Program 202 – Historical Introduction

The Yankton Sioux and Strikes the Ree
[audio:https://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/s2_progs/202_hi.mp3]
with Arlie Neskahi

 

From the journal of William Clark:
William Clark, August 29 th, 1804: ” Sergeant Pryor informs me that when they came near the Indian camp they were met by men with a buffalo robe to carry them. a fat dog was presented as a mark of their great respect for the party. ”

Arlie Neskahi :
This is Wisdom of the Elders. I’m Arlie Neskahi.

It was the moon of the ripe plums, late summer. Most of the men were still away hunting buffalo when a white soldier and a French trader beached their large canoe and entered the Yankton Sioux village. They were welcomed with a generous show of hospitality and honored with special food. They had come as envoys from Lewis and Clark. Yankton Sioux scholar, Dr. Leonard Bruggier:

Dr. Leonard Bruguier:
In certain ceremonies, that meant that we consider you friends. And friend, as a term, is closer than brother and sister. When you make somebody your friend, you’re bringing someone into your family. And that’s what they made these people that came up. They made them friends.

Neskahi:
The Yankton Sioux lived east of the Missouri in today’s South Dakota and Iowa. They were a river people, agrarian, peaceful, matrilineal.

On August 27 th, as the Lewis and Clark’s little Missouri navy passed the James River, an Indian boy swam out to meet them. They learned that a large Yankton village lay not far up the James. Sergeant Nathanial Pryor and a French trader named Pierre Dorion were sent to the village to invite the Indian leaders for a council.

The Yankton attempted to honor the two men by carrying them into camp on a buffalo robe. Refusing the ride, they were then escorted into the village and honored with a special meal: dog soup.

Neskahi :
Dr. Leonard Bruguier :

Dr. Bruguier :
Shunka, the dog. The dog has a long, long, long, long history with us. I know it goes back into antiquity and millenniums. Indians had this respect for this animal and certain ceremonies they feed them dog, which also means that they were giving them the highest honor that they could… u ltimate respect. They would have a dog ready for that purpose.

Neskahi :
Ladonna Brave Bull Allard is tribal historian for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, Fort Yates, North Dakota.

Ladonna Brave Bull Allard:
We believe that dogs – the shunkas – are sacred. They are born with medicine in their bodies, and one of the things that we always tell people is like, when you are a child and you fall down or hurt your knee, and a dog comes and it will lick the wound, they have a healing component in their saliva. The same with us. When we are sick, there is healing components in the dogs that will heal our bodies, and so we use that same component.

Neskahi :
The council between Lewis and Clark and the Yankton Sioux took place at Calumet Bluff on the Missouri River on August 30, 1804.

Dr. Bruguier:
They were over in council at, at, what is today, Gavins Point Dam. They handed out peace medals, and, they called them friendship medals, and had a big Powwow, dancing and all those cultural activities that the Indians do.

Somebody told them that a little baby had been born, so they said, “Oh, bring him up”. So, they did, the story goes they wrapped this little baby in an American flag, and they said, “This baby’s gonna grow up to be a man, and this man is going to be a good American.”

Neskahi :
The baby became known as Strikes the Ree. By the 1850’s when the Yankton were moved onto a reservation he had become a head man.

Bruguier :
Strikes The Ree was Catholic, but he was a practicing Presbyterian. When he was an old man, right as he went into the church, they had the bishop’s chair. That was the Strikes The Ree chair. And the story is that when they’d hear him, they had wooden sidewalks. He had a cane and they’d hear him coming. Then nothing started until he’d come in and he’d sit down. And then the services would start.

Music:
Communion of the Saints
Cheyenne River Mission Singers
Beautiful Beyond: Christian Songs in Native Langua
Smithsonian/Folkways

Bruguier:
And he was an assimilationist. He had been to Washington, D.C. He’d been to New York, been to Baltimore, been to all those places and he was very impressed by how many white people there were. So the way it’s been interpreted is that he told his people, “If you go to war with them, you can kill ’em, and kill ’em, and kill ’em, but they’ll keep coming, because they have so many of them over there… You could war until you’re no longer there.”

Neskahi :
I’m Arlie Nesakhi, and this is Wisdom of the Elders.