The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West (39 page)

74
    Two other dates—1823 and 1827—have been proposed as the year of Coth-co-co-na’s birth, but since her age is listed as forty-five on the 1870 federal census, 1825 seems the safest bet. See Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, Montana Territory, National Archives(microfilm), roll M593, p. 225. Though almost always identified as Under Bull, her father has also been listed as Big Snake or Owl Child. For the former see undated document, Montana Historical Society, Helen P. Clarke Papers, SC 1153, folder 3; for the latter see Roxanne DeMarce, ed.,
Blackfeet Heritage, 1907–1908
(Browning, Mont.: Blackfeet Heritage Program, 1980), 68.

75
    Clark Wissler, “The Social Life of the Blackfoot Indians,”
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History,
vol. 7, pt. 1 (New York: Published by Order of the Trustees, 1912), 16–18.

76
    Grinnell,
Blackfoot Lodge Tales,
185.

77
    Wissler, “Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians,” 63–64; and Ewers,
The Blackfeet,
109–10.

78
    J. N. B. Hewitt, ed.,
Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz
(1937; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1970), 79. To be sure, white indignation about perceived gender inequality among the Indians was a major driver of liberal criticism in eastern Indian policy, too.

79
    Katherine M. Weist, “Beasts of Burden and Menial Slaves: Nineteenth-Century Observations of Northern Plains Indian Women,” in
The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women, ed. Patricia Albers and Beatrice Medicine
(Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1983), 29–52. See also David D. Smits, “The ‘Squaw Drudge’: A Prime Index of Savagism,”
Ethnohistory
29, no. 4 (1982): 281–306.

80
    For Blackfeet marital customs, see Wissler, “The Social Life of the Blackfoot Indians,” 9–14; and Ewers,
The Blackfeet,
98–101.

81
    For more on the Sun Dance, which was celebrated by many Plains Indian peoples, see Clark Wissler, “The Sun Dance of the Blackfoot Indians,”
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History
, vol. 16, pt. 3 (New York: Published by Order of the Trustees, 1918).

82
    Witte and Gallagher, eds.,
The North American Journals,
2:432.

83
    Other factors, of course, drove intermarriage throughout the Western Hemisphere. For instance, the Spanish conquest of indigenous empires in the New World brought them inevitably into close and intimate proximity with Indian peoples. The far less numerous French, by contrast, depended upon such interracial relationships to expand the reach of their colonies and to cement critical military alliances with Indian groups, essential in checking the ambitions of other European powers. For the Spanish case, see, among others, J. H. Elliott,
Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492– 1830
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2006), and David J. Weber,
Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2007). On the French, see Richard White,
The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815
(New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991); and Alan Greer,
The People of New France
(Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1997).

84
    Jennifer S. H. Brown and Theresa Schenck, “Métis, Mestizo, and Mixed-Blood,” in
A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Philip Deloria and Neal Salisbury
(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002), 329.

85
    William B. Parker, ed.,
Thomas Jefferson: Letters and Addresses
(New York: A. Wessels, 1907), 190. For more on Jefferson’s views, see Reginald Horsman,
Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812
(East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1967), 104–14; and Anthony F. C. Wallace,
Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).

86
    Quoted in Annette Gordon-Reed,
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
(New York: Norton, 2008), 343.

87
    Joseph Ellis,
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
(New York: Random House, 1998), 201.

88
    See Sidney Kaplan, “Historical Efforts to Encourage White-Indian Intermarriage in the United States and Canada,”
International Social Science Review
65, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 126–32.

89
    For classic treatments of the subject (though in the Canadian context), see Sylvia Van Kirk,
Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1980); and Jennifer S. H. Brown,
Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country
(Vancouver: Univ. of British Columbia Press, 1980). See also Clara Sue Kidwell, “Indian Women as Cultural Mediators,”
Ethnohistory
39, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 97–107; Ewers,
Indian Life on the Upper Missouri,
57–74; and “Intermarriage and North American Indians,” a special issue of
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
29, nos. 2–3 (2008).

90
    For the relationship between Culbertson and Natawista, see Wischmann,
Frontier Diplomats.

91
    Kenneth McKenzie may have had several Indian spouses, though their names are unknown. For his part, James Kipp eventually abandoned his Mandan wife, Earth Woman, when he returned to Missouri. For more information on the contours of native-white intermarriage on the Upper Missouri, see John Mack Faragher, “The Custom of the Country: Cross-Cultural Marriage in the Far Western Fur Trade,” in
Western Women: Their Land, Their Lives, ed. Lillian Schlissel, Vicki L. Ruiz, and Janice Monk
(Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1988), 199–225; Michael Lansing, “Plains Indian Women and Interracial Marriage in the Upper Missouri Fur Trade, 1804–1868,”
Western Historical Quarterly
31, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 413–33; and William R. Swagerty, “Marriage and Settlement Patterns of Rocky Mountain Trappers and Traders,”
Western Historical Quarterly
11, no. 2 (April 1980): 161–80.

92
    Hewitt, ed.,
Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz
, 155.

93
    For more on the benefits and costs of fur post life for Indian women, see Van Kirk,
Many Tender Ties,
75–94.

94
    Author interview with Darrell Robes Kipp, Oct. 2006.

95
    Ewers explains, “Adventurous young men hunted the powerful grizzly bear for its claws, which they proudly displayed in the form of necklaces. However, most Blackfoot Indians feared and avoided this dangerous beast. They regarded it as a sacred animal of great supernatural as well as physical power.” See
The Blackfeet,
85.

