EASTERN AMERICAN INDIAN COMMUNITIES
by Robert K. Thomas Monteith College
Wayne State University Detroit, Michigan 1948,
William H. Gilbert, Jr. wrote an article called, "Surviving Indian Groups of Eastern United States."1 In this article he 'examined nearly all of the states east of the Mississippi, excluding Michigan and Wisconsin but including Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri and looked at the various Native American communities there. He listed each Indian group, did a1population estimate and gave a partial sketch of the community in terms of economy, acculturation, language and so forth. This was the first time that such research had been attempted and it gave us the first overview of the Indian groups of eastern United States. He came out with a total population estimate of somewhere between 75,000 to 100,000. This study was quite a revelation as these Indians had been hiding -den for many years; not only hidden but neglected. Most Indian groups I'''. in the eastern United States, are not well known outside of their local areas and they have tended not to be among the more "colorful" peoples zr) that American anthropologists studied. Most research on American 149 (1 1 54 AA, Indians has been done id the western United States, since these are the groups which tend to display more aboriginal traits than do those in the eastern part of the country. Although Gilbert's research was a revelation, it did not lead to further solid research. Unfortunately his paper, written in 1948, is still the best done in this area. In recent years a few other scholars have looked at these modern Indians in the east, but by and large such scholars have been sociologists looking at population statistics or else interested in caste phenomenon in the southern part of the United States. Rice ,Italy Stuyvesant and Stanley of the Smithsonian have tried to bring Gilbert's research up to date. 2
Later in this paper I want to include their chart, which lists these groups cronologically by state so that the reader can get a notion of the names of these communities, where they are located and what population they have. One of the problems of native American communities in the eastern United States is the lack of solid information. For instance, in Sturtevant and Stanley's chart some of the names assigned to these groups appear to be names which their local neighbors call them. Some of these names may be in fact pejorative and may not be accepted by the people so named. .No one has talked to the people in these communities to find_out what, if anything, they call themsetves, or what their own name for themselves is. If some of these names are insulting to the people involved our only excuse is, once again, the lack of any solid research in many of these communities. Social and Cultural Origins To understand the present situation of eastern Indian communities one can start by looking at the social and cultural origins of these groups; the formation of these groups and what used to be referred to in anthropology as their "acculturation";* that.is, how did their' present style of life and style of community come into being. We must divide the eastern United States into several regions which are not only geographical, but regions within which the same primary contact situation prevailed between Whites and Indians and resulted in conditions which at an early time gave a character to and set a pattern s. -' for the later development of these small, societies. The first region is the eastern seaboard. This is the area of the old thirteen colonies and it is in this area that there is the largest group of native Americans in the east, both in the number of distinct groups and in terms of gross population.
When the thirteen colonies were established, each colony tended to determine its own relationship with the Indian groups within its borders. In the 1600's the British had neither developed a consistent "' Indian policy nor had the Crown taken sole jurisdiction for dealing with Indians as they did later in the 1700's.- Contact with Indians and policy regarding Indians varied from colony to colony in response to local conditions. There was an overlap in territory occupied by Whites and Indians in some colonies. There was even an intermingling of settlements. Some colonies would make agyeements with Indians regarding land purchase: In some of the southern colonies, even individuals would make agreements' with local chiefs about land purchase. Outside of Virginia, most of the Indians on the seaboard were very loosely organized. They lived in small bands and might for a large part of the year live in extended kin groups scattered over a wide hunting territory. Most of these Indians did not have political _cohesion nor were they even socially compact, as opposed to the 151 - (1156 S incoming Whites. The upshot was that Indians lost the basis of their economy and much of their land base. Further, some colonies like Massachusetts undertook forced acculturation programs under the guise of education and Christianization and this, needless to say, was a further pressure ,-on Indian groups in the area. The result of this kind of contact was a series of disastrous wars between Whites and Indians in the latter part .of the 1600's and the early decades of the 1700's. These wars were so disastrous that the Indian population was decimated. It appears that individual Indian families were pushed into submarginal lands in these colonies; not at the margin of the colonies, but internally into swamps, forests and out of the way places. These families were fairly isolated from ,the rest of the population. There was, of course, some contact with neighbors, probably on a fairly intimate level. It was in this period that most of the Indians on the eastern seaboard learned English well. It was also during this period that Indians began to marry extensively with both Whites and Blacks. One of the results of this decimation of population was that there were very few Indians in any one area and this, no doubt, forced people to pick mates who were either White or Black.
Along about Revolutionary times, a number of things happened. Indians were puAling back together to form more cohesive communities. ,,..\ Population increases was on the upswing in these communities. If one looks at any of these Indian groups on the eastern seaboard, one finds very few family names among them because the original population consisted of very few families. Even such a populous people as the Lumbee Indians of eastern North Carolina, who now number somewhere between 30 and 40,000 probably have something like eighty percent of r the tribe bearing some twenty family names. It is very possible that this very large group of people have descended from some twenty nuclear families. This kind of population increase sounds nothing short of spectacular, and to the modern person it is, indeed, nothing short of - spectacular. However, if one considers the general history of the . population increase in America, particularly of the pre-Revolutionary stock of Americans, this by no means is surprising. For instance, most Of the people in the United States in the Middle South, the Southwest and most of the lower Middlewest, plus a great deal of the Rocky Mountain area and West Coast are descended from several hundred thousand north Irises who came to the United States before the American Revolution. In other words, it is probably no exaggeration to say that there are a minimum of 50 million people in the United States of north Irish descent who are descended from possibly 300,000 migrants. The spectacular increase of eastern Indian groups is not as surprising as one might think given the general context of population increase in the United States from pre-Revolutionary times up to the present. By 1800 a great many eastern Indians, had come back together as groups and were starting to build solid Indian communities. Now, of course, during the one hundred years previous the language had been lost, probably through the extensive intermarriage with outsiders. The general life style that these communities had developed was very much like that of their White or Black neighbors.
Besides original tribes restoring themselves, new intertribal communities had formed. Indians within a region, whether or not they had been members of tribes which were related linguistically or culturally,. clustered together. The Lumbee of eastern North 'Carolina are one-such example of a people -'153 - (1158 who drew membership from the general region of central North Carolina. Many of these original families were probably the last survivors to their small tribe. In short, most of the Indian communities of the eastern seaboard had, by 1800, assumed the central character both socially and culturally that we see today. Earlier in the paper I said that most of these groups, by 1800, had come to resemble their neighbors in terms of cultural traits. It is a paradox that many Indian groups in the east are distinctive to the outsider because they have preserved so many early American cultural items from this period of the synthesis of their style of life. Their English, food, farming techniques, certain attitudes, etc. all reflect this "cultural lay." We should be-careful not to interpret the above as an example of "stagnation." Eastern Indian communities ery vital and innovative social wholes. Some of the most spectacular Indian adjustments to the American economy have been created by seaboard Indiana. The Gay Head Indians of Martha's-Vineyard island in Massachusetts had, in the early part of the 1800's, become expert sailors and whalers. -They were sought after by sailing masters in Massachusetts. The character of Tantaquidgeon, Melville's American Indian harpooner in "Moby Dick," was inspired by these Indian whaling experts. In recent years the noted success of the.Mohawks in high steel speaks for itself. The second region is the area just to the west of the coast and the Peidmont. It includes the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, western New York, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the western Carolinas, southwest Virginia, north Georgia, north Alabama and Mississippi. I will call this region, the inland area for want of a better word. I have chosen to put northern Florida and southern Alabama into the seaboard region even though these sections are outside of the original thirteen colonies. I am doing this because these sections are old, settled--the northern Gulf Coast. And the same Contact °situation and subsequent results prevailed in this area as in the eastern seaboard proper. I have chosen to put southern Florida and northern Maine into the inland area even though these Actions are geographically part of the eastern seaboard. however, northern Maine and southern Florida are late frontier areas and resemble the interior region in terms of the contact situation. Tribes in these sections are the Passamquoddy, Penobscot and Seminole. By the time that intensive contact began with the inland tribes, the disastrous Indian wars of the eastern seaboard had come to a close.
