The Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma presently holds trust lands in southeastern Oklahoma. The Lenni Lenape (or Eastern Delaware) live in northeastern Okla-homa. Munsee descendants share the Stockbridge-Mun-see Reservation near Bowler, Wisconsin; others make up the Munsee Delaware Indian Tribe in Ohio; others live in Ontario as part of the Moravian of the Thames and Muncey of the Thames bands and among the Iroquois of the Six Nations Reserve. In New Jersey, two bands, the Native Delaware Indians and the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Indians (with the Nanticoke), maintain tribal identity. A group known as the Delaware-Muncie Tribe are centered in Pomono, Kansas. The Delaware of Idaho operate out of Boise. Lenni Lenape descendants also live in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, region, the location of the Lenni Lenape Historical Society and Museum of Indian Culture. The museum holds an annual Roasting Ears of Corn Festival in late August that involves tradi-tional foods, music, dancing, and arts and crafts. In 1992, the Delaware Nation Grand Council of North America was incorporated in Ohio to foster unity among all Lenni Lenape. In 2002, the Grand Council and tribal groups negotiated with the National Park Service for the repatriation of human remains found on the bank of the Delaware River in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, as granted to tribes in the Native American Grave Protec-tion and RepatriaProtec-tion Act (NAGPRA) of 1990.
LUISEÑO
The Luiseño gathered wild plant foods, hunted, and fished for sustenance. In warm weather, coastal groups traveled inland to harvest acorns, and, in the autumn, inland groups traveled to the coast to collect shellfish.
The Luiseño occupied almost 50 small villages on or near the San Luis Rey River. They were ruled by the noot (hereditary chief ), paxa’ (ceremonial official), and puupulam (village council). Their houses were conical and covered with reeds, brush, or bark. In each village was found a partly underground earth-covered sweat-house and ceremonial open-air enclosures.
The Luiseño had many different ceremonies, includ-ing various rites of passage such as initiation into secret societies. Luiseño religion during the mission period included the cult of Changichngish, also shared by the Gabrieleño, involving belief in a savior figure appearing to Indians and teachings about maintaining traditional values in the face of Spanish rule. As among the Diegueño, the vision quests of Luiseño boys were aided by the narcotic and hallucinogenic effects of jimsonweed and involved ground paintings. Part of the ritual for the Luiseño involved ordeals, one of which was to lie naked on an anthill of large biting ants.
Some Luiseño were converted by missionaries and set-tled, starting in the late 18th century, at the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, where there were mostly Dieguño. In 1834, the missions were secularized, and the Luiseño were forced to survive on their own once again. Their sit-uation became even more difficult with the onslaught of non-Indian settlers during the California gold rush that began in 1849.
Despite hardship, the Luiseño remained generally friendly to settlers. Manuelito Cota of mixed Luiseño
and Spanish descent from the village of Paumo on the San Luis Rey River was appointed chief by the Spanish and was a rival of the Cahuilla Juan Antonio and the Cupeño Antonio Garra to the east. In 1847, he clashed with Juan Antonio, and in 1851, he refused to support the Garra Uprising. In 1875, a rival Luiseño chief, Ole-gario Sal, met with President Ulysses S. Grant to discuss the loss of Luiseño lands, which led to the establishment of a number of reservations.
Contemporary Luiseño live on eight different rancherias, or reservations. Water rights have been a con-cern for the tribe. In 1989, most Luiseño reservations were granted restitution by the federal government for the illegal diversion of water from them. To further tribal income, some of the Luiseño bands have developed gam-ing and commercial recreation projects.
146 LUMBEE
Throughout American history, from colonial times to the present, one of the largest concentrations of Native Americans in the United States has been located in Robeson County and the surrounding counties of south-eastern North Carolina. The exact Indian ancestry of these people never has been established. It is possible that the Lumbee have ancestors from tribes of all three major Indian language families of the region, including
ALGONQUIANS, Iroquoians, and Siouans. The view held by most modern scholars is that the majority of Lumbee are descended from the Cheraw, a Siouan people living in what is now northwestern South Carolina at the time
of contact with Spanish explorers. The fact that the Lumbee, following interaction with English and Scottish settlers who came to the region in the late 1700s, lost their native language and many of their traditional cus-toms sometime in the 18th century has made it impossi-ble to determine exact ancestry.
