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The history of the Highway 61 area tends to focus on our Euro-centric American ancestors, from about 1820 to the present. We learn little, if anything, about four major groups who preceded them:
1) Lakota Sioux came to dominate southern and western Minnesota all the way to the Rockies,
2) Anishinaabe people dominated northern Minnesota and,
3) along with the Cree, central Canada; they also contributed to the
4) Metis people that came close to creating a sovereign nation in what is now most of Manitoba.
There were substantial ties between these bordering nations before U.S. and Canadian governments gained control during the last quarter of the 19th Century.
If you want the more complete histories of the Metis and Lakota nations, read Strange Empire by Joseph Kinsey Howard and Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hamalainen. Both books are well researched and fascinating. If you cannot wait to learn more, read on here.
The Metis were a distinct culture descended from French and British fur traders who inter-married with Anishinaabe and Cree people. The Metis dominated the heart of the North American continent during the bulk of the 19th century. They centered on the Red River of the North from St. Paul to Winnipeg and abutted the great canoe routes to the Canadian interior from Grand Portage. They developed the Red River Cart that brought furs to St. Paul and took trade items back north. Buffalo robes and pemmican were the commodities of barter for Metis. They followed the buffalo from the Red River to the Rockies, ignoring Canada/US borders. And they mixed the cultures as well as blood, being deeply Christian as well as singing the medicine songs of healing. The Metis were the largest population group on the northern Plains, larger than the Euro- Americans and any single Native American tribe.
In mid-century (1850), the Canadian government sought more control over Metis’ areas, known for a long time as Rupert’s Land. Louis Riel arose as leader of what was claimed to be a sovereign nation. The Metis attempted armed resistance at the Red River in 1869-70 and in Saskatchewan in 1884- 85 with some temporary success. They suffered, as did all people of color, as both Canada and the U.S. claimed their Manifest Destinies. Rogue white militias roamed Metis areas confiscating their lands. And U.S. soldiers made repeated forays into Montana to round up Metis and return them to Canada.
There are many persons of Cree and Metis ancestry in Cook County. (Singer Buffy St. Marie, a Cree and 80 this month, has a son, Dakota Wolfchild, born in Minnesota by a Sioux father.)
Abutting the Metis areas to the south grew the Lakota Nation. Lakotas became the strongest of the seven Sioux tribes, beginning in southern and western Minnesota and the Dakotas, later moving further west as far as the Rockies and south to about the Commanche Nation. The spiritual heart of their territory was and is the Black Hills.
Until about 1850, the U.S. and Lakota nations coexisted while each expanded. Ultimately, the desire for U.S. control of the mid-continent led to repeated conflict. The Little Big Horn battle of 1876 was the worst U.S. loss of the Indian War battles. Lakotas were led there by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. The final chapter was written at Wounded Knee. A group of Lakota were led there by U.S. troops. Four Hotchkiss cannons on a hill overlooking the village helped kill some 270 people, 170 being women and children. With no apparent irony, twenty soldiers who served there were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
As noted in Lakota America, “The great paradox of Lakota history is that by helping prevent the realization of other American Wests—French, British, and Spanish— Lakota paved the way for an American West, and eventually, their own downfall.”
That summary does no justice to the complexity, nuance, diplomacy, and conflict of tribal relations as well as relations between U.S. and Native Americans. Some notes are called for. First, the Metis and Lakotas met up in Montana and North Dakota to their mutual advantage in trade. As the Indian Wars proceeded, the U.S. outlawed trade in weapons with the Sioux. The Metis filled that void for a while.
Next is the symbolism of the Wounded Knee events of 1973. The American Indian Movement (AIM) sought removal of a corrupt tribal leader. The U.S. refused. The standoff ensued that included 10,000 gunfire rounds. When machine gun fire had killed Buddy Lamont, an Oglala Viet Nam veteran, the White House agreed to investigate AIM complaints. Wounded Knee had the effect of energizing the Native American sovereignty movement. Rep. Deb Haaland’s appearance at a Standing Rock Sioux protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 is an example of that energy’s effect. Sioux leader Leonard Peltier remains in federal prison 45 years later despite the prosecutor having asked President Obama to relieve Peltier (per YouTube).
Another result of that energy is the appointment of the first Native American to a cabinet post. As Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland will have jurisdiction over U.S. tribal relations as well as the bulk of federal lands in the American West. She is a member of the Laguna Pueblo, a people that dates back in New Mexico to about 1200 A.D. (Haaland is also the daughter of a Norwegian Minnesotan.)
Finally, the Lakota made claim to return of the Black Hills in 1974. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an award of $122,000,000 as compensation. The Lakota have refused the compensation, insisting instead on the return of the heart of their country.
If this column prompts you to look at these issues more, consider these sources:
For Sioux/Lakota issues: Vine Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins; Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
For Anishinaabe Issues: Staci Lola Drouillard, Walking the Old Road; William H. Warren, History of the Ojibway People.
All the cited works have notes that will take you deeper.
James Baldwin called slavery America’s original sin. The next big sin was the way we reduced the native population from some five million to less than 200,000 as my New England ancestors moved west. As a personal note, my ancestor George Aldrich was one of the founders of Mendon, Massachussets, the site of the first armed Native American response to western expansion.
To “begin again” in Baldwin’s phrase, we must correct the incomplete history taught in schools and public events. Hence this column.
Steve Aldrich is a retired Hennepin County lawyer, mediator, and Judge, serving from 1997-2010. He and his wife moved here in 2016. He likes to remember that he was a Minnesota Super Lawyer before being elected to the bench. Now he is among the most vulnerable to viruses. Steve really enjoys doing weddings, the one thing a retired judge can do without appointment by the Chief Justice. He recently officiated at a rural Grand Marais wedding where several people attended by Zoom from Norway and White Bear Lake.
Copyright Stephen C. Aldrich and News Herald, 2021
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