclair may have been selling them. A closer look on the credits side of these transactions, it can be seen that the Natives at a later date would sell back the rifle for the same price they had purchased it. By selling rifles to Natives, and buying them back for the same price, the storeowner was using a borrowing system with the Native Americans which means he had built trusting relationships with the Natives who used his shop. If the store owner was Antoine Leclair it would make sense that he would have many Native customers as he spoke many Native languages. The fact that he was half-native and ran a shop catering to Natives and whites speaks to his status within the community. His blood and his customers blood did not affect his business nor his influence on the area. This ledger can bring an inside perspective into Native and white business relationships. If whites were having business relationships, especially ones that used a borrowing system, then they were developing non-violent and trusting relationships with Native Americans.

Figure 2: Photo of Antoine Leclaire’s Ledger

(To view figure please click here)

Debits are on the left column while credits are on the right

Ledger shows transactions with two Native Americans, both ‘borrowing’ rifles

Indian Trade Ledgers, possibly belonging to Antoine Leclaire, 1826, Folder 4, Box 1, MSS 101Indian Trade Ledgers Collection, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Kerry Trask’s Argument

In his book, Blackhawk: The Battle for the Heart of America, Kerry Trask argues regions were divided both geographically and by their attitudes towards issues. This caused the East and the West to have different views of Native Americans as well. He states starting in the 1820s’, Eastern viewed Native Americans as ‘noble savages’, while Westerns viewed them as violent and diabolical. These harsh Western views, he argues, created a climate where all settlers hated Natives to their cores creating the atmosphere of the Blackhawk War. Trask in his book approaches race relations in the Midwest through generalizations. He comes to conclusions that all white settlers hated Native Americans and viewed them as violent, when in reality individual settlers all had different interactions and as show previously these reactions were very positive despite the fear incited by newspapers. If Trask had taken into account individual settlers stories he would’ve seen that Westerners as a whole did not hate Native Americans but instead public opinion through newspapers clouded the experiences of actual settlers.

Conclusion

Too much of history is generalized to fit into an idea of what people think should’ve happened. Evidence to the contrary is written off or ignored because it doesn’t fit that general idea. Midwestern history has undergone a similar treatment with the stories of Quad Cities settlers. They are assumed to have had poor or negative relations with Native Americans because public sources, like newspapers, show us whites were afraid and generalized Natives as violent. But when we look closely at settler narratives, we see a different story. One that may not fit the mold we previously thought, but one that deserves to be acknowledged anyways. The discovery of positive settler and Native relations is important to Midwestern history because they reveal to us a new understanding of the past in the Quad Cities. Learning more about Native and white relations in the Quad Cities area specifically can help us understand how whites viewed natives which affected their actions towards natives. By comparing both public opinion, perpetuated by newspapers, compared to individual settlers opinion, through ledgers and interviews, we can understand relationships between whites and natives. This is important to Midwestern history overall, because so much of history is compiled by written public record, like newspapers, and ignores individual accounts which are equally if not more important to understand relationships between all peoples.

Bibliography

Early History of Wallingford, (Circular: 1864).

Editor’s Budget: Blackhawk, The Hesperian; a Monthly Miscellany of General Literature, Original

and Select (1838-1839), (Columbus: 1838).

Gewen, Barry, Chief of a Vanishing Empire, (New York Times: 1998).

History.com editors, Tecumseh, (A&E Television Networks: 2018).

Indian Trade Ledgers, possibly belonging to Antoine Leclaire, 1826, Folder 4, Box 1, MSS-101

Indian Trade Ledgers Collection, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Interview Between John Henry Hauberg and David Sears, Folder 48-2, Box 48, MSS-27 John

Henry Hauberg Papers, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Interview between John Henry Hauberg and John Moody, Folder 48-2, Box 48, MSS-27 John

Henry Hauberg Papers, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Interview Between John Henry Hauberg and Sam Calloway, Folder 48-2, Box 48, MSS-27 John

Henry Hauberg Papers, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

M'afee, Robert, B, Death of Tecumseh, (The National Register: 1817).

Miscellaneous, (Western Recorder: 1825).

Paulson's, Daily Advertiser, Christian Indian Martyr, (The Weekly Recorder: 1819).

Trask, Kerry, Blackhawk: The Battle for the Heart of America, (Holt Paperbacks: New York:

2006).

By Megan Lundblad

As Christian European missionaries traveled to the New World during the late 1600s and early 1700s, they encountered many different Native American tribes, all with their own customs and religious beliefs. Despite this variety, though, many missionaries still lumped all indigenous peoples together, describing them in their narratives and correspondences as “children”, at best, and “savages”, at worst. The European missionaries, such as the Jesuits and Recollect missionaries, were uniquely prone to dismissing native religions and beliefs due to their dedication to the Catholic faith and their desire to evangelize the North American continent. Their tunnel vision with regards to religion led them to view the Native Americans as lesser beings, whether children or savages, which they considered to be intrinsically linked to their native religious beliefs and practices. In this way, missionaries saw a need to civilize the indigenous peoples through the acquisition of Catholic Christianity and the abandonment of native religions; furthermore, the introduction of Catholicism to native tribes produced a particular “middle ground” between the natives and the French missionaries, where a series of cultural misunderstandings relating to religion and the permeance of native beliefs and practices allowed for the cohabitation of various areas within the current state of Illinois.

