enough to be carried distances between stretches of water. The canoe also disturbed the water very little because of its shallow shape, and so the Native Americans could travel relatively silently and stealthily. The boats could be built to fit just one or two people, or could carry several passengers and their goods; these canoes could be up to 40 feet long. This sort of canoe was used on the Great Lakes. The smaller type was used on smaller rivers and lakes.
The frame of the canoe was constructed from springy pine with a covering of flexible birch bark. The rough side of the bark faced outwards, as the toughest part of the wood and the sheets of bark were stitched together. The vessel was made watertight with a coating of pitch, especially concentrated around the area of the stitching.
CANONICUS
A chief of the Narragansett, Canonicus would have been born around the 1560s.
When the Pilgrim Fathers first landed at Plymouth, Canonicus was one of the first Native American chiefs they had any dealings with. By all accounts Canonicus was not at first impressed with the immigrants, treating them with disdain. However, after the incident for which he became best known, he would reverse his opinion.
Canonicus is remembered as the chief who challenged the head of the new colony, William Bradford, by sending him a bundle of arrows tied together with the skin of a snake. As a riposte, Bradford sent a parcel back to Canonicus: the “gift” was a bundle of lead shot and gunpowder.
This small package was passed among the Narragansett with an increasing amount of awe and reverence, until it eventually acquired an almost magical superstitious relevance. The gunpowder and shot were finally returned to Bradford, this time as a symbol of peace, and in 1636 Canonicus signed over part of the tribe’s territory to the white settlers without any recourse to war.
CAPTAIN JACK
1837(?)–1873
Also known as Kintpuash, or Keentpoos, Captain Jack was a leader of the Modoc of California. He was born close to Tule Lake, which was part of the hereditary lands of his people.
In common with other Native Americans, the Modoc were moved to a reservation in order to make way for the white settlers who favored the fertile Modoc land for their agricultural endeavors. Problems arose, however, because the area that the Modoc were sent to, in 1864, was already occupied by the Klamath tribe; the Klamath and the Modoc had been enemies for generations. Not only that, but the reservation was on Klamath land, and the Modoc were also outnumbered. Conditions for the Modoc were uncomfortable, to say the least.
A year after arriving at Klamath territory, Captain Jack took charge of the deteriorating situation and led his people back home. Four years later they were rounded up by the U.S. Army and returned to Klamath territory; matters did not improve, since the Klamath were still effectively in charge, and so once again Jack led some of his people—almost 200 in number—away from hostile territory and back to their homelands.
A couple of years later, in 1872, the U.S. Army once again decided to “deal” with Captain Jack and his band of Modoc men. Their aim was to round up the errant Natives and force them back to the Klamath reservation. However, a fight broke out between a Modoc and a U.S. Army soldier, which led to a skirmish; Jack used the ensuing confusion to lead his people into a naturally fortified area consisting of caves and lava beds, in what became known as “Captain Jack’s Stronghold.” The Modoc hunkered down; when the U.S. Army found them in 1873, the attack they launched was a disaster for them: the Army suffered 35 fatalities and numerous casualties, while the Modoc band remained unharmed.
Jack hoped for a peaceable solution, and negotiations opened between the two sides. However, there was a faction of the Modoc that wanted action rather than talk. For them, negotiation was frowned upon as unmanly; Jack was accused of cowardice. Retaliating at this slur, Jack agreed with a plan to kill the negotiators.
At a conference in April, at a pre-arranged signal Jack and other Modoc men drew pistols and shot the two leaders of the commission, General Canby and the Reverend Dr. Eleazar Thomas. Reinforcements were brought in by the Army, and this time the Modoc had no choice but to flee.
During what became known as the Modoc War, some of the Modoc continued to fight the Army while others, seeing the futility of the situation since they were severely outnumbered, began to surrender. Captain Jack was hunted down by his own people, who were working against him at the request of the Army. Jack finally surrendered on June 1, and was duly dispatched yet again to Fort Klamath. In October 1873, he was hanged for the murder of Canby and Thomas. Three other Modoc men were executed alongside him.
Captain Jack’s body was sent east by train, where it was rumored that it was to be embalmed and used as a carnival attraction. However, the truth was that the severed heads of all three men were transported to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C.; just before the turn of the century the skulls were moved to the Smithsonian. In the 1980s, the remains of Captain Jack were returned to his relatives.
CARLISLE SCHOOL
As part of the effort to “civilize” the Native Americans and recruit them into a European way of thinking, several boarding schools were established with the aim of assimilating Indian children into the culture of the white man.
The Carlisle Indian School was the first of these educational establishments, founded in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. His aim was “ … to get the Indian away from the reservation into civilization, and when you get him there, keep him there.”
Pratt was authorized by the Federal Government to use the former Carlisle Barracks for the school. As part of the process of assimilation, it was deemed necessary to remove the Native American children from their parents and families, their traditional homes, and the way of life that they had followed for generations. In view of this fact, the Carlisle School, and others which emulated it, were situated away from the reservations.
It was suggested to the Native Americans that one of the reasons the white man had been able to dominate was that the Natives were not educated. If their children were brought up in the European way of education, and taught to read and write English, they would be better off for it. Accordingly, many Native families sent their children to the Carlisle School voluntarily. Subsequently, as 26 more schools sprang up using the example of the Carlisle School as their inspiration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs applied more pressure in separating children from their families.
At the Carlisle School, it was initially forbidden to use any language other than English, and when they first arrived children were given new English names. Also, a young student arriving at the Carlisle School would be given an enforced haircut. Many tribes believed that cutting the hair was a sign of mourning, and consequently the children would often weep until late into the night after this treatment. Their own clothes were taken away and replaced with formal Victorian dresses for the girls and military uniforms for the boys. There are archives of “before and after” photographs, ordered to be taken by Pratt, which were sent to Washington to show the difference in the children’s appearance to prove that all was in order.
For a student of the Carlisle School, the day’s regime was strict: the pupils were even expected to march,
