Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought

3. From Enemies to Pan-Indian Allies

3 From Enemies to Pan-Indian Allies EastmanonDakota-OjibweRelations The waters of Menesotah have been crimsoned with the blood of both nations;and the upper Mississippi has witnessed their unrewarded contest;and their shouts and groans have alike resounded among the mountain passes,and echoed from cliJ to cliJ on the rock-walled shore George Copway, The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation One of the least understood aspects of Eastman’s writings is the consideration he gave to the Dakotas’ historic relations with the Ojibwe.In all but one of his books,Eastman makes references to the Dakotas’ traditional enemies in ways that reflect his growing awareness of panIndian aJairs in turn-of-the-centuryAmerican society.Eastman thus goes from recounting stories, both mythical and historical, about DakotaOjibwe warfare to emphasizing the camaraderie he feels with the Ojibwe in their common struggle to adapt to white society. Setting aside personal bias and ameliorating a historic feud that defined generations of Dakota warriors was not something that happened immediately for Eastman,even though by his own admission he never got the opportunity to go on the warpath against his tribe’s ancient adversary. Missing the opportunity did not preclude Eastman from being inculcated with prejudices that were generations old and which he only outgrew the more he reflected on the nature of Indian religions, in addition to the causes behind key events in American Indian history, from King Philip’s War to the massacre at Wounded Knee. Eastman’s reflections unfold within the stories and anecdotes that turn up throughout his books,which were written in tandem with the development and prominence of the Society of American Indians (sai),an organization he eventually served as president in 1919, presiding over its annual meeting in Minneapolis. 55 A pivotal change in Eastman’s views most likely came about because of the time he spent with the Ojibwe in northern Minnesota and Canada during the summer of 1910, while on a collecting mission for George Gustav Heye and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Up until then, the Ojibwe, in Eastman ’s eyes,were no more than respected rivals whose role in Creation was on a diJerent path from their Dakota enemies. Indeed, it is a commonplace among Indian nations that each received a diJerent homeland and way of doing things from their Creator,entailing that their respective interests and concerns did not extend beyond their boundaries. Although they might share resources—due to the typically hazy boundaries separating nations and their respective hunting grounds—as well as complementary histories—due to traditional rivalries or alliances— Indian nations generally did not regard themselves as one race.Only in situations of great urgency did otherwise disparate nations band together in common cause, be it in terms of confederacies like the Iroquois , which Hiawatha and Deganawidah established to end the relentless blood feuds aeicting the region, or, even more dramatically, the fleeting but brilliant alliances initiated by Pontiac and Tecumseh, who each sought a bulwark against the deleterious eJects of westward expansion and colonization. By the time Eastman emerged as a major American Indian intellectual in the early twentieth century,the grand era of Indian prophets that stretched from Neolin to Wovoka was a thing of the past.What Eastman sought,then,along with his post-1890 peers was a stable and longterm way of adapting to the non-Native forces of modern life, which valued competition,money,accumulating material goods,and political power.Entering into such a situation necessitated going through a transvaluation of traditional customs and beliefs,which for Eastman in particular meant reconsidering how he thought about the Ojibwe.Consequently , what emerges is a race consciousness that previously did not exist in Indian culture, this in addition to a political identity, i.e., the American Indian, which also did not exist before but around which Indian people,however tangentially,could identify their individual and tribal needs, thereby augmenting the sai’s eJort at gaining justice and restitution for the price Indians paid so that the United States could grow and prosper. Dakota Philosopher 56 In The Indian To-day, Eastman makes a very casual but by no means insignificant observation about the Ojibwe’s relationship to the Dakotas: “The great Siouan race occupied nearly all the upper valley of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. North of them dwelt the Ojibways...