Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T16:23:27.615Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Signatures and Thumbprints: Ethnicity among the White Earth, Anishinaabeg, 1889–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Melissa L. Meyer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Historians have often portrayed American Indian populations as relatively homogeneous. Notorious in this regard is the genre of formulaic tribal histories, in which individuals or subgroups are scarcely seen and amorphous tribes merely react to U.S. policy directives and agents’ actions (Clifton 1979; Iverson 1984). When internal differences are noted, they tend to be lumped into dichotomized categories, with little attention given to their composition or to the historical processes from which they arose. Hence the literature is replete with references to traditionalists and progressives, Christians and pagans, and mixed bloods and full bloods, to name only a few. But history does not unfold in fixed oppositional stages, and dichotomizing these terms, even if they were employed by historical participants themselves, reveals little about social processes. They indicate, instead, a recognition that intratribal heterogeneity was increasing, perhaps in patterned ways (Clifton 1989).

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , Fall 1990 , pp. 305 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1990 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anders, G. C. (1977) “The internal colonization of Cherokee Native Ameri cans.” Development and Change 10: 41–55.Google Scholar
Anders, G. C. (1981) “The reduction of a self-sufficient people to poverty and welfare dependence: An analysis of the causes of Cherokee Indian underdevelopment.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 40: 225-38.Google Scholar
Anders, G. C. (1985) “Theories of underdevelopment and the American Indian.” Journal of Economic Issues 14: 681–702.Google Scholar
Anderson, G. C. (1984) Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Babcock, W. (1962) “With Ramsey to Pembina: A treaty-making trip in 1851.” Minnesota History 38: 1–10.Google Scholar
Barth, F. (1969) “Introduction,” in Barth, F. (ed.) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. London: George Allen and Unwin: 9–38.Google Scholar
Bellanger, M. (c. 1982) Interview with unknown interviewer. Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Reservation History Project, Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Cass Lake. Handwritten transcription.Google Scholar
Berg, C. J. (1982) “Agents of cultural change: The Benedictines at White Earth.” Minnesota History 48: 158-70.Google Scholar
Berg, C. J. (1983) “Climbing learners’ hill: Benedictines at White Earth, 1878-1945.” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Berkhofer, R. F. Jr. (1978) “Native Americans,” in Higham, J. (ed.) Ethnic Leadership in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press: 119-49.Google Scholar
Blu, K. I. (1980) The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Borchert, J. R. (1959) Minnesota’s Changing Geography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Brown, J. S. H. (1980) Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Buffalohead, R., and Buffalohead, P. (1985) Against the Tide of American History: The Story of the Mille Lacs Anishinabe. Cass Lake: Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.Google Scholar
Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] (1889-1920) Censuses. Microfilm Publications, Rolls 649-55. National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Carlson, L. (1981) Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land: The Dawes Act and the Decline of Indian Farming. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C. (1978) “Core-periphery relations: The effects of core capitalism,” in Kaplan, B. H. (ed.) Social Change in the Capitalist World Economy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage: 159-75.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C. (1980) “The development of core capitalism in the antebellum United States: Tariff politics and class struggle in an upwardly mobile semiperiphery,” in Bergesen, A. (ed.) Studies of the Modern World System. New York: Academic: 89–230.Google Scholar
Chilcote, R. H., and Johnson, D. L. (1983) Theories of Development: Modes of Production or Dependency? Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Chippewa Commission (1890-99) Register of Arrivals. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, Entry 1305. National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Chirot, D., and Hall, T. D. (1982) “World system theory.” Annual Review of Sociology 8: 81–106.Google Scholar
