Many Feathers and Much Paint Don't Make an Indian

under the guise of "honoring" and "admiration."  At the time of the images below, it was still thought that indigenous people were vanishing. Those who existed on reservations were subjected to agents, permits needed to leave the reservation, and a lack of citizenship rights because they were still deemed "wards of the government." They were in limbo. Society loved the images of them in headdresses and wielding tomahawks, but "real Indians" and their treaty rights, human rights, and rights as citizens didn't matter.  The Boy Scout's played into the "Noble Savage" image of the Hiawatha romanticized era. The scouts were whites-only, as were the Order of the Red Men who did the exact same thing - but as adults.  These people "played Indian"... THEIR version of what an Indian was; not as a person now, but as the person whom they were remembering.  And it is true, that some actual "real life Indians...

1953, Sep 16 Shamokin News Dispatch  1990, Oct 15 The Morning Call  1994, May 12 The Morning Call  1997, Nov 30 The Morning Call 

1931, Aug 18 Albuquerque Journal 

Scouts Interpret Indian Dances by John P Kline  1950, June 18 The Morning Call  The low, mystic beat of the tom tom, the soft rhythmic shuffling of moccasined feet on a giant thunder drum, and the plaintive chanting of a group of young "braves" in voicing thanks to "Woconda," constitutes a typical Indian dance as performed by the Munsee Indian dancers of Troop 22, Boy Scouts of America.       Since last September, when these Allentown Scouts began to perform Indian dances before the public after a year's training, thousands of Americans have come to realize, through the dance and accompanying narrations, that the American Indian was indeed, not only remarkable but decidedly "typically American" in most of his ways. He was a good sport, good neighbor, good husband and father; loved life, hated injustice, and respected authority.       Rev Charles J Harris, pastor of St Michael's Evangelical Lutheran church, declared that the da...

Allentown 'Palefaces' Teach Indians  Almost Forgotten Native Traditions 1953, March 16 The Morning Call  Five years ago three Allentown "palefaces" dressed in costumes they made at home and did some Indian ceremonial dances they learned from a book. They hoped it would look real.      It apparently did.      American Indians on reservations, since then, have asked the group to teach their children the almost forgotten native dances.      And old tribal leaders have outbid each other for some of the costumes.      The group now numbers 31. All members of Explorer Post 222, Lehigh Boy Scout Council, they call themselves the Munsee Indian Dancers. 1953, March 16 The Morning Call       They have made tremendous strides. From their first of a few dozen, they have traveled into at least four states and played to a high as 13,000 people.       Adults and children...

Indian Tribe Still Stages Sun Dance Though Its Meaning Long Forgotten by Kenneth Allen 1948, Sep 11 Valley Morning Star  Fort Hall, Idaho - You can put pants on an Indian, but every so often you can expect him to revert to feathers and paint. Especially when he has need of a heart-to-heart talk with the Great Manitou.      So nobody in Idaho is surprised when the Bunnock-Shoshoni Indian roll back the centuries for the staging of a sun dance, which in its more serious aspects is a simple prayer for the cleaning of the soul and a supplication for strength and beauty of body. 1948, Sep 11 Valley Morning Star       The average Bannock-Shoshoni Indian of the twentieth century lives on his own farm on the reservation here. He does a little farming, a little hunting and a little studying. In fact, any activity he engages in a susceptible to description by the word "little."      The average Indian takes part in tribal af...

1948, Sep 12 Great Falls Tribune  Crow Agency - Pioneers in an almost single-handed fight to preserve American Indian dances from oblivion are two young members of the white race -- Reginald and Gladys Laubin -- who are living this summer and fall as for several recent summers in a tepee on the Crow reservation.      During the recent Crow Fair, which attracted members of five tribes, Laubin stained his body each evening, put a wig of straight black hair over his own red-brown locks, donned the traditional Sioux dancer's costume and took part in the dancing under an arbor of cotton-wood and aspen boughs.       Few whites among the spectators knew Laubin was not an Indian; all could see at a glance that he was much the best dance in the group.       Living with the Indians to study their folkways is nothing new to the Luabins. They have been doing it for years, since the day when they decided, while both were at art s...

Indians Now Present Sun Dance to Tourists 1940, July 23. Lebanon Daily News  Pocatello, Idaho - The Indians of the west are "streamlining" the Sun Dance -- ancient, tortuous and once sacred ritual of the Red men.      Time was when the Sun Dance, as old as the American Indian himself, was a ritual which no white man could witness. Today the Sun Dance is semi-public, and the white brethren can witness it -- for a small fee.      In fact, the Shoshone Indians on the Fort Hall reservation here are holding two special Sun Dances for the benefit of the tourist. And they've located their brush enclosures close to two highways that carry heavy tourist travel - one near Blackfoot on the main north-south route to Yellowstone National Park and the other at Bannock Creek west of Pocatello on the main cast-west route from Salt Lake City to Boise and the Pacific northeast.      The Dance near Blackfoot started last night, simultaneou...

Re-Vamping The Indian  1924, Mar 7 Altoona Tribune  Ever since they took Manhattan Island from the American Indians for a few strings of  beads and paltry baubles, every since the time the White Man began to devastate the hunting grounds of the aborigine and forced him to surrender the lands and firesides so near, and dear to the heart of every Red Man but little, if any, consideration has been shown. After having done the worst, having done the worst, having cheated and misrepresented negotiations, after having broken one treaty after another -- be it to the everlasting credit of the Indians that they never broke a treaty after another -- be it to the everlasting credit of the Indians that they never broke a treaty with the White Men -- now they would take away the tribal dances, dances which these sons and daughters of the forest have been performing since long before Columbus' first voyage. The dances are suspected of immorality.       And wh...

