Connecting Reservations

Native Americans used the tools acquired at Americanized Indian schools to express themselves beyond reservation boundaries, overcoming the segregation that the reservations of the West were designed to create. Native Americans employed education, namely literacy, as an anticolonial tool. Letters written by Native men, women, and children passed over reservation borders (courtesy of the US Postal Service) to other Natives, bridging the distance between reservations, largely outside the control of colonialism.

During the 1870s and 1880s, a series of local communities networked into larger, growing intertribal communities. Native networks of correspondence tied individuals to their families, families to their tribes, and tribes to other tribes. Nations divided by language used written English as an effective common language. Related peoples separated by geography and by the consequences of colonialism, like the Northern and Southern Cheyennes, Northern and Southern Arapahos, Southern Utes and Uintahs and Ourays, or divisions of Lakotas living at different agencies, could stay in constant communication and be informed about the affairs of other groups. Nations without a previous relationship could forge new bonds, and those with a history of conflict could make peace. Correspondence was used by leaders to spread influence, sway minds, hash out disagreements, inform others about the dirty dealings of the US government, and to organize opposition to government policies. Letters spread warnings of disease, plans for improvement, and ideas of change. Cultures were exchanged, especially religious concepts; visitations and dances were planned; and extratribal life developed.

Boarding School Networks

Many western Native Americans began to correspond for the first time out of necessity. With hundreds of boys and girls sent off to live at boarding schools, often hundreds of miles from the reservation, concerned parents wrote to communicate with their children. Parents exchanged letters with their children living in dormitories at off-reservation boarding schools across the country, providing children at least one tether to their accustomed life back home. Students regularly sent letters home at the request of their parents, as an exercise in English class, or of their own free will. Parents also corresponded with school administrators and government officials concerning their children. Beginning in the 1870s, a great chain of correspondence was created throughout the country among superintendents and parents, parents and students, and students and superintendents and agency officials.

Intratribal Correspondence

Even with their compulsory confinement on reservations, western Natives traveled across their boundaries. Those traveling on their own accord, for business or pleasure, used the postal service to keep in touch with their families back at the reservation. Many western Natives participated in the market economy before the twentieth century, working off-reservation, traveling with Wild West shows, freighting government supplies, or laboring on white farms. In many instances, individuals were separated for reasons outside their control, often because of the consequences of settler colonialsim, and letter writing kept them in contact. The dislocation caused by US colonialism also separated entire tribes. With all the movement, forced relocation, and imprisonment of “hostile” Indians, the whereabouts of fellow tribesmen could be lost, but letters could facilitate the search for them.

Native Americans also used letters to stay informed of the political affairs of tribal nations hundreds of miles away. In 1879, Cañge-skă, an Omaha man, wrote in his language to his Yankton friend Feather-in- the- Ear, hoping to hear “a correct account of the various affairs of the Dakota tribes up the Missouri River” and “of the various affairs of you own nation,and what they are doing.” 98 Another Omaha man wrote to a Yankton friend, “I hope that you will send and tell me exactly how you are, and what you are doing. I wish to see those young Dakotas whom I made my children (in the pipe-dance).” The Omaha man asked to acquire a calumet, “such as they use in the pipe-dance,” from another Yankton family “and dance the calumet dance for his children.” The Omaha man also addressed the Oglala chief Red Cloud in the letter. He asked Red Cloud to “ask that my petition be granted as a personal favor to you” when he went to Washington. The Omaha man wanted to talk to the president “about several matters,” he explained. “When the Omahas reach the Yankton village, tell them what you will give me. When you come to the Yankton lodges, send me a letter quickly. I wish to hear from you.”

Intertribal Correspondence

Corresponding became a normal part of life for many Indigenous peoples of the West during the 1870s and 1880s. This practice, which was once a specialized skill, developed into a collective routine. As a result, correspondence began to connect those who lived on different reservations, those who were members of different tribes, and those outside of kinship networks. Between 1881 and 1893, for example, at least sixty letters were received by the Southern Utes in southwest Colorado from the Northern Utes at the Uintah and Ouray Agency in Utah (distinct groups of people who shared relatives and friendships). The letters carried news, information, and well-wishes. At least two dozen letters from the Northern Utes to the Southern Utes relayed bad news. In November 1890, the Northern Utes reported two deaths. “We will inform you of all deaths that may happen here at anytime in the future,” they promised. “All my brothers and sisters have died and left me all alone and I will have to die sometime can’t help all from dying sometimes, the Dr can’t help people from dying sometime. . . . All die sometime large and small, old and young.”

Written Diplomacy

Written correspondence was also used to express disagreements between western nations and perhaps hash out those conflicts. Intertribal relations in the West were complicated by long histories of competition for resources, raiding, violence, and alliance making. Relations were further complicated in the 1860s and 1870s with the increased presence of white Americans in the West, the settlement of reservations, and the constant pressures of colonialism. Tribes were forced onto reserves, and some found themselves with new neighbors, tribes that might have been longtime enemies or distant strangers. Osages, for instance, were forced to relocate onto a reserve in Indian Territory in 1870, a territory with eventually more than two dozen other tribal nations, several of which were rivals. Like other nations in the territory, Osages had to consider other groups diplomatically and figure out the best path toward harmony. An early reservation-era letter, sent in 1873 from Osages to Wichitas, was an attempt to solve a dispute stemming from the murder of Wichita chief Isadawah by a couple of Osages. Wichitas wanted the Osages to hand over the men responsible, and according to the white press, war was “imminent” between the two tribes in May 1873. Shawnees who lived Indian Territory, having gotten a copy of the Osage letter, sent their own letter to the Osages in June that demanded the men be handed over. The Sac and Foxes did the same. Eventually a council was held, and the Osages begrudgingly agreed to pay for Isadawah’s life with ponies.