Clifton, J. A. (1977) The Prairie People: Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Culture, 1665-1965. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Clifton, J. A. (1979) “The tribal history: An obsolete paradigm.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 3: 81–100.Google Scholar
Clifton, J. A. (1989) “Alternate identities and cultural frontiers,” in Clifton, J. A. (ed.) Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers. Chicago: Dorsey: 1–37.Google Scholar
Coleman, B. (1967) Where the Water Stops: Fond du Lac Reservation. Superior, WI: Arrowhead Printing.Google Scholar
Coleman, B., Bud, Verona La, and Humphrey, John (1967) Old Crow Wing: History of a Village. Duluth, MN: College of St. Scholastica.Google Scholar
Commissioner of Indian Affairs [CIA] (1850-1940) Annual reports, U.S. Congressional Serial Set. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Danziger, E. (1979) The Chippewa of Lake Superior. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Davis, A. M. (1977) “The prairie-deciduous forest ecotone in the upper Middle West.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67: 204-13.Google Scholar
Densmore, F. (1929) Chippewa Customs. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 86. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Dickason, O. P. (1982) “From One Nation’ in the Northeast to ‘New Nation’ in the Northwest: A look at the emergence of the metis.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 6: 1–21.Google Scholar
Eggan, F. (1950) Social Organization of the Western Pueblos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fowler, L. (1982) Arapaho Politics, 1851-1978: Symbols in Crises of Authority. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Fowler, L. (1987) Shared Symbols, Contested Meanings: Alternate Views of Culture and History in an American Indian Society; The Gros Ventres, 1778-1984. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, A. G. (1969a) Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. New York: Monthly Review.Google Scholar
Frank, A. G. (1969b) Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. New York: Monthly Review.Google Scholar
Gilfillan, J. A. (1898) “The Ojibways in Minnesota.” Minnesota Historical Society Collections 9.Google Scholar
Gilman, R. R., Gilman, Carolyn, and Stultz, Deborah M. (1979) The Red River Trails: Oxcart Routes between St. Paul and the Selkirk Settlement, 1820-1870. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.Google Scholar
Grim, J. A. (1983) The Shaman: Patterns of Siberian and Ojibway Healing. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Hall, T. D. (1983) “Peripheries, regions of refuge, and nonstate societies: Toward a theory of reactive social change.” Social Science Quarterly 64: 582-97.Google Scholar
Hall, T. D. (1985a) “Is historical sociology of peripheral regions peripheral?” California Sociologist 8: 281–304.Google Scholar
Hall, T. D. (1985b) “Change and assimilation: Native Americans under Spain and the United States.” Free Inquiry 13: 173-77.Google Scholar
Hall, T. D. (1986) “Incorporation in the world system: Toward a critique.” American Sociological Review 51: 390–402.Google Scholar
Hall, T. D. (1988a) “Patterns of Native American incorporation into state societies,” in Snipp, C. M. (ed.) Public Policy Impacts on American Indian Economic Development. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Native American Studies: 23–38.Google Scholar
Hall, T. D. (1988b) Social Change in the Southwest, 1350-1880. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Hallowell, A. I. (1960) “Ojibway ontology, behavior, and world view,” in Diamond, S. (ed.) Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin. New York: Columbia University Press for Brandeis University: 19–52.Google Scholar
Hallowell, A. I. (1967) Culture and Experience. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Hallowell, A. I. (1976) Contributions to Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hawkinson, E. (1934) “The Old Crossing Chippewa Treaty and its sequel.” Minnesota History 15: 282–300.Google Scholar
Hickerson, H. (1956) “The genesis of a trading post band: The Pembina Chippewa.” Ethnohistory 3: 289–345.Google Scholar
Hickerson, H. (1962) “The southwestern Chippewa: An ethnohistorical study.” American Anthropological Association 92.Google Scholar
Hickerson, H. (1965) “The Virginia Deer and intertribal buffer zones in the upper Mississippi valley,” in Leeds, A. and Vayda, A. P. (eds.) Man, Culture, and Animals: The Role of Animals in Human Ecological Adjustments. Publication No. 78. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science: 43–65.Google Scholar
