The Great War and the Native North Americans

by Tina Johnson

How does one decide to work with your enemy? In your homeland you live in peace, you have freedom, and you wholeheartedly live with integrity. Your people have come to know the new people through friendship. To you, friendship is eternal and nothing breaks that bond but these new people do not see friendship the same way. Unbeknownst to you, your new friends used you for their own needs. Now that their needs are met, your new friends decide to go against your friendship and now you feel deeply betrayed. How does one trust? They have become an enemy. These people cross your path again, asking for your help. How does one decide to work with your enemy?

In a land formerly called the New World, there was a time in which there were many Natives that resided as whole cultures. Their wholehearted lives demonstrated awareness and knowledge that would provide for the tribes a perception of their world as they knew it. Their customs, traditions, and beliefs were strongly connected to their place on mother earth. Like the bond between parents and their children. They lived in this land for centuries before the inhabitation of the European man.

I could imagine in this world, a way of life that would be free to grow, explore, learn, and feel more in tune with oneself. To live in a world with the wonders, beauty, mystery of nature, and all that it offers defining oneself as a person. To have a strong sense of belonging, communicated through the acceptance of one’s people and to be allowed to develop the courage to become the person one desired, along with bonding experience of learning life lessons through listening to the elders. “Most Native people, including Choctaws, vested the earth with an overriding maternal quality: the earth mother gave life and sustained all living things. As siblings, all humans and animals intimately were connected, kindred in a literal sense. All had spirits and destinies irrevocably intertwined with destiny of humankind” (Akers 3). Mostly, life would be peaceful. Socially, there would be duties, expectations, and traditions that would be required for the health of the members of the tribe. Some life challenges would exhibit themselves like having to live off the land, survive the weather and seasons, protect and fight for your territory, and guard your life and your tribesmen from your foes and predators.

The Choctaws lived as one tribe with the Chickasaws, Muskogees (Creeks), and the Seminoles centuries ago but due to great battles and jealousy among the chiefs, they divided up into their own people. Over time, the new tribes developed their own customs, laws, and dialects. Each nation claimed different areas of the land on the east coast; “the Seminoles claimed as their domain the peninsula country, now Florida; the Creeks the region north of the Seminoles, compromising a part of eastern Alabama, Georgia, and perhaps parts of South Carolina; the Choctaws a large portion of Alabama and the southern half of Mississippi; the Chickasaws, the lands the north of the Choctaws, comprising northern Mississippi and a portion of west Tennessee” (McAdam 20). The agrarian Choctaws and the Chickasaws were not a warring people. They were a happy people, with strong characteristics of virtue, truth, hospitable, justice, integrity, and peacefulness. Europeans surprised by these civilized customs, in 1891, presented a theory in which these Natives were from the linage of the Aztecs.

Centuries have passed and now a new people had come to the land known as home. Throughout the seventeen to the nineteen century the European man came to the New World and their goal was to take the newly founded resources for themselves. Ever since the trespassing of the European people, Natives have been at war, whether it was to remove the Europeans or side with the European’s firepower to eliminate their enemy tribe(s). The Indians were moved from their lands forcibly, their way of living, and their rights were removed or restricted for the sake of progress of the white man. In their dealings with white man, the Indians developed a lack of trust, hatred, and revenge.

