By Monette Bebow-Reinhard, WMD Author
Editor's Note: This is part 2 of 2 of "The Divided Loyalties of 'Half Breeds' (part 1)," by WMD author, Monette Bebow-Reinhard.
LESS
FAMOUS
HALF-BREEDS
In
September 1869, John Richards
Jr., a sub-contractor for hay and “mixed blood” interpreter at
Fort Laramie, shot Corporal Conrad of the Fourth’s Company E at
Fort Fetterman in Wyoming
for no
apparent reason or provocation. Conrad died the next day.
Commissioner Ely S. Parker wanted his trade license reinstated, but
Governor Campbell thought that wasn’t a good idea, since he had
killed a soldier and then disappeared. Richards
reappeared in summer of 1870 with Joe Richards,
his half-breed cousin, and Toucon to report an attack by Northern
Cheyenne, who supposedly ran off a few head of their cattle around
ten miles from their post.
On
July 31st
six six-mule teams loaded with corn arrive at the post, with John
Richards,
one “Calluff” and three “squaws or women.” They reported that
Joe Richards
had killed Toucon (or Touissant) near the military lime kiln. They
were put in the guardhouse for detention, while a military guard went
out to arrest Joe Richards.
To elude capture Joe hid among the Sioux in Powder River, and
eventually Toucon turned up alive and uninjured.
Half-breeds
were given positions as teamsters, jobs not given to full-bloods. We
know why Richards
was at the fort, mingling with soldiers, and we might even guess what
could have been the source of the altercation:
drunkenness.
It was quite possibly self-defense on Richards’s
part. As for the prank between family members of falsely reporting
murder, it
could well have been
divided loyalties emerging between family members.
John
Richards
Sr. had traded with Indians in the Fort Laramie region and had a
Sioux wife. His son became well known as a trader and civilian
contractor for the military. He voiced friendship with the Crow and
declared himself an enemy of the Whites
during the 1868 peace treaty negotiations where he served as
interpreter. But these turned out to be accusations leveled against
Richards
that were declared false by General John Sanford, who said that he
had accomplished much toward bringing Indians to council in a
peaceful manner.
As
a result, John Richards
Jr. received an Indian trade license in February 1869 but saw it
revoked two months later. He was working as a subcontractor when he
killed Conrad, supposedly in a drunken fit. They’d earlier had an
altercation, when Conrad ordered him to leave the room of a whore. He
then joined the Sioux and was heard to say he’d incite them to war.
He eventually sought a pardon, received it, and
went
back to doing business.
But
on June 17, 1870, after fighting with a Sioux relative, John
Jr. was
cut
him to
pieces in response.
Another
lesser known demonstration of one foot in each world is Toussaint
Kensler, who was jailed for murdering a rival for the affections of a
whore at a hog ranch. He told his captors that an invasion of the
Black Hills would bring on a war with the Indians for which the Sioux
had been preparing for two years. He believed the Sioux would even
make peace with the Crows to get them to join. “Half-breeds”
like Kensler, who was of German and Indian descent and once dressed
as an Indian to “avoid detection,” were often used as
interpreters and agents or as teamsters for the army and had an ear
in both worlds. (He
became the second man legally hung in the territory.)
After the Little Bighorn,
half-breed interpreters were no longer sought out by the army.
Instead, Indian children were sent to school to learn English on
their road to becoming “civilized.” And still, they returned to
the reservations and given nothing to do.
After
the Dawes Act
of 1887,
where
each Indian was allotted a certain amount of reservation land and the
rest opened up to white settlement, more
half-breeds were found willing to sign away the land, leading their
Indian relatives to hope they would go poor out there in the White
world and not try to come crawling back.
It would appear, too, that
unscrupulous Whites were able to use the “mixed blood” of
settlers on Indian land against them. In the 1830 Prairie du Chien
treaty (Wisconsin/Minnesota), a clause was added to allow land to go
to the half-breed settlers of the area. The land in question remained
unsettled, so the Minnesota legislature gave these half-breeds scrips
that could be exchanged for any federal land anywhere of their
choosing. Whites then bought off these scrips, and some even used it
to buy rich timber land around Lake Tahoe during the Comstock Lode
rush that built Virginia City, Nevada in the early 1860s.
Divided loyalties always
came with a price.
MEDIA
STEREOTYPES
Having
divided loyalties appeared to be a common experience, especially in
the west with both sides fighting each other. But having interpreters
helped to tame the west down, at least at first. When the
interpretation became suspect, by either side, the references to
half-breeds in general became derogatory.
