As the son of a Comanche chief and a white captive by the name of Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah Parker rose from the status of a Comanche warrior to their tribal leader. Although not much is known about Parker’s personal life and early years, he plays a vital role in William T. Hagan’s book “Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief”. In this book, Hagan identifies the Comanche Chief through his upbringing to his death, describing his transactions with local Indian agents, presidents, high officials in Washington and the cattlemen of the western United States territory. The author presents the Indian chief as a “cultural broker” between the cultures of the white southerners and his tribal members, presenting a blend of beliefs that are heralded as progressive and traditional as he maintained the control and organization of his tribe. During a period of transition for the Comanche people, …show more content…
Through his role as an ambassador and a leader, the Comanche Chief was able to establish a middle ground for effective communication between the white men of the west and the Comanche tribe without forfeiting significant facets of his tribe’s culture. In ways that kept intact the cultural identity of the Comanche people, Parker acted as a “cultural broker” who actively sought ways in which the white men and native people could work towards a common ground.
To understand Parker’s role as the chief of the Comanche people, it is imperative to comprehend the aspects of a “cultural broker”. The responsibility of a cultural broker is to facilitate the cultural exchange between a group of people to another group of people. In other words, this act can be defined
Theda Perdue`s Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835, is a book that greatly depicts what life had been like for many Native Americans as they were under European Conquering. This book was published in 1998, Perdue was influenced by a Cherokee Stomp Dance in northeastern Oklahoma. She had admired the Cherokee society construction of gender which she used as the subject of this book. Though the title Cherokee Women infers that the book focuses on the lives of only Cherokee women, Perdue actually shines light upon the way women 's roles affected the Native cultures and Cherokee-American relations. In the book, there is a focus on the way that gender roles affected the way different tribes were run in the 1700 and 1800`s.
Quanah Parker is known as the last chief of Commanchees, born about 1845 south of the Wichita Mountains. He is the son of Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, who was a white woman captured by the tribe in 1836. For decades he became an entrepreneur of the white civilization, and became quite the celebrity developing friendships with men in high status. Quanah Parker not only helped change the image Anglo Americans had about Native Americans, but he agreed to accept the challenges and responsibilities that came with leading a whole tribe.
Essentially, Parker was denouncing her native people, saying that she was no longer one of them. This must have been viewed as an insult for an Anglo-American woman to denounce her own civilized society in favor of a barbaric uncivilized native tribe. It is also interesting that the government went as far as bribing her with thousands of acres of land and an annual payment of $100 for five years in an attempt to make renounce her Comanche identity (History.com 2018). Parker’s tragic end a few years after being recaptured- she died of influenza after a self-imposed starvation- further shows that the Anglo-Americans were trying to force a reluctant White Indian to accept a civilization she did not identify
As Europeans began to infiltrate the territory the Cherokee nation inhabited in the mid-1700s, Cherokee men’s power increased, drawing them into more traditional masculine roles. However, Cherokee women, Perdue argues, maintained their roles and power within the nation. She posits that their influence may
When Tecumseh was growing up, he had passed all of the other male Indians standards by being the strongest, and most athletic Indian out of the Shawnee tribe. Tecumseh had helped his older brother, Chiksika, on a series of raids against frontier settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee in the late 1780s. Afterwards, Tecumseh had emerged as a prominent war chief by the 1800. Now when we look back at Tecumseh’s legacy, people tend to speculate
Secondary Source Analysis In order to create his ideal Native American standing within the American Government, which includes the non-indigenous portion of the world acknowledging and understanding Native American issues with the United States and Internationally, Walter R. Echo-Hawk, in his A Context for Understanding Native American Issues, delves into the United State’s past Indian affairs as well as his goals for achieving this ideal. It is important to consider the author’s attitude towards the topic, his desired audience and the devices he used when analyzing the strength of his arguments. Echo-Hawk brings up the point, during the beginning of chapter two, that the general public is unaware of much of the happenings between the United
According to Ancient history Encyclopedia “An empire is a political construct in which one state dominates over another state, or a series of states. At its heart, an empire is ruled by an emperor, even though many states in history without an emperor at their head are called "empires". At its core, an empire is the domination of one state by another.”
In conclusion, even though the Crow Indian tribe did not have a set constitution, Two Legging’s memoir provides repeating themes that allow historians to approximate important aspects of Crow society. Throughout Two Leggings’ memoir, we can infer that the five key aspects of Crow society involved; warrior culture, religion, medicine bundles, respecting elders and medicine men, and lastly hierarchy within the tribe. It is important to note, that while most of these aspects overlap, they each play a crucial role in the formation of the Crow Indian culture, and way of life. Men like Two Leggings dreamed of becoming a warrior and eventually a chief. They wanted to be able to take care of the tribe and be rewarded for it through dancing and singing.
The Comanche were never really a Indian or Tribal Nation, but they had great success in their early years working as groups or bands. But because a lack of a true unity for them in the beginning, despite their success, it became one of their greatest weaknesses. During the Spaniards occupation in the West and Southwest of America in the early eightieth century, the horse was introduced to America and to the American Indians. Groups or Band of Shoshoni Indians broke away and moved into the plains of the United States, Colorado, Kansas, Texas giving them greater access to wild mustangs and other large herds of animals like the buffalo1.
From 1863-1868, the Navajo, or Diné, found themselves the target of a major campaign of war by the Union Army and surrounding enemies in the American Southwest, resulting in a program of removal and internment. This series of events is known to the Navajo as the “Long Walk” , where as a people the Navajo were devastated by acts of violence from multiple factions of enemies. The perspectives of the Navajo regarding the “Long Walk” can grant context to the changes occurring in the American Southwest during the American Civil War, where the focus of the Union’s military might fell upon Native Americans instead of Confederate forces. Rather than as a program of Indian removal resulting from the Civil War militarization of the Southwest, the Navajo
Hidden amongst thick reference books on the Menominee Indian Tribe, a small red single-edition book written by Phebe Jewell Nichols offers an unreplicatable perspective on the lives of Chief Oshkosh and Reginald Oshkosh. Published jointly by the Centennial Edition and the Oshkosh Northwestern newspaper, Oshkosh the Brave preserved an intimate version of a an individual which other histories never captured, Chief Oshkosh’s grandson Reginald Oshkosh. Acting as Chief, Reginald Oshkosh struggled alongside other Menominee leaders during the Menominee Tribe V. United States case. Despite obvious personal biases included in the narrative, Oshkosh the Brave captures a unique Indian-based perspective and enshrines a Menominee chief forgotten by white
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
“Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, chapter one of “A People’s History of the United States”, written by professor and historian Howard Zinn, concentrates on a different perspective of major events in American history. It begins with the native Bahamian tribe of Arawaks welcoming the Spanish to their shores with gifts and kindness, only then for the reader to be disturbed by a log from Columbus himself – “They willingly traded everything they owned… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn pg.1) In the work, Zinn continues explaining the unnecessary evils Columbus and his men committed unto the unsuspecting natives.
In his oration to Governor Isaac I. Stevens Chief Seattle, a Native American leader addresses the governor's request to buy Indian lands and create reservations. Through his oration Seattle boldly presents his stance on the issue of Indian lands, representing his people as a whole. On account for his native people Chief Seattle's stands up for their land through the use of imagery, parallels, and rhetorical questions. Chief Seattle communicates his purpose by using bold imagery that directs the audience to the cause that Seattle is speaking of. He uses metaphors and similes comparing aspects of nature to the issue at hand.