“Until the 1870s, the federal government negotiated treaties with many tribes, treating them as sovereign nations” (Kilpinen 494). After the colonies had received their independence, the 1786 treaty at Hopewell was signed, thus it guaranteed the Choctaws and the Chickasaws their right to possess land peaceably. The Choctaws and the Chickasaws kept their end of the treaty and the many other treaties that were created from 1801 to 1825. Choctaws wanted to stay in their ancestral land, thus they accommodated to the white culture; such as owning slaves and excepting the practice of Christianity. Unfortunately, through these treaties with the Americans, the Choctaw Nation ceded millions of acreage to the United States government. With the creation of each treaty there would be less and less land that the Choctaws would own and more and more to the U.S. government. For example, the Treaty of Fort Adams of 1802 was created to specify the boundaries between the Choctaw Nation and the federal government. Here the Choctaw ceded 2,641,920 acres. In 1803, the Treaty of Hoe Buckintoopa, in which the United States government would be allowed to redraw old lines of Indian property and the Choctaw’s had ceded 3,853,760 acres. In 1805, there were two treaties: the Treaty of Limits, which allowed the federal government to expand their land ownership east of the Mississippi and the Treaty of Mount Dexter which was similar to the recently mentioned treaty of the same year, defined how the United States government would make payments of the 4,142, 720 acres that were ceded from the Choctaws. Eleven years later in 1816, another treaty was signed, which ceded more land east of a new Choctaw boundary and detailed the payment plan from the United States government. In the Treaty of Doak’s Stand of 1820, the Choctaw relocated from the lands in the east for a very large tract of land that is west of the Mississippi River. This also included that the Choctaw were to receive provisions of hunting supplies and education. From then on the Choctaw Nation held strong to one principle “Although individuals were free to leave Mississippi and take up residence in the West, the nation was unwilling to cede its lands in total and move en masse to Indian Territory” (Kilpinen 488). The Indian Territory is about 10.4 million acres that is in the southern portion of current day Oklahoma and a portion of western Arkansas, some five hundred miles west away from their homeland.

The Mississippian legislators were eager to own the Choctaw’s rich land, consequently in 1829, Jackson’s first congressional address in which he stated” that Indians who did not agree to move to the West should submit to U.S. laws and eventual assimilation (Meserve 1935)” (Kilpinen 488). Then the unimaginable happened, President Jackson, a long time ally of the Choctaw had endorsed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. “When the Choctaws signed the Treaty at Dancing Rabbit Creek, September 27, 1830, they gave up the last acre of their land in the state of Mississippi. By the new treaty they were required to move to a region west of the Arkansas. The sixteenth article of the treaty provided that the U.S. government should remove at its own expense the 20,000 members or so of the nation in wagons, and with steamboats as may be found necessary. George W. Harkins, a district chief of the Choctaw Nation, expressed the feelings of his people as they left the Mississippi on board a steamship, in as address which appeared in the press in the winter of 1832” (McLuhan 138).” He stated, “ TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: It is with considerable difficulty that I attempt to address the American people, knowing and feeling sensibly my incompetency, and believing that your highly and well improved minds could not be well entertained by the address of a Choctaw. But having determined to emigrate west of the Mississippi river this fall, I have thought proper in bidding you farewell to make a few remarks of my views and the feelings that actuate me on the subject of our removal . . . We were hedged in by two evils, and we chose that which we thought least. Yet we could not recognize that right that the state of Mississippi had assumed to legislate for us. Although the legislature of the state were qualified to make laws for their own citizens, that did not qualify them to become law makers to a people who were so dissimilar in manners and customs as the Choctaws are to the Mississippians. Admitting that they understood the people, could they remove that mountain of prejudice that has ever obstructed the streams of justice, and prevented their salutary influence from reaching my devoted countrymen? We as Choctaws rather chose to suffer and be free, than live under the degrading influence of laws where our voice could not be heard in their formation. Much as the state of Mississippi has wronged us, I cannot find in my heart any other sentiment than an ardent wish or her prosperity and happiness. I could cheerfully hope that those of another age and generation may not feel the effects of those oppressive measures that have been so illiberally dealt out to us; and that peace and happiness may be their reward. Amid the gloom and honors of our present separation, we are cheered with a hope that ere long we shall reach our destined home, and that nothing short of the basest acts of treachery will ever be able to wrest it from us, and that we may live free. Although your ancestors won freedom on the fields of danger and glory, our ancestors owned it as their birthright, and we have had to purchase it from you as the vilest slaves buy their freedom . . . But such is the instability of professions. The man who said that he would plant a stake and draw a line around us, that never should be passed, was the first to say that he could not guard the lines, and drew up that stake and wiped out all traces of the line. I will not conceal from you my fears, that the present grounds may be removed. I have my foreboding – who of us can tell after witnessing what has already been done, what the next force may be. I ask you in the name of justice for repose, for myself and my injured people. Let us alone – we will not harm you, we want rest. We hope, in the name of justice that another outrage may never be committed against us . . . Friends, my attachment to my native land is strong – that cord is now broken; and we must go forth as wanderers in a strange land! I must go – let me entreat you to regard us with feelings of kindness, and when the hand of oppression is stretched against us, let me hope that every part of the United States, filling the mountains and valleys, will echo and say stop . . . Yours with respect, George W. Harkins” (McLuhan 138).

