With the oil royalties on Osage lands in Oklahoma reaching approximately $20 million a year (see entry for 1897), wealthy tribe members increasingly become victims of non-Indian con men looking to swindle them out of their money in any way possible. In the three-year period beginning in 1921, many Osage are killed under mysterious circumstances, often with non-Indians named as their legal beneficiaries. While 24 murder cases are left unsolved, many other deaths are questionably ruled as suicides. This reign of terror among the Osage will lead Congress to pass the Osage Guardianship Act (see entry for 1925).
Mission Indian Federation members are arrested for conspiracy.
Angered by the hostility of Mission Indian Fed-eration—a powerful California Indian advocacy group—toward the Bureau of Indian Affairs (see entry for NOVEMBER 1919), the Department of Justice orders the arrest of 57 federation members. They are charged with conspiracy against the U. S. government. Released without bail, the accused prepare for a long legal battle, but the charges will be dropped three years later after all Indians are granted citizenship (see entry for JUNE 2, 1924).
Non-Indian hobbyists perform the Snake Dance as the Smokis.
Established by the Prescott, Arizona, chamber of commerce to promote tourism, the Smokis are non-Indians who gather annually to dress up in Indian costumes and perform a version of the Hopi Snake Dance down the town’s main street. Over the next 70 years the Smokis will develop into a secret society, with members taking Indian names and identifying themselves with small tattoos, called “snakebites,” on their hands. The hobbyist group will continue to stage its annual Snake Dances until the early 1990s, when objections from the Hopi finally compel the Smokis to abandon the ceremony.
The Snyder Act provides funds services for Indians.
Responding to the dire health conditions in many Native American communities, Congress passes the
Snyder Act. The act gives Congress the authority to authorize funds for health, social, and educational programs for Indian groups, even those for whom the United States is not required by treaty to provide such services.
Plenty Coups speaks at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier dedication.
Joining President Warren G. Harding and many foreign dignitaries, Crow leader Plenty Coups marches in a procession to Arlington National Cemetery for the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Before the soldier’s body is placed in the tomb, Plenty Coups, in a scripted performance, emerges from the crowd to place his eagle-feathered headdress and coup stick on the coffin. Ignoring officials requests that he remain silent during the ceremony, the Indian leader then turns to the crowd and, speaking in Crow, pays tribute to the Indian warriors of the past and offers a brief prayer for peace.
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“I am glad to represent all the Indians of the United States in placing on the grave of this noble warrior this coup stick and war bonnet, every eagle feather of which represents a deed of valor by my race. . . . I hope that the Great Spirit will grant that these noble warriors have not given up their lives in vain and that there will be peace to all men hereafter.”
—Crow chief Plenty Coups at the dedication ceremony for Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
December
Eighty Kwakiutl are arrested for holding a potlatch ceremony.
In a village near Alert Bay, off Vancouver Island, nearly 300 Kwakiutl Indians gather to hold a potlatch—a ceremony that is outlawed by the Canadian government (see entry for APRIL 19, 1884). To assert his authority, the local agent arrests 80 of the most prominent participants. In the subsequent trial—conducted in English, a language most of the defendants do not understand—30 are sentenced to prison terms of up to a year. All are forced to promise never to attend another potlatch and to surrender goods that were to be distributed to guests at the potlatch feast.
The arrests effectively end illegal potlatching, but they also earn Canadian officials the enmity of the Kwakiutl people for decades to come. The Kwakiutl are also outraged by the confiscation of many treasured masks, costumes, and other potlatch paraphernalia. Many of these objects will be placed on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, the National Museum in Ottawa, and the Museum of the American Indian in New York City (see entry for 1916).
World History