Hickerson, H. (1970) The Chippewa and Their Neighbors: A Study in Ethnohistory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Hoffman, W. J. (1891) “The Midewiwin or Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibway.” Bureau of American Ethnology, Seventh Annual Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Hoxie, F. E. (1984) A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Hurt, R. D. (1987) Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Iverson, P. (1984) “Indian tribal histories,” in Swagerty, W. (ed.) Scholars and the Indian Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 223-58.Google Scholar
Jorgensen, J. G. (1971) “Indians and the metropolis,” in Waddell, J. O. and Watson, O. M. (eds.) The American Indian in Urban Society. Boston: Little, Brown: 67–113.Google Scholar
Jorgensen, J. G. (1978) “A century of political and economic effects on American Indian society, 1880-1980.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 6: 1–82.Google Scholar
Kappler, C. J., comp. (1904) Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. 5 vols., Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Kay, J. (1985) “Native Americans in the fur trade and wildlife depletion.” Environmental Review 9: 118-30.Google Scholar
Keahna, F. (c. 1982) Interview with unknown interviewer. Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Reservation History Project, Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Cass Lake. Handwritten transcription.Google Scholar
Kugel, R. (1985) “Factional alignment among the Minnesota Ojibwe, 1850-1880.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 9: 23–47.Google Scholar
Kugel, R. (1986) “‘To Go about on the Earth’: An ethnohistory of the Minnesota Ojibwe.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Landes, R. (1968) Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Landes, R. (1969) The Ojibwa Woman. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
McFee, M. (1968) “The 150% man: A product of Blackfeet acculturation.” American Anthropologist 70: 1096–1107.Google Scholar
Meyer, M. L. (1984) “Warehousers and sharks: Chippewa leadership and political factionalism on the White Earth Reservation, 1907-1920.” Journal of the West 23: 32–46.Google Scholar
Meyer, M. L. (1985) “Tradition and the market: The social relations of the White Earth Anishinaabeg, 1889-1920.” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Meyer, M. L. (in press) “The Ojibwe of the Red Lake Peatland area,” in Wright, H. E., Coffin, Barbara, and Aaseng, Norman (eds.) The Patterned Peatlands of Northern Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, M. L., and Thornton, R. (1988) “Indians and the numbers game: Quantitative methods in American Indian history,” in Calloway, C. (ed.) New Directions in American Indian History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press: 5–29.Google Scholar
Meyer, R. (1968) History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Miner, H. C. (1976) The Corporation and the Indian: Tribal Sovereignty and Industrial Civilization in Indian Territory, 1865-1907. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar
Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (1983) A History of Kitchi Onigaming: Grand Portage and Its People. Cass Lake: Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.Google Scholar
Mittelholz, E. F. (1957) “Historical review of the Red Lake Indian Reservation, Redlake, Minnesota: A history of its people and progress.” Belframi County Historical Society Collections 2.Google Scholar
Office of Indian Affairs [OIA] (1889-1920) Records. Kansas City Federal Records Center, Kansas City, MO.Google Scholar
Ortiz, A. (1969) The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Otis, D. S. (1973) The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Land. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, E. C. (1939) Pueblo Indian Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, J. (1978) “Prelude to Red River: A social portrait of the Great Lakes metis.” Ethnohistory 25: 41–67.Google Scholar
Peterson, J. (1981) “The people in between: Indian-white marriage and the genesis of a metis society and culture in the Great Lakes region, 1702-1815.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Chicago Circle.Google Scholar
Peterson, J. (1982) “Ethnogenesis: The settlement and growth of a ‘new people’ in the Great Lakes region, 1702-1815.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 6: 23–64.Google Scholar
Prucha, F. P. (1979) The Churches and the Indian Schools. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Putney, D. T. (1980) “Fighting the scourge: American Indian morbidity and federal policy, 1897-1928.” Ph.D. diss., Marquette University.Google Scholar
Ransom J. Powell Papers [RJP] (1914) Testimony of Indian informants. Minnesota Historical Society Archives, St. Paul.Google Scholar
