From Hiawatha To Geronimo

Spanning three centuries, from Champlain’s first encounter in 1609 with primitive Iroquois warriors to Geronimo’s death in 1909, Hiawatha to Geronimo chronicles the demise of the native peoples of North America to the relentless encroachment of white European settlement. From the forests of New England to the deserts of the American southwest, the indigenous peoples of America were driven mercilessly from the lands they had roamed for thousands of years. This is their story, the forgotten tribes and their heroic leaders: King Phillip, Blue Jacket, Tecumseh, Osceola, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Cochise, Geronimo. Each of these, along with countless others, rose up to take the torch from his predecessor in a near-continuous cycle of conflict that spanned the continent and all but eradicated a people and a culture. Taken together with our nation’s terrible history of slavery, the assault by whites on Native America formed the second of the great pillars of the American Tragedy. It was perhaps the most egregious of our Nation’s Original Sins.

Hiawatha, a Native American legend, is known as the spokesperson for The Great Peacemaker, Dekanawidah. Dekanawidah was the creator of The Great Law of Peace, a law that gathered and bound all Iroquois Confederacy together, first in oral tradition only, but eventually the decree was written with Native American symbols on wampum belts. This book is an introduction to the life and work of Hiawatha whose peaceful advocacy and education inspired songs, books and folklore. It contains original artwork, historical context of the story, recounts folktales from her diverse culture, and defines words unique to the story.

His face has appeared on T-shirts, postage stamps, jigsaw puzzles, posters, and an Andy Warhol print. A celebrity and a tourist attraction who attended three World’s Fairs and rode in President Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade, he is a character in such classic westerns as Stagecoach and Broken Arrow. His name was used in the daring military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, and rumors about the location of his skull at a Yale University club have circulated for a century. These are just a few of the ways that the Apache shaman and war leader known to Anglo-Americans as Geronimo has remained alive in the mainstream American imagination and beyond. Clements’s study samples the repertoire of Geronimo stories and examines Americans’ changing sense of Geronimo in terms of traditional patterns—trickster social bandit, patriot chief, sage elder, and culture hero. He looks at the ways in which Geronimo tried with mixed results to maintain control of his own image during more than twenty years in which he was a prisoner of war. Also examined are Geronimo’s ostensible conversion to Christianity and his image in photography and literature.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his "discovery" in 1832 of the source of the Mississippi River. His wife's knowledge on Native American legends shared with Schoolcraft formed in part the source material for Longfellow's epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha. Schoolcraft began his ethnological research in 1822 during his appointment as Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. He wedded Jane Johnston, who was the daughter of an Irish fur trader and an Ojibwe woman. From his wife, he learned the Ojibwe language and the lore of the tribe. In 1841 he lost his position as Indian agent and moved back to the East, where he continued to write about Native Americans.

As the grotesque figure stepped closer to Myung-Dae Kwon, his stomach convulsed from the foul stench that enveloped him. The servant of Satan planted himself firmly only a few feet from Myung-Dae Kwon and bellowed with a voice that shook the ground for miles. His putrid breath dropped birds in flight and frogs from the trees to the ground. It laid the tall wheat grass down around the path as far as one could see. At the bank of the Han River, Kim heard the unholy roar of the beast and fell back into the longboat. Peering over the side, he saw the river water dancing (as it does when an alligator sounds its mating call). Kim saw the birds falling from the sky and the frogs dropping into the river and along the shore. He was struck with fear. The repugnant creature spoke to Myung-Dae Kwon with a horrifying voice. "In your cloak you carry a script that belongs to me. Put it in this box, and I will not harm you."

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 - December 10, 1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of American Indians in the 1850s. He served as a United States Indian agent for a period beginning in 1822 in Michigan, where he married Jane Johnston, mixed-race daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother, herself a daughter of Ojibwa war chief Waubojeeg. She taught him the Ojibwe language and much about her maternal culture. They had several children, two of whom survived past childhood. She is now recognized as the first Native American literary writer in the United States. In 1846 the widower Schoolcraft was commissioned by Congress for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States, which was published in six volumes from 1851 to 1857. He married again in 1847, to Mary Howard, from a slaveholding family in South Carolina. In 1860 she published the bestselling The Black Gauntlet, an anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin novel.

"More than four hundred years ago, the five tribes of the Iroquois Indians were at war. Only the great Indian leader Hiawatha was powerful enough to bring the tribes together to sign a peace treaty. How did Hiawatha make peace among the tribes? Join him and be there at the founding of the Iroquois nation. BE PART OF AMERICAN HISTORY!"