American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The cultural commonplaces concerning Native Americans evoke images of the Cigar Store Indian, a passive figure immersed in an enervating quietism. Recent events, however, have shattered this debilitating stereotype. The "Trail of Broken Treaties" destroyed the image of the passive, drunken Indian while the "Longest Walk" demonstrated an increased sophistication in the manipulation of mass media. The "Red backlash" seems to preoccupy Indians as well as their supporters. Fueled largely by their recent successes in the courts, the report of the American Indian Policy Review Commission as well as the dispute over water rights in the western states, the drive to deny Indians the spoils of their victories has be enmounting in intensity. A significant portion of the dispute has become centered on the meaning of the term trib. As is well known, various Indian groups are bringing suit to recover lands that they allege were illegally taken from them. Unlike the cases before the Indian Claims Commission, these groups are not seeking compensation, but title to the land itself. The Mashpee case, the first to come to triaL was decided on the grounds of tribal identity. Basically, the jury found that the group was not really a tribe as defined by the Supreme Court in Montoya v. U.S. (circa 1901).

The Cayugas, considered to be one of the smallest nations in the Iroquois Confederacy, once were established in some nine villages on the east side of Cayuga Lake, in central New York. Four additional villages - two elsewhere in central New York, and two in Ontario - seem to have represented their principal areas of settlement. To the east, the Cayugas were adjacent to their elder brothers, the Onondagas, and their nearest neighbors to the west were the Senecas, also elder brothers, with whom they shared some linguistic similarities. At the time the Iroquois League was organized, the Cayugas provided ten local clan chiefs who became Confederacy chiefs. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Cayugas sided principally with the British against the American rebels, although their support of the British is by no means consistently clear-cut . The Cayuga chief Fish Carrier, for example, offered his support and that of 88 tribesmen to Colonel Guy Johnson for a war party in February, 1780. Yet in 1792 General George Washington gave Fish Carrier a silver medal of appreciation for his bravery in the Colonial army during the Revolution, and it was later observed that because of Fish Carrier's influence, the Cayugas joined the colonists in their struggle against the British.s Yet it is also a matter of record that the United States signed a treaty of peace with the Six Nations at the close of the Am erican Revolution, to which Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas were signers.

Nineteenth-century expansion of the United States moved many Native Americans west of the Mississippi; that series of events concealed the large numbers of these people who remained in their southern homelands. Throughout the southeastern United States particularly are pockets of Native Americans. Most of these groups suffer from their absentee status. These people are often deprived of federal assistance provided their western counterparts, and, because of reduced numbers, less federal assistance, and cultural differences, do not often have the power to overcome their poor circumstances. With the current, national trend toward cultural pluralism and ethnic identity, these absentee groups are struggling more vigorously to regain their identity, respect, and federal attention. This paper examines the case of one absentee Native American band struggling to establish its identity and directions for a more prosperous future, and to project the legal, economic, and other social implications of their situation. Two major sections comprise this paper: The first section describes the current status of this group. The salient issues entailed by their current status are identified in the second section. Methodologically, the study is primarily historical and preliminary: From the historical description we attempt to conceptualize the situation in terms which will facilitate more empirically oriented field research.

Cherokee children today have an educational tradition that is unique among American Indians. Wahrhaftig (1969) states that after Cherokees were removed to Oklahoma they began in 1841 to set up a national school system. So successful were their efforts that at its height it was reported to be the finest school system west of the Mississippi River (Fannin, 1968). Most of the schools were at the primary level, but for those graduating from the primary schools separate academies were set up. With the earlier invention of the Sequoyah syllabary in 1821, a large majority of the people had already become literate in the Cherokee language. In those schools attended largely by full-bloods, bilingual teachers taught from text-books printed in the syllabary. Fuchs and Havighurst (1972) report that the Cherokee school system was so successful that Oklahoma Cherokees had a higher English literacy level than the surrounding white populations. But in spite of the many successes, the Cherokee school system was abolished when the Oklahoma territory became a state in 1906. The following study looks at Cherokee children currently attending elementary school in Eastern Oklahoma. Hypotheses regarding age trends, sex trends, and cross-cultural differences in cooperative and competitive behavior are examined. In addition, an attempt is made to determine the relationship between cooperative and competitive behavior and school achievement. Cooperation and competition are two variables in traditional Cherokee culture that have long been thought to play an important part in the academic achievement of Cherokee Indians (Sanders, 1972; Garrison, 1970). Although ethnographic studies have found evidence that Cherokee children favor cooperation and avoid competition, no experimental evidence has been offered to substantiate the belief that the high cooperative behavior of the children leads to their low academic achievement.

The Literary Offences of Ruth Beebe Hill Allan R. Taylor Hanta Yo: An American Saga. By Ruth Beebe Hill. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1979. 834 pp. $14.95. As a young person I was an enthusiastic reader of all kinds of works on North American Indians, both fictional and non-fictional. Fairly early in my life I read the romantic works on Indians of James Fenimore Cooper, which of course captivated me, for I was yet a child. Later on, in more mature years, I came upon the splendid essay which Mark Twain wrote on Cooper's Indian tales.' The essay was anything but friendly, but delightfully witty, and it certainly gave Cooper what he had coming to him. Cooper's principal failing, in Twain's opinion, was that he was careless with fact (not to say ignorant), but Twain also took him to task for his trite, repetitious style and his dull, uninspired plots. Mark Twain is unfortunately no longer with us, so we will not be able to benefit from his wit and insight as we attempt to deal with this late 20th century equivalent of the Leatherstocking. Although I find Mrs. Hill guilty of many of the same eighteen offences for which Cooper was castigated by the incomparable Mr. Clemens, I nevertheless approach the presentation of the case with great temerity. Mark Twain is a hard act to follow. Nevertheless, the attempt must be made. Hanta yo is a phony and pretentious book which I find offensive on several levels. It is offensive to a scientist of language because of the naivete (if not ignorance) about language in general which it displays. It is offensive to anyone who knows the Dakota language because of the inaccuracies in use and translations which appear throughout the book.