For much of their history, the Lumbee have sought tribal recognition, trying to change the attitude of those who referred to them in general terms, such as “people of the color.” In 1885, the North Carolina general assembly gave them the name “Croatan Indians,” because at that time the prevalent theory was that they were primarily
LUMBEE
Mission basket
The Mahican and MOHEGAN, with similar-sounding tribal names, often are confused. Both peoples are
ALGONQUIANS and perhaps are descended from the same distant ancestors, but they have distinct identities and histories. The Mahican lived along the northern end of the Hudson valley, mainly in present-day New York, but also in southern Vermont, western Massachusetts, and the northwestern corner of Connecticut. Many Algonquian bands and villages near the Hudson River were united into the loosely knit Mahican Confederacy.
The Mohegan, on the other hand, lived in Connecticut and were an offshoot of the PEQUOT.
The name Mahican, pronounced muh-HEE-cun, is derived from their Native name Muhhekunneuw or Muh-he-con-ne-ok, meaning “people of the waters that are never still.” Mohegan is from Maingan for “wolf.”
Both tribes have been referred to as “Mohican.” This alternate spelling became widespread with the publica-tion of the book The Last of the Mohicans by James Fen-imore Cooper in 1826, a fictionalized account involving Indian peoples, perhaps drawing on both the Mahican and Mohegan for inspiration.
The capital and largest Mahican village at the time non-Indian explorers became aware of them in the early
MAHICAN 147
descended from a combination of coastal Algonquians and Raleigh’s Lost Colonists from the 1587 British settlement on Roanoke Island (see ROANOKE). In 1911, the North Carolina legislature assigned to them the unwieldy name
“Robeson County Indians.” In 1913, the legislature used the name “Cherokee Indians of Robeson County,” which was historically inaccurate since few CHEROKEEhave been known to settle among them. But then in 1953, the gen-eral assembly accepted a name the Indians themselves had chosen—the Lumbee (pronounced LUM-bee)—after the Lumber River running through their territory. And in 1956, the federal government followed suit, giving them recognition as the Lumbee Indians. Yet it did not grant them special tribal status, which would have guaranteed federal services. Finally in 1993–94, Congress voted to rec-ognize the Lumbee. In 2001, the Lumbee elected their first tribal council.
Before the Civil War, the Lumbee were ill-treated by many southern whites as were other Native Americans and African Americans. During the Civil War years, Lumbee men were forced to work on Confederate forti-fications under terrible conditions—with minimal sleep, prolonged exposure to the elements, and little food.
Some Lumbee hid out to avoid this forced labor; others managed to escape. The Home Guard troops tracked them down, terrorizing the entire Lumbee community in the process. In 1864, a teenager named Henry Berry Lowrie (also spelled Lowerie), on the execution of his father and brother—they had been accused of aiding Union soldiers—began a campaign of resistance against this cruel treatment. He led a band of young men in raids on rich plantations and distributed the stolen food to poor Indians, blacks, and whites alike.
The Home Guard came after Lowrie and his fighters, but the insurgents escaped into the swamplands they knew so well. Lowrie’s men kept up their resistance even after the Civil War, now eluding federal troops. Lowrie was tricked into capture on three occasions but managed to escape each time. He became a mythical figure among the Lumbee, some of whom claimed he could not be killed by bullets. Lowrie also stood up to the Ku Klux Klan, the racist group that preached white supremacy, protecting his people from the Klan’s violence. In 1871, 18 militiamen ambushed Lowrie from a bank of the Lumber River as he paddled by in a canoe. He jumped into the water and, rather than trying to escape, he used the boat as a shield as he returned fire with his rifle.
Slowly advancing toward the militiamen, he singlehand-edly routed them. Yet the following year, Lowrie disap-peared. His death was never proven and, as late as the 1930s, some among the Lumbee claimed he was still alive.
Lowrie seemed to be present in spirit almost a century after his disappearance, in 1958, when hundreds of tribal members, angered by the racism of Ku Klux Klansmen, marched on a rally held by the group and drove them out of Robeson County once and for all.