This treaty promised to secure a permanent Choctaw domain and it would never be taken over by state or territory, plus the federal government promised to protect Choctaw from their enemies and strife, and in exchange, the Choctaw were to cede all their rich land in the east of the Mississippi, about 5.2 million acres, for the Indian Territory. The Choctaw ceded approximately “19 million acres in all and received approximately 20 million acres in the country west of Arkansas, with $2,225,000 in money and goods” (McAdam 22) from the United States government.

This homeland that the Choctaws had to move from was given to them by the Great Spirit. It was a sacred place, their people were buried there and because of the deep spiritual and physical attachment to the earth it was a source of identity to the Choctaw. “Through the oral traditions, Choctaws learned that they not only were part of the Earth, but also part of a specific region of the earth. The gift of the Great Spirit was this land. They were to never leave it or the nation would die” (Akers 3). The land of the west was considered the land of the dead which meant that the spirit would roam forever never reaching the afterworld.

This created a morally and spiritual crises to the Choctaws, they quit living their daily life as they knew it. When the time came to move, in 1831, the Choctaws were in deep distress and in mourning, the prophets foretold if they were to leave that land, they would die as a nation. The federal government did not allow the Choctaws to take their dead or their livestock. It is extremely important ritual to protect the bones of the spirit who was protecting you in your life. United States government promised that they would get new livestock in the Indian Territory.

“Imposed to immigration and hoping that his tribe, the Choctaws, could stay for a while longer in their homes east of the Mississippi, a leading chief of the tribe, Colonel Cobb, addresses a government agent who has come to remove them” (McLuhan 128). He stated, “BROTHER! WE HAVE LISTENED TO YOUR TALK, COMING FROM OUR Father, the Great White Chief, at Washington, and my people have called upon me to reply to you . . . Brother! we have, as your friends, fought by your side, and have poured out our blood in your defense, but our arms are now broken. You have grown large. My people have become small, and there are none who take pity on them. Brother! my voice is become weak – you can scarcely hear me. It is not the shout of a warrior, but a wail of an infant. I have lost it in mourning over the desolation and injuries of my people. These are their graves which you see scattered around us, and in the winds which pass through these aged pines we hear the moanings of their departed Ghosts. Their ashes lie here, and we have been left to protect them. Our warriors are nearly all gone to the West, but here are our dead. Will you compel us to go too, and give their bones to the wolves? Brother! our heart is full. Twelve winters ago we were told our Chiefs had sold our country. Every warrior that you now see around us was opposed to the Treaty; and if the voice of our people could have been heard, that act would never have been done; but alas! though they stood around they could neither be seen nor heard. Their tears fell like drops of rain – their lamentations were borne away by the passing winds – the pale-faces heeded them not and our land was taken from us. Brother! . . . . you speak the words of a mighty nation. I am a shadow, and scarcely reach to your knee. My people are scattered and gone; when I shout, I hear my voice in the depths of the forest, but no answering voice comes back to me – all is silent around me! My words therefore must be few. I can now say no more” (McLuhan 128).

In three different time frames, most of the nation was forced to walk the five hundred miles west, which started in the fall. When the appalling misfortunes happened to the Choctaws, they were not surprised because it was foretold that they would die. For example, when they reached the Mississippi River, the worst winter to hit the area, the ice floes blocked the passage way and this caused everything to stop moving indefinitely. Many of them were barefoot and without clothing; this lead to suffering, disease, and starvation which killed many of the people. During the move, a group of lost Choctaws had walked thirty miles in the Mississippi swamp without food for about six days, being exposed to the elements and starvation. Another ritual that was not honored by the federal government was the scaffolding of their dead for three months, it was believed to be superstitious by the European men. Many other horrific misfortunes on this westward move and at their destination, such as “exposure, illness, accidents, depression, misery, and death” (Akers 6), approximately one-third of the Choctaw Nation died. Due to many of the elders dying, there was spiritual and political clan chaos. The oral traditions were interrupted, along with their known traditions

