Plains Indians

THERE IS GREAT POVERTY OF FACT AND CIRCUMSTANCE IN THE RECORDS OF THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THESE MEN, SO CARELESS WERE THEY OF NOTARIETY, SO HOLY DID THEY MERGE THEMSELVES IN THEIR WORK, Anything like ostentation was foreign to their taste, and to the spirit of their time, which took plain, dutiful heroism as a matter of course.

No one knows any characteristic anecdotes of Meriwether Lewis, and the best stories about Clark are those preserved in the tribal histories of Western Indians.

The separate identity of the two men is practically lost to all except the careful reader.

EACH HAD HIS BAPTISMAL NAME, TO BE SURE, BUT EVEN THEIR PRIVATE NAMES ARE FUSED, AND THEY ARE BEST KNOWN TO US UNDER THE JOINT STYLE OF LEWIS AND CLARK.

when several years after the conclusion of the great expedition the manuscript journals were being prepared for publication the editor could not find sufficient material out of which to make a memoir of captain lewis and was forced to appeal to mr jefferson for aid for jefferson had been an early neighbor and friend of the lewis family and later on becoming president had made the lad merriweather his private secretary and had afterwards appointed him to direct the exploration the sketch written by mr jefferson is like most of his papers appreciative and vital It is to this document, dated at Monticello, August 18, 1813, that every biographer must have recourse.

Meriwether Lewis, late governor of Louisiana, was born on the 18th of August, 1774, near the town of Charlottesville, in the county of Albemarle, in Virginia, of one of the distinguished families of that state.

john lewis one of his father's uncles was a member of the king's council before the revolution another of them fielding lewis married a sister of general washington his father william lewis was the youngest of five sons of colonel robert lewis of albemarle the fourth of whom charles was one of the early patriots who stepped forward in the commencement of the revolution and commanded one of the regiments first raised in virginia and placed on continental establishment Nicholas Lewis, the second of his father's brothers, commanded a regiment of militia in the successful expedition of 1776 against the Cherokee Indians.

This member of the family of the Lewis's, whose bravery was so usefully proved on this occasion, was endeared to all who knew him by his inflexible probity, courteous disposition, benevolent heart, and engaging modesty and manners.

It is not necessary to call him a liar to touch his vanity.

Tell a Plains Indian that he has failed to steal horses from the neighboring tribe or tell a man living in bourgeois society that he has failed to pay his bills at the neighboring grocer's and the results are the same.

Each, Plains Indian and bourgeois, is smeared with the slightly different veneer, that is all.

It requires a slightly different stick to scrape it off.

The raw animals beneath are identical.

Schulze, Perrin-Dulac, Adair, and others allude to houses of mercy, the right of asylum in certain lodges and buildings, or even whole villages, to which if the pursuit of the tribe or even an enemy could obtain admission, his life was secure.

Frank Grouard and others who have lived for years among the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and other tribes of the Plains have assured me that the same right of asylum obtains among them for the fugitive who takes shelter in the medicine lodge or the council lodge, and almost parallel notions prevail among the Apache.

I have heard that the first American who came into one of their villages, tired and hungry, was not molested in the slightest degree.

It is stated by Kelly that all warriors who go through the sun dance of the Sioux rank thereafter as medicine men.

The moment a friend approaches, the warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted, and the friend can tell the name, receiving a reciprocation of the courtesy from the other.

The giving of names to children is a solemn matter, and one in which the medicine man should always be consulted.

Among the Plains tribes, the children were formerly named at the moment of piercing their ears, which should occur at the first sun dance after their birth, or rather as near their first year as possible.

The wailing of the children at the sun dance as their ears were slit will always be to me a most distressing memory.

FantasticSo I guess I'll read this final poem, and, um, and this one came fr- out of some archival research as well for the same book of essays that I'm writing.

It's a series of beadworks and a book, and it's, they both are titled Indian Country 1975, and they start with being given a cache of family slides from a Central Main Indian Association gathering in August of 1975, which is the month and year of my birth and seven months before my Mi'kmaq father is murdered, right? So it's a, it's a, they're these close family slides, and they're my aunt and uncle kind of dressed in Plains Indians regalia, but at the same time reclaiming their Wabanaki identities.

So it's a, it's a really interesting moment in time, and then the project goes, spreads out from there, and it's, it's personal essays and beadworks.

But as I was researching for this project, I was looking at the Fogler Library at the University of Maine at the Nicholas D. Smith papers.

It is not necessary to call him a liar to touch his vanity.

Tell a Plains Indian that he has failed to steal horses from the neighboring tribe, or tell a man living in bourgeois society that he has failed to pay his bills at the neighboring grocer's, and the results are the same.

Each, Plains Indian and bourgeois, is smeared with the slightly different veneer, that is all.

It requires a slightly different stick to scrape it off.

The raw animals beneath are identical.