The British government and the economic interests it represented were becoming more and more involved in the Indian trade and Indians in the interior were becoming harvesters of furs and customers for trade goods. It was at this point in history that the British government began dealing with Indian groups as semisovereigns and initiated a policy of treaty making. Not only did the British government set up 4 a standard policy but they also began to function as the intermediary between the colonies and inland Indian groups. These inland Indians were different in character than the seaboard peoples. They were always large, more cohesive and more organized tribes; groups like the Iroquois, Cherokees, Choctaws,,Creek;, Shawnees and so forth. After nearly a century of sporadic contact with Whiles their cohesion had increased. Moreover, the British treaty -1 making policy raTclinly contributed further to this development. Some authors, in fa feel that White contact as a single cultural, 155 7 force brought into being the great confederation of the Iroquois tribes and the Creek tribes, as well as the later nation building developments of the Cherokees, Choctaws, etc. The great interior tribes that the American settlers were to meet head on after the Revolution were certainly by this time in history' powerful peoples to i)e reckoned. The history of :large interior Indian groups is well known to Amricans and it will not contribute to the purpose of this paper to belabor that history except to point out that when the United States became an independent nation and settlers .began to pour into the interior of the continent there were some very famous conflicts between advgncing settlers and these Indian nationalities. This tension and conflict was finally resolved by the,forced removaltof most of these interior tribes to what is now the area of Oklahoma and Kansas in the 1830's. Parts of these tribes and entire smaller tribes escaped removal and remained in the area.
The eastern Cherokee of North Carolina, the Mississippi Choctaw, the Semitic:51e of Florida and the'Iroquois of New York are the prime examples. All of these groups, unlike the seaboard tribes, are recognized as Indf;ans by treaties,7laws and statutes of the Federal government. In regent years reservations have been set aside for these portions of the in prior peoples who escaped removal and these Indians are to some extent, particularly the Choctaw, Cherokee and Seminole, "Federal Indian " he inland tribes held together socially and culturally early contact times up to the present day. They have remained large cohesive social wholes all through history end have displayed m social and cultural autonomy all through their history. Some of them have taken over many European cultural items and institutions. Le 156 - () 1 C.; 1. the last century the southern tribes developed a republican style government. Most have become devout Christians. The native language has persisted, however, and the'culture traits they have borrowed from Europeans have been placed in the context of the autonomous 'meanings and experience of these peoples. They are yet among the most "Indian the peoples in the United States. There are, however, Indians this interior region who are descendants of individual Indian families who came into the area as pioneers' along with American White pioneers. Then, in response to the caste system, which became formal in the south and informal in northern areas in this period, they began to group together and form new com- . munities in these frontier regions. For instance, the Melungeons of Tennessee are such a people. They appear to have some into east Tennessee as individual pioneer families from all over the eastern and central sections of Virginia and North Carolina. Then, in the 1830's they began to form a single community in Hancock County, Tennessee. From there, colonies spread out from this original community down the Tennessee Valley into most of the eastern Tennessee counties into neighboring counties of northern Alabama, then westward into the counties-of middle Tennessee. Another spurt went northward into southwest Virginia, on into eastern Kentucky and finally into some counties in southern Ohio. Another group called the Guineas pulled together in West Virginia after migrating from areas further east. They later set up colonies in southern Ohio. Both of these groups recognize their Indian origins, bu t the majority of them think of themselves // as a new people, as a racially mixed people. In the case of' the Melungeons, they see themselves as a mixture- of,Portuguese and \, 157 - ) 1 2 and Indian. Their conception of themselves is like that of the Metis of Mannitoba and Saskatchewan, who ark descendants of French trappers and Indian women, and also who, in the late 1700's, made new communities around forts, fur trading posts and in fact are a new people. In this sense, the Melungeon's conception of themselves has a historical validity to it.
The same holds true for the Guineas in West Virginia. One could also include in this category some groups interne). /I to the eastern seaboard, such as the Wesorts of Maryland d groups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and so forth. These groups appear to be later communities made up of migrants from the older, but rejuvenated Indian communities in the seaboard region. Needless to say, the style of life of these groups was very much like that of the typical American frontiersmen of the particular area in which they settled, and this style of life is very little different from that of their present day poor White or Black neighbors. The third region, which I have arbitrarily designated a register, is Louisiana. Louisiana is a state, an area, which both resembles // the eastern seaboard and the inland region. It resembles j1e eastern seaboard/ in that the older Indian communities tend to h ve a similar social history seaboard Indians--that is, they we /e decimated in population on scattered in individual family groups And changed a lot N intermarriage. The began a process of coming together and forming a rejuvenated t be or perhaps a new tribe made up Of individuals from many bal backgrounds. There are also Choctaws, in the area and Cohush a, both of whom are later migrants from Mississippi and Alabama and tend to resemble their fellow tribesmen Mississippi or Okl ma. e fourth area of consideration I am calling the eastern ??, which includes the states of Michigan and Indiana. I am excluding Wisconsin from discussion since most of the Indians in estimation and have ties with Minnesota. Mic Indiana Indians have a very different social and cultural histo even though the Chippewa are the most numerous tribe throughout the re- Lakes country. Southern Michigan and Indiana were part of the great interior that I discussed earlier. Tribes in this section were like tribes further* south, pressured for removal by the Federal government. Most of the Miamis of Indiana did in fact remove to what is now Oklahoma, a large contingent stayed behind and lived on what were lands of individual chief's, which had been set aside in the removal for their use. Part of the removal policy was to give lands to individual chiefs.- so that they and their immediate kin could stay behind while the removal of the rest of their tribe was sanctioned.