1934, Nov 18   The Courier Journal  War bonnets, scalp shirts, tomahawks, war clubs, a tepee model, and hundreds of other interesting pieces of bread of quill [work] from the Plains Tribes of North America make up the collection now on exhibit at the J B Speed Memorial Museum. This fine collection from Indians of the northwest has been assembled and is owned by Frederick Weygold.      Mr Weygold's interest in Indians was first aroused when he was a mere lad. As a small boy in Missouri, he heard the old-timers telling of the pioneer days and the Indian wars. About this same time he saw large caravans of ox-drawn prairie schooners moving westward over the Boone Lick Road, the eastern extension of the Oregon Trail. The reports of the great Custer Battle which came from the West when he was just 6 years old made a very vivid impression on this youth.      Twenty-five years after this famous battle Frederick Weygold returned from Europe, where h...

1941, Feb 28 The Chillicothe Constitution Tribune  Indian influence is showing up in 1940 trends of art in the home.      And, strangely, it isn't a cavalcade of gaudy color nor of weirdly woven materials.      With Indian influence in your home and your boasting about it, your neighbor will like as not ask. "Just where is all that Indian stuff, anyway?"      Navajo blankets, for example, seem just right for the modern chair designed for the New York Museum of Modern Art by Henry Klumb. It's the simplicity, the emphasis on basic materials, and the soft, rich colors of the trend-to-be that are attracting the attention of housewives who see home decorating possibilities at "the biggest exhibit of American Indian art" at the museum.      In an interesting group beside the chair is a cottonwood drum, with rawhide head and lacings, used as an end table. Ornaments on the table are a polished Papago pottery jar in hist...

1938, Nov 19 Lansing State Journal  Indians are at present being victimized by confidence operators among them on the basis of a partial truth. This partial truth matter is of importance to others besides Indians.      The Indians are being told that if they will contribute a dollar, the money will be used at Washington to pay secretaries and office rent, we suppose, to hasten an appropriation which will return to the Indians $3000 for every Indian living and the same for every disgruntled Indian ancestor dead. White folks have -- "fallen for" -- less alluring promises.      The Indians are being told that the white man is sorry for what his ancestors did to the Indians and so desires to make recompense. Now this is the partial truth -- but not all of it. Few, indeed, are present-day folks who desire to dig up more taxes wherewith to pay Indians $3000 a head.      Looking at what went on in America with our "hind sight" we see what ...

Indian Rights 1929, Nov 2   Lebanon Daily News  The American Indian has had the fate of many conquered peoples, in that he has been made a hero in fiction after being made a villain and a victim in fact. The earliest white settlers, indeed, talked for a time about saving the natives fro the kingdom of heaven,  but they soon came to the conclusion that the best way to do that was to send the redskins there.      The gunpowder method of conversion simplified the problem of who was to occupy the country which had been occupied by the Indians. But when the original Americans had ceased, by becoming more or less extinct, to be any particular menace, the chivalrous disposition of the conquerors asserted itself. They discovered that the sons of the forest had been true children of nature, with all the virtues which the eighteenth century sentimentally ascribed to natural men, still uncorrupted by the dread influence of civil institutions.     ...

Palm Springs Physician Says  Indians Are Being Robbed of Their Language of Institute Declares Children at Arlington School Are Forbidden to Speak in Their Own Tongue 1929, June 18 The San Bernardino County   Indians of the Southwest are being robbed of their language and traditions through the system in effect at the Sherman Indian institute, Arlington, it is charged by Dr. Clara Stillman, noted physician f Palm Springs.      Addessing the crowd gathered Sunday afternoon at the San Bernardino [asistencia], on the Barton road between Redlands and San Bernardino, Dr. Stillman asserted that Indian children at Arlington are forbidden to speak their own language.       "Boys and girls come to me at Palm Springs and tell me that they receive demerits merely for greeting each other in the Indian tongue outside the school building," she said.      "The Government is doing all it can to make these first America...

1949, Dec 23 Wilmington News Journal  The Boston Transcript this week paid tribute to Miss Mary Cabot Wheelright for doing "something that couldn't be done" at the completion of her museum, the House of Navajo Religion, that will house her collection of sand paintings in Santa Fe. Miss Wheelwright is a Santa Fe-Bostonian who has homes in Alcalde, on Beacon Hill in Bar Harbor, Maine, dividing her time between the three places.       Winning the trust of Klah, celebrated medicine man of the Navajo reservation, Miss Wheelwright started the collection of sand paintings many years ago. "She recorded the traditional myths he told her (foreseeing that most of this learning must be lost at his death); she watched the ceremonials, and noted the ritual; she got her friend Mrs Arthur J Newcomb, who had lived among the Navajos and spoke their language, to make paintings of their sand pictures; she employed Dr. George Herzog of Columbia University, the best expert in th...

Paleface Teaches Indian Forest Lore  1931, June 10 The Akron Beacon Journal  Asheville, NC - Indian boys are learning forest lore from a paleface. A boy scout troop has been chartered on the Cherokee Indian reservation and a white scoutmaster is teaching the members on hikes in the great Smoky mountains.  1931, June 10 The Akron Beacon Journal  Whites Teaching Indians 1938, March 28 The Ithaca Journal  Porterville, Calif - In a new vocational program at Tule Indian reservation, white instructors will show Indian boys and girls how to make buskskirts shirts and do bead work.  1938, March 28 The Ithaca Journal  Seminoles Being Taught by Paleface 1949, Dec 23 Wilmington News Journal  Miami, Fla - Sminole Indians are being retaught their lost art of pottery making. A paleface, Vernon Lamme, is their instructor.      Florida's Seminoles came originally from the great Creek nation of Alabama and Georgia. In earl...