To put this phenomenon into perspective, the time period of the late 1600s to the early 1700s consisted of both inter-tribal warfare, as well as a tentative peace under the control of the French. The earlier period of sporadic, inter-tribal warfare is commonly known as the Iroquois Wars, which lasted from 1641 to 1701 (1). Beginning with the destruction of Huronia, the wars reached far and wide, creating a substantial refugee population moving ever west. After a great deal of destruction on the part of the Iroquois, the tide of the conflict turned in favor of the western Indians and their French allies, allowing them to mount a counteroffensive against the Five Nations, which led to the ultimate defeat of the Five Nations in Iroquois territory (2). The position of the French as one of the victors at the end of the Iroquois Wars, as well as their relative position as outsiders, allowed them to take on the power that came with mediating between the tribes and negotiating peace treaties. The period following the Iroquois Wars would come to be known as the French Era, due to the amount of influence the French exerted during this period of time, especially through trade (3).

Also important to understand is the discourse surrounding the existence of a “middle ground” in various parts of North America. Richard White is the historian most well-known for the argument in favor of the “middle ground”. White argues that a series of cultural, or “creative” as White puts it, misunderstandings allowed for the coexistence of native peoples and Europeans, which in turn created a blending of native practices and culture with those of the Europeans (4). He writes in his book The Middle Ground, that at first, European missionaries like the Jesuits and the Recollects would try to situate the Catholic faith within the established framework of Indian beliefs so that they would understand, which generally resulted in evoking the image of God as an Indian manitou (5). In fact, White goes so far as to argue that “Indians were not so much being converted to Christianity as Christ was being converted into a manitou” (6). In this way, the missionaries allowed for a certain blending of beliefs in order to convert the natives to Christianity. White further explains that the Indians did not care so much who they were praising, as long as the powerful being provided for them, which White articulates by saying, “[Christ] was and remained a potent manitou, but Indians sought his aid so long as he delivered it reliably” (7). This shows that the indigenous peoples were willing to adapt to certain aspects of Christianity, but their motivation to do so was not exactly what the European missionaries would have intended.

The existence of a middle ground and misunderstandings between the native peoples of the Illinois region and the French missionaries can be seen in multiple primary sources from the late 1600s and early 1700s. One such source is a narrative by Father Zenobius Membré, a Recollect missionary, that was written in the second half of the 17th century throughout the Mississippi River Valley. In this source, Father Membré talks about his perception of Indian morals and beliefs. He writes that the natives have “anti-christian morals” and have an “alienation from the [Christian] faith” (8). He also mentions that he was not able to definitively convert any of the natives, but that their “docile nature” allowed for their acceptance of various Christian practices, such as baptism, even though they likely did not understand what they signified (9). Father Membré offers an explanation for why certain Indians submitted themselves to baptism when not completely understanding its significance, contending that the Indians were “entirely material in their ideas”, which could refer to their belief in physical or material acts of healing (10). This could be a sound explanation due to the fact that Father Membré only baptized a few children and adults who were dying (11). In this way, the natives could have seen baptism as a healing ritual, whereas the missionaries saw them as spiritually saving those who “manifested proper dispositions”. Therefore, this source demonstrates the idea of the middle ground, where misunderstandings related to religious practices and beliefs between natives and Europeans allowed for coexistence, but also prompted degrading and unfair perceptions of indigenous peoples.

Another useful source in discussing the topic of the middle ground and European perceptions of native religions can be found in the Jesuit Relations. One specific letter within this collection of sources was written by Father Gabriel Marest on November 9, 1712, in Cascaskias. In this source, Jesuit missionary Father Marest talks about the religion of other indigenous peoples besides the Illinois. He deems their beliefs worthy of the title of “religion”, but he continuously stresses the deceptive and animalistic nature of their worship and practices (12). Father Marest sees their practices as primal and superstitious, which leads him to consider the native peoples to be savages (13). Furthermore, Father Marest contrasts the Illinois tribe, who had converted to Christianity, with the other indigenous groups who continued to practice traditional native religions. In doing so, he rather explicitly implies that the Illinois were more civilized than the other Indians due to their adherence to Christianity, and therefore Western morals. The presence of misunderstandings contributing to the construction of a middle ground is visible in Father Marest’s explanation of the Illinois’ earnest adherence to and observation of multiple Christian practices and worship services. While pleased that the Illinois were seemingly responding to his teachings, Father Marest basically complains about the enthusiasm that the natives had for going to services and practicing confession, musing that “we have been obliged to appoint the days on which [the Illinois] are allowed to confess, otherwise they would leave us no leisure to attend to our other duties” (14). This fervor could be explained by the Illinois’ desire to respect the practices of the missionaries, who they began to incorporate into their kinship links through marriage and cohabitation. Therefore, a middle ground based on differing perceptions and understandings of Christianity was formed between these missionaries and the Illinois people.