In the case of the Miamis a much larger contingent stayed behind than the Federal government had no doubt anticipated. At least until 1880 this group of Indians in Indiana were a very cohesive, conservative Indian community. From 1880 on the community started to marry outsiders extensively, lost the language and integrated into. the general population, although there is yet a core of' People in that section of Indiana today who retain some semblance of a Miami community. This same process happened in Michigan. The Potowatomie of southern Michigan were pressured for removal. Many of them fled to Canada, some fled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and formed new communities. But a great many of them were removed to what is now , Kansas and some ultimately to Oklahoma. One chief did manage to have his band exempted from the policy, Simon Pokaton, and some 300 of the -.159 - Pokaton Potawatomie live in scattered individual family groups around southern Michigan. Another group neap Battle Creek, Michigan remained, behind and the State of Michigan, set aside a small state reservation for them. Most of these groups remained conservative Indians for many years. In recent times, however, that cohesion Was lessened by the general urban development in southern Michigan. One can imagine the impact that the 20th century midWestern agricultural and industrial development has had on these very scattered, loosely structured people. Now there are probably very few people of either band who are able to speak the Potowatomie language. Northern Michigan, the northern section of the lower peninsula, and the upper peninsula was largely ignored by the Federal government and by White settlers in the last century. Treaties were . groups of Ottawa and Chippewa, but only four reservations aside. In the lower peninsula, the reservation near Mt. trade with were set Pleasant, originally Chippewa, was allotted to individuals, opened and' integrated - . into a state system many years ago. There are three reservations in'the northern peninsula, but.none of these reservations have the land base necessary to support the band members much less for the many other Chippewa and Ottawa bands in the northern part of the State!' After 1900, the lumber industry, tourism and new settlers simply moved in on the Ottawa and Chippewa in this area and in a very short time between 1900 and 1930, 9 rapid acculturation took place. Very few Chippewa in Michigan, now under.forty, are able, to speak the native language. There is one notable exception--the Lac Vieux Desert Chippewa community in the northern peninsula. This settlement both speaks thp . . native language and practices the native Chippewa religion and is quite a contrast culturally, to the rest of the Chippewa and Ottawa in State of Michigan. 'Elie Chippewa and nttawa of northern Michigan.appear to be going through a period of cultural and social disorientation at this juncture in their history after having existed for many years in Isolation with a fairly independent' and_ autonomous economy. They have simply been been overwhelmed by the influx of settlers, lumber companies, tourist cabins -Detroit-and .the Smaller cities of Michigan. These four geographical areas, as the reader has probably surmised, are in fact not geographical areas at all. They are areas in which a common contact situation has tended to prodUce a common social and cultural complextion to the Indian communities in each area. The Culture of Eastern Indian Communities If we look at most eastern Indian communities and their style of life in terms of items or traits, we find vet1 little that is distinct from their White or Black neighbors. It is a middle-class American bias totend to hold "human nature" constant, to say "everyone is basically the same," and to see the distinctiveness of peoples in terms of items or traits. In some sense, even the most sophisticated analysis of is-still external to the ptople themselves. For ,in- / st4nce, you would ask a local White in Mississippi if there were //---- any distinctive items of Choctaw life, he would probably be hard put to name any particular traits. The most'obvious one, of course, is the language. Perhaps he-Would point to the ceremonial ball playing and some of the dances performed at the Choctaw fair, but these traits have become modern symbols of Choctaw identity and are not meaningful . in the same way as they were one hundred years ago.
The Choctaw today r) 16CC are committed Christians; they are cotton farmers; the children go to school; they dress primarily in American clothing; they drive auto- , mobiles and so forth. These same Whites, however, would tell you that the 6hoctaws are a very different people from either the Whites or the Blacks in this same region. They may interpret this difference in the separate natures of the races, in the "blood;" but they do know that the Choctaws are a distinct people. In this sense, even racists are more astute observers than liberal middle class Whites, although they may come to a racist conclusion about their observations. They are not blinded by the liberal ideology which states that all men are basically the same and differences are really externals. Liberal middle class Whites would probably interpret the Choctaw behavior as an example of "deprivation" or "the culture of poverty" since they could see'no obviously different cultural items to signal them that the Choctaws are, culturally distinct. Quite a few years ago, Robert Redfield' wrote-a paper called "The Folk Society" in which he postulated that a great many small communities of the world resemble each other in certain ways. He looked at those features shared in common by these small communities, features which contrasted with characteristics 'of modern urban life. Then having distilled these common characteristics in apposition to modern life, 41% Robert Redfield conceptualized a type of society which he called a folk society and presented it as an ideal type. In this sense, ideal does not mean perfect but the scientific sense of ex4eme. He said, Such a society (the fplk society) is small, isolated, non-literate and homogeneous with a strong sense of group solidarity. The 'ways of living are conventionalized into that coherent system which we call 'a culture.! Behavior is traditional, spontaneous, uncritical and personal. There is no legislation or - 162 7, U 3 q7 0 habit of experiment and reflection for intellectual ends.- Kinship, its relationships and institutions, are the type categories of experience and the familial group is a unit of action. The sacred prevails over the secular, thq economy is one of status rather than of the market."' Many peoples of the world approach this characterization: peasant villages, Appalachian mountaineers, even the working class in cities to somedegree, but in this ideal form, it probably applies most characteristically to those people in the world we call tribal. Among those, of course, are the.various American Indian groups who come closer to this ideal type folk society than do most West African or inner Asian tribals. In fact, there are very few peoples Of the world who would approach this ideal type as closely as American Indian tribal groups. Robert Redfield. described this society in terms of its characteristics. One need only know what it means for a human being to be part of this kind of society. For instance, one of Redfield's characteristics is that behavior is traditional. What he means by tradition in this case is not outmoded custom, 'as many lay Americans think of it. He thinks of tradition as a-body of knowledge, prescriptions, rules and cues external to the person, which a group of people have worked,out over the years as best allowing them to live with one another and with an external environment. If tradition guides life for such an individual he looks outside himself for guides and cues. He is not a person who has motivations nor does he have a lack of motivations. He is a person for whom the word motivation is inappropriate. He is a person who responds to the external environment and this includes the people around-Rim who tend not to have internal guides and controls. In the modern middle-class sense, this description seems rather negative. However, on the - 163 - 1)1f18 positive side, this is a person who is extremely sensitive and observant to what goes on around him. If there is one feature about American Indians on which observers have commented, it is the Indian ability to observe what goes on around- -him.- Redfield characterized behavior in the ideal folk society as personal. Personal behavior in this sense does not mean friendly. .necessarily. It means that your relationships with others are wholistic, unique, particular and the people with whom you have these relationships tell you who you are, in fact. The closest thing that we in the urban world have to these kinds of relationships are with very close friends and with family. A great deal of our relationships in the .urban world are not personal, but categorical. We deal with strangers in standardized role functions such as waitresses, cab drivers, colleagues, etc.
