Intertribal Visiting

Native Americans made at least twelve hundred trips between western reservations from 1880 through 1890, trips that varied from parties of one to parties of hundreds. Many of the parties in those years, at least one-third, traveled off-reservation without permission. This map visualizes each one of these trips and the intricate networks of mobility that connected reservations across the West. Native American men and women traveled off-reservation to feel independence, to experience life outside their reservations, to find economic opportunities, to create and support bonds of kinship, and to expand their connections with other tribal nations. Interaction among tribes was a vital part of prereservation life. Now on reservations, Native Americans demanded the freedom to leave those reservations in order to visit other Natives and secure the benefits that came with it.

Interregional Connections

Natives used the mail to plan visits and gatherings with tribes living on distant reservations. In March of 1890, Red Cloud, an Oglala Lakota who lived on the Pine Ridge reserve in South Dakota, wrote a letter to Marcisco, who lived on the Uintah and Ouray reserve in Utah, inviting the Utes to meet him at the Wind River Agency in Wyoming. Marcisco forwarded the letter to Buckskin Charley, a Southern Ute living in Colorado, along with the letter linked to the right. Marcisco told Buckskin Charley had already written back to Red Cloud and he wanted Buckskin Charley to go with him. He asked Buckskin Charley to “tell this to all of the Utes, so that they will all know.” The connection between the Utes and Oglalas began after a group of Oglala journeyed to Utah in 1886 to socialize and dance at the Uintah and Ouray reservation. It continued into the next decade because of correspondence and visiting.

Diplomatic Visiting

It is no small thing that Lakotas and others were interacting peacefully with former enemies. Diplomacy in the West had always been complex; tribes held evolving alliances with outside groups while they wrestled with long-standing rivalries. In the reservation era, visits continued to be opportunities for tribes with a history of conflict to make peace. Although these interactions required skilled diplomacy, by the end of the 1880s, almost all western tribes were on agreeable terms, individual grudges notwithstanding. Several tribes made peacemaking a priority early on. In 1871, for instance, Pawnees set up a series of visits on the same journey meant to cultivate friendly relations with the Kiowas, Comanches, Southern Cheyennes, and Southern Arapahos.

Rail Networks

Railroads carried white settlers into the American West, advancing settler colonialism. But Natives also used railroads to keep their reservations connected. For western tribes, the railroads made the trips from the Dakotas to Idaho, Utah, and Nevada, across the Rockies and into the Great Basin practical. Rail travelers could spend more time at their destinations enjoying their visits with foreign nations. As soon as the rails were laid near reservations, intertribal visiting became easier and more frequent for some.

Government Restrictions on Visiting

Intertribal visiting persisted only because Natives demanded it. The US government made efforts to limit intertribal contact at the very beginning of the reservation years, but it proved difficult to control the movements of thousands of Native Americans. At the ground level, agents had to contend with the resolve of the people. In order to maintain stability on their reserves, agents often obliged those who expressed their dissatisfaction with visiting restraints. When agents refused to oblige, some Natives used the mail to protest directly to the commissioner of Indian affairs. In November 1889, the Yankton headmen Running Bull, Feather-in-the-Ear, White Swan, and three others wrote to the commissioner to complain about their inability to visit other tribes. “If we ask him for a pass he won’t give us one. If we go of our own will as men do, he telegraphs ahead and has us put in jail as spies.” The Yanktons wanted to know why they could not “travel around like white men do!” For government officials, the answer to the Yanktons’ question was simple: they were not white men. The Yanktons were colonized people who were told to follow the commands of the US government.

Visiting despite the Restrictions

Agents lacked the authority and manpower to completely rein in Native mobility. For many, a pass was simply a formality that could be ignored, and hundreds constantly traveled without permission. Large groups defiantly journeyed off the reservation, even in the late 1880s as agents grew confident in their ability to discourage large visits. While many found clear paths to their destinations without bothering to ask permission, others asked for permission to make visits and were then denied by their agents but made their visits anyway. To make matters more difficult for agents, some Natives, when denied permission to travel, simply forged passes, letters, and signatures. Native Americans questioned the power of the US government to limit their mobility, which meant much more than living what Indian agents labeled a “nomadic” lifestyle. The inability of the Office of Indian Affairs to maintain a strict visitation policy in the West demonstrates the influence the Indians held over their agents. Their demands were not always met, but Native men and women certainly pressured agents to bend to their will.

Network Analysis

The analysis of Lakota visitation networks demonstrates that Lakotas were able to maintain the social and political bonds that tied the larger Lakota bands and smaller tiyospaye together before the reservation years. These connections were maintained despite the isolation caused by the reservation system and the limitations applied to Lakota movement off their reservations. Because of the importance of the social and kinship networks among the seven bands, the Oglalas (Oglála), Brulés (Upper and Lower Sičhánǧu), Miniconjous (Mnikȟówožu), Sans Arcs (Itázipčho), Two Kettles (Oóhenumpa), Sihásapas, and Hunkpapas (Húŋkpapȟa), Lakotas fought to preserve their right to move about and visit those living at distant localities, agencies, or reservations. Visiting served important social, economic, political, and religious purposes. There is a record of at least 468 trips made by Lakotas from one of the five Lakota agencies/reservations (Cheyenne River, Lower Brule, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Standing Rock) to another from 1880 through 1890. Around one third of those trips was made without permission, but many more were undetected, thus unrecorded by U.S. government officials. At least three hundred more trips were made by Lakotas to twenty-three other, non-Lakota reservations during that period, many creating new connections with tribes that they had little contact with or were hostile with before the reservation era.