Next, a narrative by Father Allouez titled “Narrative of A Voyage Made to the Illinois” further exemplifies the belittling of native peoples by European missionaries and builds on the argument for a middle ground as established by the previous sources. In this narrative, Father Allouez, a Jesuit missionary, talks about baptizing Indians along his route to the Illinois village of Kaskaskias. In this context, Father Allouez depicts the native peoples not as savages, but as children in need of salvation brought by a superior and more knowledgeable father figure (such as Father Allouez) or Father (as in God) (15). Throughout the source, Father Allouez stresses the importance of baptism in becoming a Christian and the Indians’ embrace of this foreign practice. Furthermore, he mentions that after baptism, the Illinois only needed “careful cultivation to become good Christians”, which again implies a child-like status and the concurrent civilization of the native peoples (16). Therefore, even though Father Allouez depicts the natives more as children than savages, they are still considered below the Europeans, as they have not been exposed to the Christian religion before meeting Father Allouez. Another interesting part of Father Allouez’s narrative is when he claims that he took “possession of these tribes in the name of Jesus Christ” (17). This aspect of ownership also implies a superiority that the European Christians have over the native peoples. Moreover, Father Allouez’s assertion that he had dominion over these tribes is evidence of a huge misunderstanding between him and the Illinois tribes. The Illinois peoples likely did not perceive Father Allouez’s mission in this way, which points to the presence of a middle ground, where Father Allouez and the other missionaries lived in peace with the Illinois tribes, yet understood their practice of Christianity very differently.

Finally, in another source from the Jesuit Relations from March 2nd, 1706, Jesuit missionary Father Mermet reveals some details about the Illinois of Caskaskias that points to the presence of a middle ground. In this letter to the Jesuits in Canada, Father Mermet talks about certain Illinois from Caskaskias praying and commending themselves to God (18). Father Mermet contrasts the Caskaskias Illinois with the Illinois of Détroit, saying that the ones from Détroit are violent and belligerent (19). There is some mention of a rejection of Christianity in Détriot, where a Frenchman and other indigenous people have been killed by the Illinois there (20). This is an interesting source that focuses more on the savagery of the non-Christian Indians and their correlated disposition to violence and war. In contrast, the French and the Illinois of Caskaskias are described as working together to help a Frenchman wounded by the Detroit Illinois. In these ways, the emergence of a common ground is visible, where Native Americans and Europeans are living together and sharing their religions and ways of life. Further exemplifying a common ground is that fact that the Frenchmen allowed a native physician to help heal the wounded Frenchman and the fact that the Caskaskias Indians practiced Christianity and prayed often (21). With these exchanges in culture and generosity between the two peoples, a common ground was able to form.

In conclusion, the arrival of European missionaries in the Illinois area created many cultural misunderstandings related to religion. As evidenced by the previous primary sources, the Recollect and Jesuit missionaries treated the indigenous peoples as children and savages due to the view of native religions as being simply superstitions and worshiping other gods than the Christian God. In this way, the common ground established between the native peoples and the European missionaries was founded on misunderstandings, yet also resulted in the demeaning and belittling of the native peoples. Furthermore, it is important to understand the context of the common ground because it recognizes Indian agency and acknowledges that the indigenous people were not simply indoctrinated by the new missionaries, but that they had their own motivations and reasonings for accepting certain aspects of the Christian religion.

End Notes

1. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 29.

2. Ibid., 30-34.

3. Ibid., 39.

4. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region,1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), x.

5. Ibid., 26.

6. Ibid., 26.

7. Ibid., 27.

8. John Gilmary Shea, “Narrative of the Adventures of La Salle’s Party at Fort Crevecoeur, in Illinois, from February, 1680, to June, 1681, by Father Zenobius Membré, Recollect”, in Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley with the original narratives of Marquette, Allouez, Membré, Hennepin, and Anastase Dovay, Edition 2 (Albany: Joseph McDonough, 1903), 151.

9. Ibid..

10. Ibid., 157.

11. Ibid..

12. Father Gabriel Marest to Father Germon, Cascaskias, 9 November, 1712, in Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, vol. 66 “Illinois, Louisiana, Iroquois, Lower Canada, 1667-1669”, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: The Imperial Press, 1899), 218-294.

13. Ibid..

14. Ibid., 243.

15. John Gilmary Shea, “Narrative of a Voyage made to the Illinois, by Father Claude Allouez”, in Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley with the original narratives of Marquette, Allouez, Membré, Hennepin, and Anastase Dovay, Edition 2 (Albany: Joseph McDonough, 1903), 70-81.

16. Ibid., 80.

17. Ibid..

18. Father Mermet to Jesuits in Canada, Cascaskias, 2 March, 1706, in Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, vol. 66 “Illinois, Louisiana, Iroquois, Lower Canada, 1667-1669”, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: The Imperial Press, 1899), 49-64.

19. Ibid., 50.

20. Ibid..

21. Ibid., 54.