Our definition of ourselves tends to be not from othei people, but from our awn actions--our goals, our occupations, our roles and their symbols, etc. Men who live in a folk world are defined by other persons. In most American Indian groups, both in aboriginal times and today, these other persons who give definition to the individual, who tells one who .he is, are relatives. Redfield says, "Kinship, its relationships and institutions, are the type categories of experience and the familial group is a unit of action." In other words, such an individual is immersed in his relations with his relatives. He is committed to his relatives emotionally because trey are, in fact, definitive of him. To lose one's relatives is to lose one's self. This is not to say that.in the many folk-like groups in the world, young men d9 not stray from the home village. Certainly this is not, true of young American Indians and many go into the city to work. But this is usually seen as a temporary expediency and the point of - 164 - (I 1(iH reference is those relatives. Such a person see his contribution in the world in tests of those relatives. He sees what we will leave behind him in the world in terms of those relatives. If you are your relatives and your relatives are you, which.is the case in most ex- , treme folk societies, then one simply is who one is. The job of being is completed. There is no person to become or to fulfill. Such a thing as career motivation, for instance, is meaningless to those who live in such a world. The idea that there is a self which improves or else stagnates or disintegrates has no meaning. The self is fixed and it is completed for such people. One can imagine that in such a society where persons ar *so closely tied to one another and where everyone defines everyone else that good relationships between people are an absolute necessity for the pyschic well being of each individual. Societies which approach our ideal type folk society put a great value on harmony is generalized out to all aspects of life- - to the natural world and the supernatural world. This kind of person lives.in an ordered and reciprocal universe, like his own social world, which is-held together by harmony and good feelings among all its "parts." A tube as a human community is more than simply an ideal folk society:. There are certain features that tribal communities have in common which marks them off as a special kind of ideal folk society. One of these is that most tribal people live in a closed, bounded world. That is to say, notions about the nature of the world are shared only among this group of relatives. A tribal group is a group of relatives. It is a group of relatives who are descended in an unbroken line from time immemorial of other relatives. It is their own experience and their own interpretation of the world that is the interpretation of the world for people in a tribal group. In other words, an individual who - 165 - () 1 70 is a member of an "ideal" tribe takes into account the definition of his rclati,ve and does not take into account the definitions of outsiders. They make sense of the world in their own tOgis, not in the terms of others. The word most tribals have for themselves is either simply "people" or, in more humanistic tribes, the "real' people." The definitions of outsiders, the ideas of right and wrong of outsiders and the reactions of outsiders may be either legitimate, strange or funny, but they belong to outsiders and not to the people. Another characteristic of tribal people as a special category of folk societies is that they are very responsive to a particular natural environment, and a great deal of the life way of a tribal group has grown up in response to that particular environment. But tribals do. more than simply respond to a natural environment; they integrate into a natural environment and almost become part of that environment. Such categories ,as the supernatural and the natural and human are categories foreign to tribal thinking. Since tribal people interact with and are relative to a particular natural environment, their historical experience has been particular. A tribal group does not conceive of itself as "tribal" nor as having much to do with another tribal group, nor are there felt to be broad areas of commonality, except as seen by the outside scientific observer. A' tribe occurs in the particular. A tribe is a particular people with a strong sense of peoplehood, of peopleness. For instance, one cannot discuss the Choctaws as,a tribal group in terms of the general features of tribal groups without doing violence to that particular tribalness of the Choctaw people's experiences over time. The notions that any particular tribal people have developed from their experience with an environment are thought of as "in the nature - 166 (I 1 7 1 of things." They are natural and given. Most times these notions are conceptualized as a series of definitive statements about the nature of the world and the nature of "the people's" place in that world..
When a Cherokee woman "scolds" her child by saying, "The Cherokees don't make a lot of racket" she is reporting a fixed, given, natural fact. A fact which is as definitive of "the real people" as saying, "The Cherokees live in the woods, not out on the prairie." There are very few Indian groups in the United Satetlwho are as yet tribal in the sense that we have described tribal. Most Indian groups now are much more open, they see themselves as part of a larger whole than simply their relatives, are less particular as a people, more generalized and therefore, less tribal in the way we are describing it. Eastern Indians are no exJeption to this rule and the majority of eastern Indian communities are not as tribal as their ancestors. Surprisingly, there are some residual features left of this old tribal state. Although eastern Indian groups are not now bounded, they are still very particular in their environment and although open still very particular peoples. What is probably surprising is that there are in the eastern part of the United States some Indian groups which are among the most tribal in the United States, namely the Seminole, the Choctaw, some of the North Carolina Cherokee and the Coushattas of Louisiana. One could set up a typology of eastern Indian groups in terms of continuity with ancestors. We could put in the first category people who are very tribal and who preserve the most continuity with their ancestors. These are groups like those which were previously named, the Coushattas of Louisiana, the Choctaw of MisSissippi, some of the North Carolina Cherokee and the Seminole of Florida. One of the 167 - (11 72 indices of this tribalness is the extensive used of the native language and the presence of Indian medicine men or native curers. The use of , f the native language usually indicates that the people. are simply oriented to one another to the exclusion of outsiders. Further, it means that the experience of that social group through time, the way in which the world is divided up into categories and the way in which the world is conceived, is still within the "heads" of those people. English is not a language to which the Choctaw experience, as a_ people, can be easily transferred. _The use of native language means that the experiential world is still very much intact and is still the world which is li d in; if the native language is the language of the community and the language of the home, even if people are able to speak fairly acceptable English. Further, the use of the native language not only "preserves," but also contains the person in that particular experiencial world and, to some degree, is an insulation and a protection from the cultural imperialism of the dominant experiential world which is expressed in the English language. The presence of Indian doctor's is usually a sign that the sacred, integrated, wholistic, magical world is still very alive for those t people and that they still live in that world or as modern young people would put it, "that's the bag they come out of." Of all the tribes listed in thiat category, the Florida Seminole must be among" the most conservative, traditional and tribal of American Indian groups. They are not only very tribal, very particularly Seminole who live in a sacred world, but they also have retained a great many of the external forms of their ancestors, such as-the aboriginal religion, ceremonies, social organizations, etc. The second grouping would be what I would"call. tribals in transition.
These are the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potowtomie of northern 'Michigan who, until recently, were very isolated tribal groups and who have almost been overwhelmed by the influx, in a very short time, of urban American into their area. These communities evidence a "great many-'social ills such as alcoholism, family breakdown, etc. There are other tribals in transition. / A minority of the Miccosukkee who live on Federal reservations-are going,through a social turmoil. There are other groups such as the Tunicas of Louisiana who are also going through a transition, but without such dire social consequences. What will be the outcome of this transit for these tribal groups is yet to be seen. The third category consists of those groups which h e ideologized their tribalness. In some sense, such groups are ve urban tribals, if such a thing is conceptually possible and I would imagine, resemble the Jews in the time of the Bablyonian captivity. I am thinking particularly here of-the Iriquori tribes, who have preserved a 'great deal of'.the aboriginal trait complexes of their ancestors, particularly their religion, but reinterpreted by their famous prophet Handsome Lake into,p less tribal and more modern urban religious system. HiS reforms created'a religion that was less magical, more oriented to individual choice and conscience, more ethical and proscriptive, etc. Many of the Iroquois have used this native institution to stabilize their lives. A fourth type of Indian community is-very common in the eastern United States and is particularly evident on the eastern seaboard. These are tribes or Indian groups which, ,after almost being wiped out, havehad a period of resurgence as a people. These are the tribal groups,in southern New England, on Long Island, the NandtiC'okes in Delaware, the tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy in eastern Virginia .andso on. As I saidlin an earlier section, the native language o -f . these groups has not been spoken since the revolution. The Catawbas of South Carolina are an exception and preserved their native language _almost up until 1900. For most seaboard groups, the native language and the old institutional forms--religious, political and.social forms--were abandoned by, revolutionary times. se extensive intermarriage with Whites and Blacks during this period contributed to the loss of aboriginal traits and items of culture. ably contriving the economic sphere, particularly in the Virginia tribes, one sees the retention of many 'aboriginal traits in hunting techniques and economy since these tribes were, until recently, still dealing with tie natural environment as hunters, trappers, f -el en and gardeners!' By and Large, the items of aboriginal culture have long since disappeared but the continuity of their particularity as a people through time has remained. The fifth category of communities having a continuity with ancestors are what I would call reconstituted groups. These are groups like the Lumbees, Haliwas and so forth, who are intertribal amalgams; that is to say, people from different tribes in the same region who came together to form a new people. But their peoplehood is certainly as ,Yong as the peoplehood of the older, more established tribes. The sixth category I would call the displaced groups like the Melungeons of east Tennessee,.the Guineas of West Virginia, the Wesorts of Maryland and other such groups in the middle Atlantic states. These groups seem to be communities,which formed,when mixed blood Indians of various backgrounds came together in response to their social exclusion. Many of the\groups in this category seem to be in the process - 170 - of assimilation. A few of the Melungeon communities have a stronger identity as Indians than other communities in the same category. They refer to themselves as Indians. At present'we need some more data to establish the cause of this phenomenon. It could be the result of the resurgence of "Indianess" generally in the country today. All of these are possibilities, but all are speculations. However, the fact , . that these are very folk-like communities and communities of kin, are factors that in themselves will tend to retard assimilation even after the original cause of community formation, that is the social exclusion, disappears.
