Ella Cara Deloria - Speaking Of Indians

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Text originally published in 1944 under the same title.

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SPEAKING OF INDIANS

BY

ELLA DELORIA

Introduction by Vine Deloria, Jr.

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

MARY SHARP FRANCIS

a beloved teacher and a great missionary

My thanks are due to all who have read my manuscript and offered constructive suggestions. Especially would I thank Miss Edith M. Dabb, former missionary teacher and for many years Y. W. C. A. secretary for Indian work, whose criticisms out of a breadth of knowledge and a wealth of experience were most helpful to me.

I am profoundly grateful to the Missionary Education Movement for giving me this chance to speak out freely from the Indians point of view. The widest latitude was allowed me, with the apparent confidence that I would be able to set forth some problems, not always plain to outsiders, which beset the Indian people in their efforts to progress. If I have justified that confidence in some measure, I am glad.

ELLA DELORIA

New York City

May, 1944

SCIENCE TELLS US THAT THE NATIVE AMERICANS came from northern Asia and that they may have arrived here from ten to twelve thousand years ago. But they were not the first inhabitants of this continent. From archeological evidences we know that man-made implements of stone were left beside ancient campfires fifteen to eighteen thousand years ago, some even say twenty thousand. Man-made projectiles, too, have been found deep in the earth, together with the skeletons of a prehistoric species of bison. It is known from such remains that these earlier peoples lived by both hunting and seed-gathering. We cannot know what became of themwhether they had all vanished before the ancestors of the modern Indians arrived, or whether some were still wandering about and were absorbed by the newcomers. Of course, every bit of this is speculative; one guess is nearly as good as another, for we can never be sure of what actually took place.

And it doesnt really matter, does it? All that which lies hidden in the remote past is interesting, to be sure, but not so important as the present and the future. The vital concern is not where a people came from, physically, but where they are going, spiritually. Even so, it does help to look briefly at these theories of origins.

We all know that the natives of America are not really Indians, that that name was mistakenly applied to them by Columbus when he reached these shores and supposed he had found India by sailing west. Then who are they? Scientists generally give as the best answer possible with the evidence now in hand that the ancestry of the Indians is Mongoloid. This does not mean that the Indians are Chinese nor that they came from Chinafor the excellent reason that at the assumed period of their arrival in America China and the Chinese were not yet in existence. Old as they are, the Chinese, by comparison, are recent. It is more nearly true to say that the Indians probably have a remote ancestry in common with other Asiatic peoples of today. But it was all so very long ago and the various races of mankindwhich presumably had a common biological originhave become so differentiated that no one knows what racial intermixtures may have occurred during the long ages.

It is supposed that the migrations from Asia that began ten to twelve thousand years ago took place in waves with varying intervals between. When they ended no one knows, or what finally put a stop to them. Perhaps it was some drastic change of climate or topography. Look on a map at the vast expanse of northern Asia stretching eastward all the way from old Russia and northeastward from the China of today to the point where it almost meets America, with only the narrow straits to hold the old and new worlds apart. It is not hard to imagine that small bands of hunters broke away occasionally from the tribes that roamed there and gradually found their way into-the new world, either by boat or perhaps by a land bridge that later disappeared.

The newcomers brought with them the knowledge and progress of their people back home in what we now call Siberia. It was not much, in that remote agethe early New Stone Age, sometimes called the Neolithic Age. They brought along the throwing stick; stone implements and tools, better made than those of the first Stone Age, but very simple still; a knowledge of basket-making; probably with the first migration, the bow and arrow; and only one domestic animal, the dog.

I can picture that dog, pulling a small travois on which are piled his masters few belongings. I can picture a line of early men, women, and children, struggling along on foot, and, among them, these burdened dogs. Snow and winds harshly whip across their primitive faces. All are heading for America, to become unwittingly the First Americans. If one stops to muse on them coming thus, one must feel a little sorry for them, for they were walking deliberately into a trap. With each step they were cutting themselves off for thousands of years from the rest of mankind.

Until they left home, no doubt their chances of progress were about even with those of other peoples. All human progress was slow at the beginning, but at least it was cumulative as long as peoples could occasionally get in touch with each other. But now, upon reaching the New World, the Indians began to lag behind, although it must be said to their credit that they never stood still. But why did they have to lag at all? The answer is easy, and happily it casts no reflection on their potentialities. They lagged because they were isolated. All progress depends on contacts and the resulting exchange of new ideas. Dr. Franz Boas has said:

We must bear in mind that none of these [ancient civilizations] was the product of the genius of a single people. Ideas and inventions were carried from one to the other; and so, although intercommunication was slow, each people which participated in that ancient development contributed its share to the general progress. Proofs without number are forthcoming to show that ideas have been disseminated for as long as people have come in contact with one another, and that neither race nor language nor distance limits their diffusion. As all races have worked together in the development of civilization, we must bow to the genius of all, whatever group of mankind they may represent. {1}