96
    There are several accounts of the marriage, including Culbertson’s, which is reflected in the telling above and which Wischmann finds most plausible. See
Frontier Diplomats,
92–95. The Bloods, meanwhile, have a much more romantic version, recorded by James Willard Schultz, a white man who married a Piegan woman and lived among the Blackfeet for several decades in the late nineteenth century. See his book,
Signposts of Adventure: Glacier National Park as the Indians Know It
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 111–17. In any event, the union effectively ended in 1870, when Natawista returned—without Culbertson—to live among her own people.

Chapter 2: Four Bears

1
    Charles Dickens,
American Notes and Pictures from Italy
(1842; New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), 218–19.

2
    On West Point, see Stephen Ambrose,
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1966); James L. Morrison Jr.,
“The Best School in the World”: West Point, the Pre–Civil War Years, 1833–1866
(Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1986); and George S. Pappas,
To the Point: The United States Military Academy, 1802–1902
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993).

3
    For Poe’s brief West Point career, see Ambrose,
Duty, Honor, Country,
156– 57.

4
    Report of Proceedings in the Case of Cadet E. Malcolm Clark, 16 April 1835, Montana Historical Society (cited hereafter as MTHS), Heavy Runner Records (cited hereafter as HRR), Records of the War Department, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Court Martial CC-48, MF 53a.

5
    For more on Jackson’s interference at West Point, see Ambrose,
Duty, Honor, Country,
106–24; and Pappas,
To the Point,
224.

6
    The details concerning this second fight are elusive. For the fullest account, see LeRoy R. Hafen, ed.,
The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West
(Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clarke, 1971), 8:69–72. For Clarke’s class rank, see
Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, June 1836,
14.

7
    The painting hangs in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. For more on Thomas Seymour, consult J. Hammond Trumbull, ed.,
Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633–1844
(Boston: Edward L. Osgood, 1886), 1:193. For more on the importance of the battle, see Richard M. Ketchum,
Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War
(New York: Henry Holt, 1997).

8
    For more on Nathan Clarke’s military record, see Reuben G. Thwaites, ed.,
Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
vol. 11 (Madison: State Printer, 1888), 362–63.

9
    Nathan Clarke is much harder to track than his wife. There are different accounts for both the date (1788 or 1789) and place (Connecticut, Massachusetts, or Ohio) of his birth, though 1788 in New England seems the likeliest scenario. For more on Clarke, see Thwaites, ed.,
Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
362–63; Doane Robinson, “A Comprehensive History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians,”
South Dakota Historical Collections,
vol. 2 (Pierre: State Historical Society, 1904), 155; and E. F. Ellet, “Early Days at Fort Snelling,”
Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society,
vol. 1 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1872), 421.

10
    Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve, “A Brief Story of the Life of Charlotte Seymour Clarke,” Dec. 1873, unpublished manuscript, Minnesota Historical Society, Horatio P. Van Cleve and Family Papers, box 152.E.5.8F, 4.

11
    For more on the Northwest and its history of conflict, see R. David Edmunds,
The Shawnee Prophet
(Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1983); Eric Hinderaker,
Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800
(New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997); and Robert M. Owens,
Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2007).

12
    For a concise history of the settlement during this period, see Brian Leigh Dunnigan, “Fortress Detroit, 1701–1826,” in
The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814, ed. David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson
(East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 2001), 167–86.

13
    Van Cleve, “A Brief Story,” 4–5.

14
    Lea VanderVelde,
Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009), 18.

15
    Before he received permission to build a small private house outside the walls, Lieutenant Clarke and his growing family lived only a few yards from the quarters later inhabited by Dred Scott, a slave owned by the post’s surgeon who sued (unsuccessfully) for freedom on the basis, in part, of his residence between 1836–38 at Fort Snelling, which was in free territory. For a consideration of Dred Scott’s time with his wife at Fort Snelling, see VanderVelde,
Mrs. Dred Scott.

16
    Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten: Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other Parts of the Far West
(Minneapolis: Harrison and Smith, 1888), 148.

17
    Scott was killed in 1847 in the Battle of Molino del Rey, one of the bloodiest engagements of the Mexican-American War, moments—allegedly—after boasting that, “the bullet is not run that is to kill Martin Scott.” J. F. Williams, “Memoir of Capt. Martin Scott,”
Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society,
vol. 3 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1880), 180–87; Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten,
29.

18
    Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten, 148; Henry Snelling, unpublished manuscript
(courtesy of Nancy Cass), 75.

19
    For more on this relationship, with particular attention to the Sioux, see Gary Clayton Anderson,
Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650–1862
(Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1984).

20
    Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten, 63–67. That the Indian boy was Ojibwa
(and not Dakota) is a guess based on the verbal greeting with which Clarke hailed him.

21
    There are numerous accounts of this episode. My version relies primarily upon Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten,
74–79, supplemented by Marcus Lee Hansen,
Old Fort Snelling, 1819–1858
(Minneapolis: Ross & Haines, 1958), 119–24, and Willoughby M. Babcock Jr., “Major Lawrence Taliaferro, Indian Agent,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
11, no. 3 (Dec. 1924): 370–71.