The seventh category that I have listed here is city Indian . This simply is a category of people who now live. in very different circumstances than their ancestors. Since they have recently migrated from many diverse communities, making special adaptations to the ity, leis almost impossible to say anything about them as a group For instance, what a Mississippi Choctaw is experiencing in Ch ago is certainly very different from what a Melungeon from east, tennessee is experiencing in Chicago. This grouping is a convenient. catagory, '74 which is not really related to continuity with ancestors but imply here to point out the beginning of a new social process the effects of which will probably be seen in later years. Perhaps city Indians will develop into a social type in the United States in future years. Certainly city eastern Indians have no separate social distinctiveness except'in the case of the Lumbee, who have a very large colony in Baltimore. Most other Indian migrants from communities are scattered out ii large cities and are as apt to interact with western Indians, as with "hillbillies," Blacks and people from other eastern communities. Eastern Indians have been trickling into cities, like other rural 3 -; A Americans, for many years now. Since World War II: . Indians, have flooded into cities as economic refugees/ Over the years, a great many individuals and families have begin assimilated, some into White society and a few into Black society. However, although city Indians are not yet a solid Community in the city, urban ( Indian social life is beginning to develop and assimliation is slowing / down. It may disappear altogether as significant process if Indians in Cities develop a real community. There are some indications that A such a community and community life might develop in the cities in the future. This does not mean that city eastern Indians are not having an impact on the general Indian scene in the eastern part of the United States and on their individual home communities. Certainly such is not the case and not only are many Indians moving to cities, but city life is moving to Indians. For instance, the area of southern New England is becoming generally an urban rea so that it is very hard to speak of rural areas in eastern M ssachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The same is true in other parts of the eastern United States. Many country Indians from eastern Indian communities who now live in cities have begun to form organizations. For instance, there is an organization of Virginia Indians who\now live in the Delaware river valley Pennsylvania. As I mentioned earlier, there is a large Lumbee community in Baltimore. There are many eastern Indians living in the Boston area and they are in the process of forming Indian organizations. and developing an Indian center on the model of other cities in the United States. The same is true of New York--there is a, Mohawk colony in New York City, in Brooklyn, the very famous one of Mohawk steelworkers.
So the urban world is intruding more and more into the life of the Eastern Indian>, Urban influence is coming to eastern Indian communities by three major routes. 'One,la great many rural 'Indian people are simply moving to the cities; some f them stay permanently, others are returning home with what the have learned in the city. Some of these people are, as stated ove, becoming "citified"enough,to form voluntary organizations, such as the association of the V irginia Indians of the Delaware valley, Indian centers, Indian organizations and so forth. The second influence is the general urbanization of what were formerly rural, areas such as in southern New England., The third route is, at least among the Lumbee,.by the development of a native middle Class and a high educational level. There appears to be two major results of this urbanization. One is that in southern New England Indian community life is becoming more and more secular so-that local churches as' significant institutions , 4 around which people have Built the life of their communities are be- . coming more and more eroded. The second obvious result is that many , young eastern Indians from cities and from the Iroquois -and Lumbee areas, are becoming more and-more militant and nationalistic. -Urban Whites tend to find it strange that urban experience would 4,tt tend to cause a militancy/Ad many sociologists have given us explanations of rising expectations and so forth as a reason for rising militancy when people become more and more urban influenced. However, the simple fact is that rural Indians, by and large, are simply "out of it"-and stand apart from the general society in:a great many ways, where as city Indian and very educated country Indians see themselves as part of American society and of course not only expect better '173' 4178 J, treatment but see the possibility of better treatment by the general society. If they were not part of the "system" they would not be- , . . objecting so much to their treatment by the system. The other facts which gives rise to this militants that urban middle-class People put a great value on 'controlling their own destiny as individuals and 4 as members of communities. They see themselves unjustifiably con- . .trolled, discriminated against and excluded by the society of which they are a part. 'A society which seems to hold out the promise of free choice, free dom and responsible everyone except themselves. Such is an intolerable condition for a middle -class urban person of whatever color -or ethnic background. .The "Problems" of Eastern Indian Communities In this section, I would like to delineate four problems areas which I think most native Americans of the eastern United States, as well as knowledgeable outsiders, would both agree were problems or .these communities. The first problem area is simply that,eastern Indians resemble poor people wherever you find them in the United States. They do not have enough resources and enough money to have a decent standard of living. They are underdevlOped. They are poor people who live in 9 poor areas. This is particularly true in the southern United States. 2 Historically, eastern Indians were pushed 'into economically marginal areas and most of these Communities have a'very little land base anda very insecure land base. There are some eastern Indian communities which Have Federal reservations. Tile,Sorth' Carolina Cherokees live on a Federal reservation,as dormancy of the * Seminole 44 tribe of Florida and the Choctaws in Mississippi. The groups have three small reservations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Other groups have state reservations; such as the Passamquoddys and Penobscots in Maine, the Pequots in Connecticut, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi in Virginia. The Iroquois in New York live on reservations held in trust by the state but sanctioned by treaty with the United States. Most of these reservations, either state or Federal reservations, are not large enough to use as a resource. .Most of the reservations are hardly big enough for homesteads. The majority of eastern Indians. are either tenant farmers or independent small farmers who farm plots of land to which they have an Uncertain title. Some groups are simply squatters on land. Except for the tribes' on Federal reservations eastern Indians receive no special Federal services from the Department of the Interior. The majority of the Indian groups in the,east are simply part of the general citizenry of the State or county insofar as special' services go and are, unfortunately, a very neglected portion. the general citizenry., '(1. . Eastern Indians are uneducated and unskilled. The economic success in America society they certainly have an extremely low level of education; the L bees being the exceptions as well as the New York Iroquois .Their.population is.increasing; many of them are getting pushed into cities as eonomic refugees, ill prepared to-compete in the maelstrom .of city lif in the United States.. Secondly, in most areas eastern Indians face very severe racial discrimination. This discrimination was overt several years ago. In the South, certainly in local areas where Indians lived, Indians were excluded from restaurants,, were not allowed to go to school with Whites and faced not only discrimination, but that kind of economic exploitation which usually goes along with discrimination. In these days overt discrimination is not as blatant, but the discrimination in jobs and economic exploitation is still very strong and the covert pressure against Indians in schools and public institutions is still felt inmost areas. The third third main problem area is that most eastern Indian communi- , ties are effectively excluded from the institutions which goverr their lives. This is true on Federal Indian reservolon's and it is true in Indian communities not on Federal reservations. Indians who are legally integrated into the general society are simply excluded from local county institutions and state institutions., Whether -this be because of discrimination or. whether because Whites have gotten their "firstest with the mostest6 and have grabbed and kept institutional power is beside the point. The fact remains that Indians are effectively excluded from the institutional complies which govern their. lives. One of the features of the segregation system in the South fore school integration, was that,Indians had separate schools and some Indian communities were able, because of this fact, to assume control of that institution. This is particularly true of the Lumbee, who developed 'A native middle -class which ran the Lumbee schools in the area. Their area had a four way segregation system--Whites, Blacks, Lumbees and another group of Indian migrants from South Carolina called Smiling. Lumbees were a big enough group to gain control of the school system and to use it to develop a professional class. Their schools, were an , institution which they_could'"parley" into"some political power. In recent years, the lumbees have reacted negatively to school integration in their section'of North Carolina. ,Certpiply part of this reason was - 176 - 1t1 e i* ss AD that they had spent so much time and effort in building this school system. Also, the social fact of the school system was a recognition --of the Lumbee as a distinct community. But more than that, many Lumbees saw school integration as a taking away of part of the institutional power they had developed. The only institution most eastern Indians have that is their own is the local, rural Protestant church and it has been this institution around which they have built their lives, cohesion.and continuity as a social group. The fourth problem area is one of social legitimacy. This is not a big problem for the large inland tribes like-the Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee, Iroquois or even the Michigan tribes, but it is certainly a problem for, most of the seaboard tribes. American Whites have a tendency to classify people as individuals into occupational, class or racial categories and then relate to them accordingly. Certainly in ' the urban world, life would be more simple and more consistent if everybody stayed.in their assigned categories. Further, Americans tend, to see aggregates Of individuals rather than peoples or communities. Of course, community is a word which is thrown around very loosely these days,. We hear of the scholarly community, the business community, the Black community. Usually these are simply cla s, racial or occupational-categories with very little social reality. They may even administers native units like the Chicago community the North Side community. But a community is more than these thingsl It is a 9 ,e 'goup of people living together over time, dealing togeth r with an environment, raising their, children/together, developing institutions, tore er and ,sharing life together. ....