The town of Pembroke in Robeson County, North Carolina, presently is a center of Lumbee activity. Tribal members have held such political offices as mayor, chief of police, and city councilman. Many Lumbee also reside in Hoke and Scotland Counties. Pembroke State Univer-sity, originally founded as a four-year state-supported school for Lumbee (formerly Pembroke State College for Indians), is now part of the University of North Carolina system and has students of all backgrounds.
MAHICAN
148 MAIDU
1600s was Schodac, near present-day Albany, New York.
The Mahican were enemies of the IROQUOIS (HAU
-DENOSAUNEE) tribes, especially the MOHAWK immedi-ately to their west, who often invaded their villages. The Mahican traded with Algonquian allies to their east and south. They were masters of spears and clubs, bows and arrows, and nets and traps. They depended on hunting and fishing, gathering wild plants, especially maple syrup, as well as growing corn, beans, and squash. They built long bark lodges as well as domed wigwams that they covered with birch bark, elm bark, or mats woven from plant materials. They had light birch-bark canoes.
They used porcupine quills to decorate their clothing and containers. They believed that Manitou, the Great Spirit, lived in all things.
Mahican life changed drastically with the arrival of Europeans. Trading with the whites for iron tools and other goods made life easier, but disease and alcohol took their toll. Moreover, Europeans aggravated traditional Indian rivalries by supplying some tribes with firearms to use against others. The swanneken (the Indian word for Dutch traders) provided the Mohawk with guns in order to gain dominance over the Mahican along the Hudson River, the primary trade route for Dutch boats.
In 1664, the same year that the English took control of the region from the Dutch, the Mohawk drove the
Mahican away from Schodac to lands farther to the east.
The Mahican Confederacy moved the council fire to Westenhuck, among the Housatonic Band of Mahican in present-day Massachusetts. But whites were settling in the Housatonic valley. The settlers called the village Stockbridge and, in 1736, established a Calvinist mis-sion there for the Mahican. The various Mahican bands came to be known as the Stockbridge Indians. In the meantime, other Mahican moved to Pennsylvania and Indiana and merged with other peoples, especially their Algonquian kin the LENNI LENAPE(DELAWARE).
The Stockbridge band moved several more times in the 1700s and 1800s. In 1756, they founded a new settlement among the ONEIDA of central New York. In 1788, white officials forced many Algonquians of the region, including some Mahican bands, to settle in eastern New York, not far from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. This group became known as the Brotherton Indians. In 1822, both the Stock-bridge and the Brotherton were relocated to Wisconsin west of Green Bay. There, in 1856, they were granted reser-vation lands along with the Munsee band of Lenni Lenape.
They still hold this reservation today and use the Stock-bridge-Munsee name (as well as Mohican). They operate the Mohican North Star Casino and Bingo as well as the Pine Hills Golf Course. Other Mahican descendants have chosen to live in Connecticut.
MAIDU
The name Maidu, pronounced MY-doo, is derived from a Native word referring to all that is living. The people of this name occupied ancestral territory along the eastern tributaries of the Sacramento River, including the Feather, American, and Bear Rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada in present-day northern California, not far from the Nevada border. There were three main divisions of Maidu, speaking an estimated 20 dialects of the Penu-tian language family: the Maidu proper (Northeastern or Mountain); the Konkow (Northwestern or Foothills);
and the Nisenan (Southern or Valley). The valley group had the most villages or tribelets—permanent main hamlets with a number of temporary satellite hamlets.
The Maidu, although not a particularly warlike people, regularly posted sentries on the hills surrounding their villages to protect themselves and their hunting grounds from outsiders.
The Maidu had many cultural traits in common with other central California Penutian tribes, such as the
MIWOK,YOKUTS, and WINTUN. All were hunter-gatherers who depended on acorns and other wild plant foods, small game, and fish. They wore minimal clothing. Some Maidu lived in pole-framed, brush-covered shelters, as did other central California tribes, but some built earth-cov-ered, domed pithouses as large as 40 feet in diameter. The openings in the roofs of these dwellings served as both a door and a smokehole. The Maidu, like many of their neighbors, participated in the Kuksu Cult. And typical of
CALIFORNIA INDIANS, they crafted beautiful baskets.
The Maidu, like all Native North Americans, enjoyed a variety of games. Some of their favorite pastimes were hoop-and-pole, tossing games, dice games, and hand games. In a popular hand game, one player would switch marked and unmarked bones back and forth in his hands, then stop to let other players bet on which hand held which. Sometimes the participants would wager away all their possessions—shell money, baskets, furs, tools, and weapons—over several days in a marathon game.