The Choctaw’s lives had been uprooted like a weed being pulled out of a garden; stripped of all they knew and loved. One could surmise that their social and personal routines of life were now suspended, waiting for a new direction. A flood of questions and emotions arose, trying to make sense of what life might be now. Wondering why this all happened to them, why would the Great Spirit let this happen? Why would these “friends” treat us in such a dishonorable manner? Do all the Europeans behave that way? How does one trust these people?

The United States of America has entered the twentieth century and in it, it has discovered its potential power. Many of the Natives were put on reservations and/or attending trade schools which taught them skills like The Cushman Indian Trades School. It was a result of the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854 for many of the lower Puget Sound tribes. The school began in 1858 on the south end of Squaxin Island but due to low attendance was terminated and later resumed on the Puyallup Reservation in 1869 and in attendance Indian students were from Alaska and the Northwest. The school offered the Indian boys vocational training like carpentry and blacksmithing but by 1910 the school had decided to include industry training which, for example, brought in plumbing, electrical and greenhouse work. The buildings were upgraded and new buildings were added to accommodate the newer vocational trainings. The Indian girls were trained in the how-to of domestic work. For example, cooking, housekeeping, canning, sewing, washing, ironing, gardening, and poultry raising. “Cushman School offered two separate courses of instruction. It provided an academic course that resulted in the completion of an eighth grade education, and it offered special two-year industrial courses. Because of its location, it did not provide agricultural training” (Roberts 222). The location of the school allowed the students to visit downtown Tacoma. They were expected to attend religious services regularly. The onset of the United States participation of the Great War brought about a change for the school’s students. The Indian boys that remained at the school prepared themselves for combat while others were either drafted or volunteered to the war. “Many of the Cushman students and alumni served with the 91st Infantry Division in France, in the battle of the Argonne” (Roberts 224). With uneventful contributing factors the Cushman Indian Trade School eventually closed in July of 1920.

One can assume that with the advent of the reservations and the Indian Trade Schools which offered education and skills to prepare the Indians to live in a white man’s world, that the Natives had added a new perspective about their world. It no longer just encompassed their territory but that their territory was part of a larger world. The younger generation may not have been able to fully immerse themselves into the traditional ways of their culture due to learning of this outside world. The war brought different opportunities to the Natives that they didn’t have since the lost of their homelands.

I suspect that there was a difference of opinion of whether one should become a participant in the war or not and that there may have been generational influences. In light of how the Choctaw Nation was treated by the United States government, I think there may have been this dilemma. How does one decide to work with your enemy? Can there be a good enough reason to participate in the great battle?

“Although most Indians in 1917 were not subject to the draft because they were not U.S. citizens, they enlisted in astonishing numbers. Even before the draft registration began, some 2,000 had volunteered, many of them eager to gain war honors” (Viola 67). “Joseph Dixon estimated that 17,000 Indians served, but he was probably citing the total number of Indians that registered for the draft” (Britten 59), with the average being 3 out of 4 were volunteers. Many went to the American Expeditionary Force and several tribes made it “their war.” Joseph K. Dixon was convinced that the Indians were becoming a vanishing race, thus his efforts to preserve the “romantic vision of Indian masculinity, strength, and courage” (Britten 39) brought about his efforts in the three Wanamaker photographic expeditions. Dixon argued with the House of military affairs, advocating the benefits the Indians would bring to the United States for their participation in the war effort. He advocated for the Indians to be segregated from the powerful influences of the Anglo and African troops in hopes to preserve “their spirit of intrepidity, their unwearying fidelity, their unswerving integrity, their unstained honor, their unimpeachable veracity, their undaunted bravery, their loyal friendship and their glad spirit of service” (Britten 39). The segregation would allow the Indians to retain its own identities, would ensure that their wartime contributions would be recognized fully, and would help preserve Indian cultures. He also pointed out a number of reasons why the Indians should become citizens of the United States.