- . . ( / . Further, since the ynited States as/'a society is $ Made up of people 0 - 177 of diverse ethnic backgrounds, many Americans -tend to.confuse the notion of a comm' a with the citizenry and ,boundary of a nation-state. Indeed, in many parts of the world, nation-state boundaries are coterminous with the boundaries of a particblar peoples, such as France or Japan. And this fact only confuses, the issue for modern Americans. Most social groups of the world who consider themselves peoples are y groups which feel themselves to be descendants' of common ancestors, to face together common problems, to have a common destiny, are committed to those others around them whom they feel to be part of their people hood and Are equally committed to their ancestors and their own descendants. This commitment is not a matter of choice, It simply is. Such is the. case with the majority of Indian,groups in eastern United States as well as othet American Indian groups. They see a continuity over time between their ancestors and.their descendants. Now since most Americans "see" neither communities nor peoples, they cannot see eastern Indians. When they look at Indian communities of the eastern seaboard they tend to see'an aggregate of individuals who live a life style very much-like poor, Blacks and poor Whites, . without Speaking an Indian language or showing any obvious aboriginal traits. Further, they see an aggregate of individuals who exhibit both White and Negro physical characteristics,-as-well,as Indian. . Therefore, they try classify these individuals into the racial category of Negro', particularly in the.South; or think of this group .as having -its origins in a mixture_between these three raced and re-' 4 fer to them' . There are a few communities in the eastern United States wh do 1 - conceive of themselves as hating their origin in an initial racial intermixture. In fact, some of the Melungeon communities of east 178 - ;1 1 1 Tennessee, the Guineas of West Virginia, the Sabines of Louisiana, at least to Whites, present themselves as communities which came into being as a result of racial intermixture. Such communities, however, are a, very small minority of eastern Indian groups. Most groups conceive of themselves and present themselves to outsiders as legitimate historic Indian groups. But since White Americans can see no obvious Indian cultural traits among many of these groupd and perceive a large amount of incorporation of foreign blood into these groups, they are dubious of such a claim. They take the attitude that the claim of being Indian is fraudulent and that the community's Indian identity is simply a way, in many cases, to escape the disability of being classified as Negroes. To Whites in some areas of-the South the term "Indian" has simply come to mean a middle ground caste or status group which contains not only people of Indian blood, but those who are neither Black or White as well as mixtures of Black and White. Eastern seaboard Indians are no longer as closed and bounded a , group as their ancestors were. They are, after all, English speakers. They lead a style of life and have a great many cultural items in common with their White neighbors. They have been legally integrated into/the fabric of American society for many years, perhaps as second'''/- class citizens, but at least functionally as part of the society that surrounds them. They are not completely separate communities; their lives-are-now -intertwined with those of their White and Black neigh- 'hors. Many American Indians from other areas that eastern Indians meet view them in the same light as do their White neighbors. More urbanized Indians in other parts of the United States have their own identity 179 - i) 1 84 problems and the problem of rank and respectability vis a vis-the general society. Such Indians are sometimes threatened by the spector of possible Negro blood in an Indian group so that their own, identity and concerns about acceptance by Whites are aggravated and, are called into question by Indians from eastern seaboard communities. Many of 4the younger members of eastern seaboard Indian communities -now living in cities, feel that they have to prove that they areisuper7Indiane. This fact partially accounts for their participation in such militant moves as the recent occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington and the Wounded Knee "uprising." American scholars, by and large, have not been helpful in assisting eastern Indians solve their identity dilemmas and most have, in fact, contributed to an opposite process. For instance, some historians and social scientists have assumed, like most of their fellow Americans, that western seaboard Indian communities formed as an attempt to escape the disabilities of the caste system and being classed as Negroes. This simply is incorrect. Most eastern seaboard Indian_ communities were formed in the 1700's at a time when the caste system Wad not yet come into existence in the United States and when intermarriage between e"races was much more "free and easy" than it was in later day Assimilation was certainly possible for many individual, Indians in those days even if they were part Black. Many present day White Americans proudly boast that they are of part,Indian ancestory, usually/Cherokee. However, if one looks closely at their family background, one finds that their Indian great grandmother, more often than not, came from the eastern seaboard and married their great grandfather during a period of history after which eastern seaboard Indians had incorporated large amounts of foreign blood. So individual assimilation was certainly possible. The caste system had not yet come into existence and it is clear that the formation of these communities was centered around the Indian component of this "mixed population." Historically, particularly in the South in the last century, eastern seaboard Indian groups fought long and hard not to be classed as Blacks and to have special schools set up-for their children. This struggle on the part of eastern seaboard Indians was a move to maintain their own separate identity and a fight for social survival as much or more than it was a resistance to being placed in a low rank position by the general society. Unfortunately, many American academics, historians, anthropologists.; sociologists and the like tend to assume, probably because Of their own life history, that considerations of rank lies behind all 0 of human behavior. Rank, of course, is important in modern society but it can never explain all of the human beings. Even when rank Concerns are obvious other concern interact with concerns in any particular human situation. The concern for social survival and 7 the resistance to the threat of social death is an overriding concern for small minority peoples within a large nation-state. Needless to say, in the United States rank and respectability r are an important Tart of personal identity and a group's identity. Rank concerns are important to eastern Indians. They want to be separate, distinct communities. They want-to-be,Indian communities and they want a respectable rank for their community within the context / of the general society. And, of course, part of this concern,with rank comes out in the way they deal with the presence of Negro ancestry in the group. Some groups are threatened by Negroes and a few are 181 (Li 8c; 4 very anti-Negro. Many of these groups, in fact, deny that they have any Negro ancestry. This problems of social legitimacy is more serious in those eastern seaboard Indian communities which had their origin as amalgam6 of different tribal groups. For instance, the Lumbee of North Carolina very much feel the lack of a historic validation for their community identity and over the last hundred years have cast around, searching for a name which both legitimatizes and expresses their identity. -Since 1870, they have called themselves successively Croatians, Robeson County .Werokees, Siouan Indians, Lumbees, and recently some of their group are presenting theirselves as Tuscaroras. ( Over the years o sooner have they adopted a name which they felt valid and pressed their identity than local Whites managed to make a joke of .the name, made it appear fraudulent and twisted it so that it became an oblique reference to Negro background. For instance, Croatan became Crow to local Whites with the implication of "black as a crow" and the further implication that this was a group of Negroes posing as Indians. , - Many smaller groups in eastern United States have simply adopted 7 the name Cherokee to refer to their group which does not endear them to North Carolina Cherokees or Oklahoma Cherokees. But all of these groups are firm in their identity as Indiana. 6en if they are tribal amalgams or simply a community which does not recall their Indian name, they have a strong local identity as a separate and distinct people. ... -* A few such groups, like the "Moors" of Delaware and the "Cubans" .ot North Carolina present themselves to Whites as being partially descended from Latins or North Africans as the names imply; thus explaining away') and making respectable the presence of non-White and non-Indian ancestry. How much this identification with Latins,and North African have replaced identification With Indians remains to be seen.