The Maidu and their neighbors maintained their tra-ditional culture longer than the southern California tribes and the coastal peoples despite Spanish attempts to move them into missions during the late 1700s and early 1800s. But in 1849 the California gold rush had a significant impact on them, and their numbers drasti-cally decreased through violence and disease.
Contemporary Maidu live for the most part in Plumas County, California (especially of the Maidu branch); Butte
County (especially of the Konkow branch); and El Dorado, Placer, and Yuba Counties (especially of the Nise-nan branch). They hold a number of rancherias (small reservations). They have undergone a cultural revitalization and regularly perform traditional dances, such as the Acorn, Bear, Coyote, Deer, Flower, and Toto Dances. As of 1994, the Maidu have also re-created the ancient celebra-tion around the return of the salmon for upriver spawning in an annual Salmon Ceremony.
MAKAH 149
MAKAH
The ancestral homeland of the Makah was situated along Cape Flattery, territory now in northwestern Washing-ton. The Juan de Fuca Strait, merging with the Pacific Ocean, separates Cape Flattery from Vancouver Island and serves as the international boundary between the United States and Canada. The Makah were the south-ernmost Wakashan-speaking people. Their name, some-times spelled Macaw and pronounced mah-KAW, means
“cape people” in the Wakashan language.
Makah culture was similar to that of other NORTH
-WEST COAST INDIANS. They were master wood carvers.
They lived in villages of large, multifamily cedar-plank houses. They carved large oceangoing dugout canoes, totem poles, chests, and other wood products. They wore cedar-bark raincoats and hats. They wove blankets out of dog hair on a loom. They practiced the potlatch, the custom of giving away possessions to prove one’s wealth. They were active traders.
With regard to subsistence, the Makah ate food from the sea, especially salmon. They also ate deer, elk, and bear meat from the forests, plus wild greens, roots, and berries.
They also were among the foremost whalers in North America, respected for their precise skill by Indians and non-Indians alike. Most of the Pacific Northwest people waited for beached whales. The Makah, like the neighbor-ing NOOTKAon Vancouver Island, actively hunted them.
Makah whalers hunted with 18-foot-long wooden harpoons, tipped with sharp mussel-shell blades and pro-truding bone spurs. The spurs would keep the weapon hooked inside the whale once the blade penetrated the tough skin. The whalers used ropes of sinew to tie the harpoon to a number of sealskin floats. When dragged, the floats would tire the whale out and then, after the animal died, keep it afloat.
The chief harpooner, an honored position in the tribe, stood in the front of the dugout, usually with six paddlers and a helmsman behind him. The harpooner sang to the whale during the pursuit, promising to sing and dance for the whale and give it gifts if it let itself be killed.
Whale-hunting of course was very dangerous. Whales might swim under a dugout and flip it. Or they might smash it with their enormous tails. It took many har-poons to kill the large sea mammals—the initial harpoon with floats to weaken it, then others carried by spears-men in other dugouts to finish it off.
A Makah whaler, the harpooner. His harpoon has a razor-sharp shell tip, with protruding bone spurs. It is attached by a line of sinew to a sealskin float.
150 MALISEET
MALISEET
The Maliseet, or Malecite, an Algonquian people, once located their wigwams along the St. John River in what now is New Brunswick, Canada, as well as in territory that is now the northeastern corner of Maine (see
NORTHEAST INDIANS). In some historical accounts, they are referred to as the Etchemin.
The Maliseet are close relatives of the PAS
-SAMAQUODDY, their allies with other ABENAKI in the Abenaki Confederacy. They helped the French fight the British in the French and Indian wars of 1689–1763.
Maliseet frequently intermarried with French settlers.
Maliseet culture resembled that of other ALGON
-QUIANSof the Maritime Provinces, the MICMACof Nova Scotia. It is thought that the tribal name Maliseet, pro-nounced MAL-uh-seet, comes from the Micmac word
-QUIANSof the Maritime Provinces, the MICMACof Nova Scotia. It is thought that the tribal name Maliseet, pro-nounced MAL-uh-seet, comes from the Micmac word