Ritzenthaler, R. (1945) “Acquisition of surnames by the Chippewa Indians.” American Anthropologist 47: 175-77.Google Scholar
Rogers, J. (1974 [1957]) Red World and White: Memories of a Chippewa Boyhood. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Ross, A. (1856) The Red River Settlement: Its Rise, Progress, and Present State, with Some Account of the Native Races and Its General History to the Present Day. London.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. (1984) “‘To Do Some Good among the Indians’: Nineteenth-century Benedictine missions.” Journal of the West 23: 26–36.Google Scholar
Shifferd, P. A. (1976) “A study in economic change: The Chippewa of northern Wisconsin, 1854-1900.” Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology 6: 16–41.Google Scholar
Simms, P. K., and Morey, G. B., eds. (1972) Geology of Minnesota: A Centennial Volume. St. Paul: Minnesota Geological Survey.Google Scholar
Smith, J. G. E. (1973) Leadership among the Southwestern Ojibwa. Publications in Ethnology, No. 7. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.Google Scholar
Snipp, C. M. (1986) “The changing political and economic status of American Indians: From captive nations to internal colonies.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 45: 145-57.Google Scholar
Snipp, C. M. (1988) “Old and new views of economic development in Indian coun try,” in Overcoming Economic Dependency: Papers and Comments from the First Newberry Library Conference on Themes in American Indian History, 1988. Occasional Paper Series No. 9.Google Scholar
Tanner, H. H. (1978) “The Glaize in 1792: A composite Indian community.” Ethnohistory 25: 15–39.Google Scholar
Thornton, R. (1988) American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Tomahawk, (1903-4).Google Scholar
Trosper, R. L. (1976) “Native American boundary maintenance: The Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana, 1860-1970.” Ethnicity 3: 256-74.Google Scholar
Unrau, W. (1989) Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress (1890) “Chippewa Indians in Minnesota.” 51st Cong., ist sess. H. Exec. Doc. 2747, No. 247.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress (1913) “Report in the matter of the investigation of the White Earth Reservation.” 62d Cong., 3d sess. H. Rept. 6336, No. 1336.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress (1920) Chippewas of Minnesota. Hearings before the Committee on Indian Affairs, 21 Jan. to 22 Mar. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (1887) An Investigation of Affairs at White Earth Reservation to Investigate the Conduct of Agents and Their Subordinates. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Statutes at Large (1887-1920) Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Van Kirk, S. (1980) “Many Tender Ties”: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870. Winnipeg, Man.: Watson and Dwyer.Google Scholar
Vecsey, C. (1983) Traditional Ojibwa Religion and Its Historical Changes. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Vizenor, G. R. (1968) Escorts to White Earth, 1868-1968: 100 Year Reservation. Minneapolis: Four Winds.Google Scholar
Vizenor, G. R. (1984) The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I. (1974) The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I. (1979) The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Warren, W. W. (1957) History of the Ojibwa Nation. Minneapolis: Ross and Haines.Google Scholar
Weaver, F. (c. 1982) Interview with Winona LaDuke. White Earth Oral History Project, American Indian Studies Program, Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN. Tape.Google Scholar
White, R. (1984) The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaw, Pawnee, and Navajo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
White Earth Agency [WEA] (1889-1918) Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75. National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Whiteley, P. (1988) Deliberate Acts: Changing Hopi Culture through the Oraibi Split. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, T. (1985) The Underground Reservation: Osage Oil. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Wright, H. E. Jr. (1971) “Late Quaternary vegetational history of North America,” in Turekian, K. K. (ed.) The Late Cenozoic Glacial Ages. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press: 425-64.Google Scholar
Zanger, M. N. (1985) “‘Straight Tongue’s Heathen Wards’: Bishop Whipple and the Episcopal mission to the Chippewas,” in Milner, C. A. II and O’Neil, F. A. (eds.) Churchmen and the Western Indians, 1820-1920. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press: 177–214.Google Scholar