There are some indications that this identification is simply a public fact to Whites to satisfy the demands of respectability and that, in fact, people in such groups still think of themselves as basically an Indian group. It is clear, however, even with the small amount of data we have at our disposal, that all eastern Indian communities think of themselves as separate, distinct peoples very local' and particular to an area and recognize their Indian origin even if they publicly stress their "Latin" .roots or even think of themselves as a new people. So far in this section I have been considering the problems of eastern Indians and I have divided those into four categories. The first is the problem of underdevelopment. I have said that eastern Indians are landless, by and large without resources, poor, uneducated, unskilled, farming submarginal land of questionable title, caught up in the cycle of poorly paid wage labor, poverty and welfare payments, etc. In other words in this area of problems, they resemble the people of the southern Appalachians. The second problem area is discrimination and` exploitation discrimination to the point of outright physical coercion in sole sections of the deep South, notably Mississippi and Louisiana, and with a general exploitation of their labor and remaining resources. Once again, the northeast is an exception to this I designated the third problem area as a general powerlessness and an exclusion from institutions that govern their own lives. In ./ this regard, all eastern-Indians share in this feature of life and - 183 ) 1 H8 0 the-northeast is no exception s rule. The fourth category o problems I have called the problem of' social legitimacy, accompanied by t problem of social survival, of group identity erosion, and concern of respectability and rank. In , other words, eastern Indians generally have all the problems of a poor racial minority with asemi-colonial relationship to the general society. Added to this is the general problem of legitimacy of Identity, particularly strong in the eastern seaboard and Louisiana's groups. There are, however, some positive features of eastern Indian life which probably more than overbalance the negative features. By and large these are strong, stable, cohesive communities. They have survived as distinct peoples under impossible conditions which attests to their strength as peoples. Further, their struggle in the crucible of modern America has probably contributed to their strength and cohesion: Most eastern Indians, regardless of poverty, dissociation, powerlessness, and a problematical group identity I had a fairly good life. Certainly these communities are stable and harmonious social wholes. The only exception t this rule are the Chippewa, Pottawatomie, and Ottawa of Northern Michigan and those of the Miccosukkee who live on Federal reservations in Florida. This Social stability of eastern Indians contrasts markedly. with Indian 4 communities in the western section the United States where many reservations are plagued, with a alcoholism, crimes of violence, the breakdown of the family, an even teenage suicide in a few cases. All of these are indices of very deep social trouble for a great many American Indian rural groups as well as in the lives of many urban - 184 - /t q" I think it behooves me in this paper to, comment on this contrast and to "suggest some seasons for such a contrast. It is obvious to most observers / hat tribal people who have recently come into contact with western civilization are not faring well. In southeast Asia tribal people have been dislocated and pushed into urban areas. In Africa tribals have come in large numbers to cities where they are controlled by Whites, and to the Black cities of newly independent Africa and so on around the world. Wien we consider the nature of the ideal folk society, the tribe and the kind. of people who live in these kinds of societies, we can readily see what the requirements for social stability are. To begin with, a tribal person is not a self-contained, autonomous person who makes choices about his owl; self, his environment, and his individual destiny apart from others. He does not wind his way through the world toward some distant personal goal. He does not valance and jockey alternatives. He does not control and create his , own self and the world around him. He does not plan and live in the future. He does not "take advantaged of opportunities". He doesn't even see them. He does not analyze and secularly work for a better 'world. He is not even aware he is responsible for his own self and the condition of the world around him. /Persons who "do" all of the above, who are that kind of being, are products of urban life. The city and urban life may be a lonely sea of faceless strangers, inconsistent, dangerous, and perhaps largely irrelevant,but,most of all, it'is a cafeteria of opportunity .:* to bring into being, to become, for the urban personality. And it is this kind of man who has developed and managed the great American institutional structure which has made the' United States the richest b. and most technologically powerful society in the world today. Needless to say, modern urban life as an environment is °tyrannized on the basis of stranger and categorical role relationships with its inconsistencies; conflicts, abrasive interactions, conflicting cues and signals and where behavior can have dire consequences so that every individual must be held responsible for his own actions. One can imagine what such an environment does to most individual tribals. And one only has to look at tribals in cities around the world to verify what logically follows from the above analysis.
Rural tribals have been able7to adjust to civilization in many parts of the world and throughout recorded history. When tribal. groups have had the autonomy to be able to use their own institutions or to develop new institutions so they could learn together as communities about their new environment,a civilization, then they have been able to make adjustments to the outside and handle the internal effects brought about by the presence of that outside force. However, many fit American Indian groups have had the above option. On most Federal reservations, the governmental agencies have perhaps unwittingly,destroyed all the previous institutional structures and have allowed no new institutions to develop. So called tribal governments are creations of the Federal gover ts--set up by urban people, who db not value harmony inhuman relationships, as reflected by such secular nations as individual and,secret balloting, majority rule and representation by geographical ar a instead of kin group. ,Such outside created structures have been simply dropped on, the heads of Indians and not only function as the internal arm of the . , . , Federal government, but are socially destructive as well to Indians.r. Most reservation Indians do not even have control of their religious , institutions. The older native religion has been so attacked as _ - to be discredited and Whites, still control Indian churches on most reservations. Without autonomous institutions on reservations, great Federal bureaucracies have simply created the worst features of the urban environment for the individual tribal to be overwhelmed by. Individual Indians are thus involved in rational, seculhr, analytic, categorical, planned programs which fragment their lives, create bad feelings among kin and bring confusions, doubts, alternatives, feelings of, incompetence and impotence into their lives". These small tribal societies have thus begun to disintegrate socially and so begins the downward spiral of alcoholism, family breakdown and the like. To my Mind, the schools are the worst offenders in this process. A similar process is now taking place among those Miccosukee in Florida, who live on Federal reservations. In upper Michigan a related 'process is happening in upper Michigan are scattered out in family groups amidst an increasingly urbanizing environment. They are excluded from the institutions that govern their' lives and even their churches are controlled by local Whites.