Tribes understood that letters could carry diplomatic messages that might ease tensions with old rivals. Several Northern Plains groups with long histories of violent conflicts exchanged such peacekeeping letters. In 1884, Indians at the Fort Berthold Agency, where Arikaras, Hidatsas, and Mandans lived, wrote several letters to the Hunkpapa and Sihásapa Lakotas at the Standing Rock Agency to invite them to visit Fort Berthold. Arikaras, Hidatsas, and Mandans were old enemies of the Lakotas in the 1800s, but increased communication between the tribes during the early reservation years cooled tensions.

Some tribes attempted a firmer diplomatic strategy. In 1879, two Northern Cheyenne leaders, Tall Bull (the younger) and Spotted Wolf, and two men of both Mnicoujou Lakota and Cheyenne descent, Hump and Horse Roads, living around Fort Keogh wrote in English to Oglala Lakota leaders at the Pine Ridge Agency. In a remarkable example of intertribal communication in the early reservation years, the men wrote with concern for their Northern Cheyenne friends and relatives who had been living at Pine Ridge for a year. The Fort Keogh Cheyennes had “heard” that some of their relatives at Pine Ridge were being mistreated by Lakotas, even being kept “prisoners.” The authors of the letter used intimidating language to convince the Lakotas to treat the Cheyennes better. “You think you are soldiers but you are not, We are soldiers here and treat everybody right,” they wrote.

Exchanging Strategies

Tribes also wrote to exchange advice and strategies in managing their changing worlds. Some letters urged recipients to pursue traditional ways of life while others recommended so-called progressive paths. Tribes also passed along information about surviving diseases, including warnings of outbreaks and recommendations for vaccines. Mantcu-nanba, wrote to Feather-in- the- Ear to warn the Yanktons of an outbreak of smallpox that was spreading in the south among the Omahas. Mantcu-nanba instructed the Yanktons to ask “for medicine among the white people. . . . If you are vaccinated you will not have the small-pox.” Smallpox devastated Omahas and Poncas in 1878, and the letters exchanged reflected the loss and allowed the nations to grieve collectively. “Your elder brother is dead. . . . Your daughter had twins. Both died. . . . Scabby Horn, your father, is almost dead. He will die before you see him,” one wrote. Some used the mail to ask other tribes for assistance, even across international borders. In 1885, Sitting Bull received a letter from Gabriel Dumont, one of the Métis leaders of the North-West Rebellion in Saskatchewan.

An Anti-Colonial Weapon

By the mid-1880s, intertribal letter writing was regularly used by Native leaders as a political tool and an anticolonial weapon. For instance, in 1886, as Lakotas were debating the merits of the Dawes Severalty Act (a disastrous plan of individual allotment of lands passed by Congress in late 1887 that dramatically hastened land loss for most tribes in the West), a letter was reportedly circulating “among the Sioux for the purpose of preventing their acceptance of the Dawes’ Bill.” Just after the Dawes Act was passed and as a Dawes Sioux Bill was under consideration (which would bring allotment to the Lakota agencies and open nearly ten million acres for white settlement in the Dakotas), there was a movement among Lakotas, as the Standing Rock agent described it, to collect money to pay for a delegation of headmen from several agencies to visit and influence politicians in Washington, DC. “Many letters from Indians of the other Sioux Agencies” were received at Standing Rock in the weeks after the Dawes Severalty Act was passed, “imparting” the Standing Rock Lakotas “to join in the movement.” And in May 1889, as the Lakotas were confronted with the reality of the revised Dawes Sioux Bill, a white trader at Pine Ridge reported to the commissioner that an “anonymous letter originally sent to Red Cloud” was being circulated among the Pine Ridge Indians. The letter suggested that the Sioux should “get together” to organize a united front against the bill before the commissioner visited the Sioux agencies.

Influence

In September 1889, a special agent told the commissioner of Indian affairs that Red Cloud, because of his “strong influence,” received a lot of letters “from those of influence scattered over the Indian nation asking his advice not only in relation to this Bill but on many of the topics that pertain to the Government and the Indians.” Natives who could not travel the distance to Pine Ridge could council with Red Cloud via letter. Although thought to be illiterate, Red Cloud made good use of the pen and paper with the help of literate Lakotas and white friends. As early as 1877, he regularly corresponded with Lakotas, distant tribes, and whites and government officials. In 1878, Red Cloud and fifteen other Lakotas sent a letter to Dakotas at the Crow Creek Reservation that reportedly appealed “to them to remember that they must act as one people when they get into trouble with the whites.” Red Cloud’s reputation and influence gave weight to his many letters that criticized government policies and the whites that implemented them. He regularly wrote to presidents and cabinet members. He wrote to newspapers to publicize the problems his people were facing. Because of the many letters of complaints from Red Cloud and a petition he circulated among Pine Ridge Oglalas, for instance, Red Cloud forced the Pine Ridge agent to concede to the inspection of his agency in the summer of 1882.

Telegraph

As telegraph lines reached their reservations, Natives did not hesitate to communicate close to the speed of light. A primary function of western telegraph lines was to more effectively coordinate the subjugation of Indians in times of war and peace. The Office of Indian Affairs relied on telegraphs to better surveil Indian movements and send updates from the reservations to eastern officials, but as with other emblems of white modernity, Natives readily used the telegraph for their own purposes. When the telegraph line opened between the Pine Ridge Agency and the Rosebud Agency in 1881, for instance, the Rosebud agent complained that it was “overrun with requests from Indians to forward messages upon the most trivial subjects,” which created “a serious annoyance” for the agent and “a hinderance to legitimate business.” Rosebud began charging one cent per message for the transmission of private messages “to prevent such general use of the wires.”