“Indians in the military in WWI were classified as white, except in the segregated South, were they were classified as colored” (Viola 100). Many of the Indians did not speak English fortunately among them, were some that were bilingual speakers. “In the 142nd Regiment alone were Indians speaking 26 different languages or dialects” (Viola 73) and “the 158th Infantry, 40th Division was the only all volunteer Native American unit in World War I” (Viola 76). One of the areas where the Natives fought was in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, in which they fought on the front lines. “Historian Brian Dippie estimates that 150 Native Americans earned medals for valor in battle, while 10 received the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military award” (Viola 68) and “more than 70 years later, the contributions of these first code talkers were recognized when France presented them the Chevalier de L’Ordre National du Merite” (Treuer 89). In the battlefield in France, some of the Choctaws were overheard talking in their own language. This gave way to an idea to help defeat the Germans intercepting the Allies telephone and wire communications. The Choctaw devised a workable code to translate military words in the Indian vocabulary. “Training the Choctaws to use their words as code, they were placed strategically on front lines and at command posts so that messages could be transmitted without being understood by the enemy. Nineteen Choctaw men have been documented as being the first to use their own language as a code to transmit military messages”(www.choctawnation.com). Other Native Americans thus followed suit with their language. This was one of the many contributions that benefited the Allies during the Great War. By war’s end, Indians purchased $25 million worth of Liberty bonds, participated in the “Great Plow-Up”, contributed livestock, worked in shipyards, aircraft plants and other war related industries, worked as nurses, and contributed money to Red Cross. They showed a remarkable record of patriotism and selflessness, which they did not have to do.

“American Indians supported the war effort for numerous reasons despite the fact, as Thomas Holm has pointed out, that many Native Americans took the military oath to defend the constitution without possessing any rights under it. More importantly, it should be remembered that Indian responses to the draft were diverse, and to suggest that there was a monolithic Indian response would be both inaccurate and stereotypical. Cultural differences, the level of acculturation, geography and demographics, education and the relationship of a particular Native American community with the federal government all affected and helped shape Indian responses to the war effort”(Britten 60). So how does one decide to work with you enemy?

The war provided thousands of Indian soldiers with opportunities to learn new skills, escape the restrictions of Indian Trade schools and reservation life, and a pride for their accomplishments; pride in Indian heritage and to be an American. With some certainty, Native Americans service in the Great War was the initial and perhaps most important catalyst for Indian citizenship in 1924. The Choctaw natives entered the U.S. army in exchange for the U.S. citizenship. So how does one decide to work with you enemy?

Works Cited

Akers, Donna. “Removing the heart of the Choctaw people: Indian removal from a Native perspective” 1999. American Indian Culture and Research Journal Vol. 23 No. 3. 5 Feb 2011 < http://0-vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.cals.evergreen.edu/hww/resu...>

Britten, Thomas A. American Indians in World War I. University of New Mexico Press, 1997.

Kilpinen, Jon T. “The Supreme Court’s Role in Choctaw and Chickasaw Dispossession” 2004. American Geographical Society Vol. 94 No. 4. 5 Feb 2011 <http://0-www.jstor.org.cals.evergreen.edu/stable/30034292

McAdam, R.W. Chickasaws and Choctaws: A Pamphlet of Information Concerning their History, Treaties, Government, Country, Laws, Politics and Affairs. Rpt. 1891. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc. 1975. 20 -24.

McLuhan, T.C. Touch the Earth: A Self-Portrait of Indian Existence. New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971.

Roberts, Charles. “The Cushman Indian Trades School and World War I.” American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 ( Summer, 1987): 221- 239

Treuer, Anton, Karenne Wood, William W. Fitzhugh, George P. Horsecapture, Sr., Theresa Lynn Fraizer, Miles R. Miller, Miranda Belarde-Lewis, and Jill Norwood. “Choctaw.” Indian Nations of North America. National Geographic, Washington, D.C., 2010. 89.

Viola, Herman J. “Fighting the Metal Hats: World War I.” Warriors in Uniform: The Legacy of American Indian Heroism. National Geographic, Washington, D.C., 2008.

http://choctawnation.com