Further, they are very hurt by the unkindness shown to-them by their White neighbors whom they respect and fear a part of. It is . small wonder that Indian life in upper Michigan is starting the long, downhill slide. Eastern Indian groups, as a whole, have been very lucky in being able to escape this social breakdown. And es I said earlier they are, by and large, very stable and cohesive communities. I would hypothesize a number of factors which// account for this fortunate condition. Firstly, I think that most eastern Indian tribes very early made an adjustment to the Americas civilization. in a time when, it was less powerful, less all pervasive and less urban than it now is. Secondly, most eastern groups have been relatively isolated from the time of that initial adjustment up until the present day. Thirdly, and most importantly, eastern Indians have been able to use their local churches to build their life around and thus compensate for any outside social erosion. These institutions have provided the sacred sanction and necessary cohesion for a stable community life. Some of the Iroquois in New York have been able to use their reformed native religious life in this same manner. But for most of the others the cement of life has been the local Indian version of Protestantism and their small community church. In a large sense, Christianity has been a replacement for the older fixed, given tradition of aboriginal times. A Choctaw minister once said to me, "Way back in the days of the old Choctaw Nation times (their Golden Age) we made Christianity the Choctaw way and the Choctaw tradition." And, indeed, Christianity among the Choctaw Appears, to be just that--Choctaw Christianity. I am sure, as an anthropologist, that Christianity has been integrated into the context of older Choctaw sacred meanings. Eastern Indians have been fortunate to have achieved and held on to a new and stable synthesis of their life ways. However, all of this poses a dilemma. Eastern Indians sorely need help from government sources to solve many of their problems. They are a deserving people and they have been grossly neglected by the state and Federal governments. That they have survived at all, much less in such good social shape, is nothing short of a social miracle and says much about their - 18 3 strength as peoples. No doubt help from governmental sources will soon forthcoming, 'But will this help from the great bureaucracies simply erode their institutional structure, break down their cohesion and bring the chaos of the urban world into their lives? I think' that both eastern Indians and government bureaucrats will have to exercise a great deal of social se sitivity and creativity in order to create the condition whereby these communities can get the necessary skills and resources to solve their problems while at the same time retaining their social stability and cohesion. There must be a way in America for some Indian groups to have both a rewarding social life and a decek material state of being. Most have neither. Perhaps eastern Ind ns'and their helpers will have the wisla to accomplish this end. significant recent development has been the formation of the Coalition of astern Native American, Inc. This organization seems modeled after the National Congress of American Indians, an organization of Federally recognized tribes. The Coalition has,offices in Washington, puts out a newsletter, organizes conferences of eastern Indian leaders and is government funded. It also arts as a semi lobbying group to promote the interests of eastern Indians on the national level. This organization could very well weld the eastern Indians into a powerful social and political force nationally and in local areas. Under the provisions of the Indian Education Act of 1972 a number of eastern Indian communities received funds for the' operation of educational4 programs in their communities. This development may be the most noteworthy, event in recent Indian political history. The layman in both the government and the private area considers it significant that communities previously unrecognized by the Federal - 189 -' i 1 (.4 4 government received Federal monies fcir their local use. The significance is not,,however, simple political recognition.
What has been happening everywhere in Indian Affairs is that issues have been depoliticized in some fields and repoliticized in others. Water rights, tribal exemption from taxation and tribal jurisdiction have in a real sense, been re politicized so that they appear as clearly cleaned fields of significant content that can be confronted add defined. Education, tribal sovereignty, and Indian religion have in the converse manner been depoliticized;. that is to say, the former policies in these fields reflected an abstract set r of theories that worked themselves out.in political decisions when the fields' that these decisions influenced were not political at all. In the recognition of eastern Indian communities with the new educational funds we must understand the process of the depoliticizetion of education and a willingness by the Federal government and the Indian people to view educational problems as capable, of solution. The path to eventual solution of many of the educational and cultural problems of American Indians will thus be clarified wil.th the inclusion 4 of eastern Indian communities and not-their exclusion. They are not after all, subjected to the massive rules and regulations and' deliberate sabotage of programs that goes hand in hand with the relationship of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The solutions that are discovered by eastern Indian communities will be solutions derived from communities that have suffered dissolution and survived. The solutions that western Federal Indian communities find will always be subject to arbitrary manipulation of outside forces such as the Interior Department so that even data gathered from these programs will have an-aspect of unreliability to it. There should he no question of the eligibility of eastern Indian communities for Federal educational grants if the Department of Health, Education and Welfare is really serious about confronting 'the educational problems of all American Indians. Only if the progress already made is reversed on purely bureaucratic"grounds and education is once again polititicized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs will the eastern Indians be denied access to Federal educational funds. Such a move would be tantamount to admitting that the Federal establishment does not consider education as.a serious venture in which it should be involved. Since we have-cleared away so many stumbling blocks in education and are now ready to confront the really difficult problems of the education of children and especially of Indian children, one would hope that the articulation of "Indian-ness" discussed in this.paper would provide additional information in the consideration of the nature of education in American Indian communities. 191 - ) I c; tTypology - Continuity With. ancestors 1. Tribals Choctaw' MiSsissippi Seminole Florida Miccosukke Florida "Fullblood" Lokees. North Carolina Coushattas Louisiana 2. Tribals in transition Chippewa Ottawa Potawatomee Passamaquoddy Malecite Tunica (?) Reservation Miccosukee 3. "Idealogized" tribals Mohawk Onieda Onondaga Cayugas Seneca Tuscarora Penobscot (?) Michigan Michigan Michigan Maine Maine Maine Florida New York New York ew York ew York N w York 'N York Ma ne 4. Resurgent peoples Wampanoag Masschusetts Nipmuc Massa'husetts Narragansett Rhode Island Pequot Connecticut Mohegan Connecticut Schaghticoke Connecticut Pangusett Connecticut Niantic Connecticut "Shinnecock New York' Poosepatuck New York Montauk New York Setauket New York Nanticoke Delaware Chickagominy,. yirginia Paumunkey Virginia Mattapony Virginia. Pappahannock Virginia Allamaha Georgia Creeks Alabama Appalachicola Florida Chitimacha Louisiana - 192 - 1 "11 Biloxi Louisiana Waccomaw North Carolina Cubans (Saponi?) North Carolina Catawba South Carolina 5. Reconstituted peoples Lumbee Haliwa Edisto "Cajuns" Houna (?) "Cherokees" Amherst County Keating Mt. "Cherokees" 6. Displaced peoples ,Melungeon Guineas Wesort North Carolina North Carolina South Carolina Alabama Louisiana Virginia Pennsylvania Kentucky, Tennesisee, Alabama & Ohio' West Virginia and Ohio Maryland 7. City Indians
There yet may be another category which would be numbered as seven. This category would include certain communities, particularly in the Middle Atlantic states, which seem to have formed as refuges for deviants who were social outcasts of various racial and ethnic origins. The partial Indian origin of these groups is really incidental. Mixed blood 'Indians simply seem to have wandered into the area as refugees with other refugees at the period of origin of these groups. The Indian component in such communities is incidental to the formation of the group /find is just one of the many racial strains which contributed to the "pot:" Such a category might include such groups as'the Jackson Whytes'of New York, the Pools of Pennsylvania, some of the Piney families in New Jersey, and the like. Unfortunately, we do not have enough data presently to\ r. "establish" this'category. 193 - Footr:Otel 01 1._ Gilbert, William H., Jr. 1949 "Surviving Indian Groups of the Eastern United States," Annual:Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1948: 407-438. 2,- Sturtevant, William C., and,!Samael ,tanley. 1968 "Indian Communities in the Eastern United Stat," The Indian Historian 1:15-19. 1 3. Redfield Robert, "The Folk Society," Bobbs-Merrill Reprint, S-229, T1ie American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LIr, January, 1947. 4. Speck, Frank G. 1928 "Chapters on the Ethnology of the Powhatan Tribes of Virginia," Indian Notes and Monographs 1, no. 5 227-455.