How
did the term half-breed come to mean something negative in today’s
world? First, we saw that when whites no longer needed them, they
were seen as unduly influencing the Indians. We could also blame the
media, too, although the media
generally
only reflects current beliefs, rather than creating new ones.
Here’s
a survey of “half-breeds” in the movies and TV, where
we can see how this stereotype of divided loyalties was perpetuated.
Mark
Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was published in 1876,
at or around the time of the Little Bighorn, making the Injun Joe
the main bad guy probably made that book gain quickly in popularity,
as the defeat of Custer’s men made even the Eastern Indian friends
turn against them. Yet, making him only half Indian could have
reduced the negative impact, indicating that Mark Twain himself
believed the Indians were goaded into war that year;
half white here perhaps meant both sides were to blame.
“Half
Breed” was used as a political party term by the Republicans in
1880. It was a derogatory applied to the more liberal half of the
party that wanted anyone but President Grant as the candidate. They
eventually embraced the term to differentiate themselves from the
Stalwarts; Garfield, who became president as a moderate between the
two, was eventually killed by a Stalwart.
From
a commentary on “The Half-Breed,” a silent movie in 1916: Films
like The
Red Girl and
The Child (1910)
and A
Redskin’s Bravery (1911)
focused on interracial friendship, continuing the romantic tradition
popularized by James Fenimore Cooper in his Leatherstocking
novels. Moving
Picture World warned viewers away from 1911’s Red Deer’s
Devotion because it “represents a white girl and an Indian falling
in love with each other. While such a thing is possible … still
there is a feeling of disgust which cannot be overcome when this
sort of thing is depicted as plainly as it is here.” Mixing the
races was here
considered
taboo, hence the western cliché of white settlers under attack
reserving their last bullets to kill the womenfolk, saving them from
the fate worse than death. This scene appears in countless movies,
from Griffith’s The Battle of Elderbush Gulch to 1950’s
Winchester ’73. As Kevin Brownlow wrote, “the moment that the
Noble Savage procreated with a white woman, the offspring became a
vicious character.” The real story [in this movie] is not Lo’s
parentage, but the triangle of Lo, Nellie, and Sheriff Dunn. Anita
Loos, who wrote Half-Breed’s scenario, might have been at least
partially responsible for turning the stereotype of the virginal
white woman and the rapacious redskin on its head. The
film follows a common strategy of exposing racism and then evading a
real confrontation with its consequences;
in
this case, by revealing Nellie to be a heartless coquette and
providing Lo with a more worthy love interest, Teresa, who, as both
a Mexican and an outlaw, as
his social equal. Yet
it’s unfair to condemn the film for its inability to transcend its
time period’s prejudices.
(Lo is a term used in place of ‘noble Indian.’ From Alexander
Pope’s “Essay on Man.”)
In
1917 in an article in Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 16, No. 1, the
word “half-breed” was still being used as an identifier and not
as criticism of a person’s character or as an insult to his
heritage.
“The
Half Breed” was a 1952 movie about a crooked politician on Indian
land. It's just after the Civil War and Frank Crawford it trying to
start an Indian war so the Indians will be thrown off the
reservation and he can then claim the millions in gold contained
there. Dan Craig, a wandering gambler, arrives and meets the
half-breed Apache, Charlie Wolf. The two become friends and for a
while they are able to prevent trouble. But after Crawford murders
Charlie's half sister, Charlie rebels and an Indian uprising appears
imminent.
Let’s face it; half-breeds are used in movies so that they don’t
have awkward conversational issues. It’s also likely a way for
whites to show they are culturally sensitive.
Even
John Wayne got in the act with “Hondo” in 1953, although the
description of the movie doesn’t refer to him as a half-breed.
Wayne is mostly known for his anti-Indian movies, increasing the
stereotypical western image of savages.
“The
Underdog,” was a Bonanza episode in late 1964 that starred Charles
Bronson as a half-breed Comanche who couldn’t get along with
anyone.
But
the
reason was that
he was
a horse thief in disguise.
He
claimed
to be persecuted because of his heritage. Another
episode
in 1968,
called “The Burning Sky,” featured a half-breed who hated his
Indian side. And when the Cartwrights heard that his heritage was
the reason, they nodded as in complete understanding.
“Winnetou
and the Crossbreed” was a German movie based on the popular Karl
May books with an interesting twist to the word,
deeming
“crossbreed” as
more acceptable. This movie was made in 1966, and gives the positive
slant
on the Indian culture,
as Karl May’s books were pro-Indian.
“Chato’s
Land” in 1972 features Charles Bronson, this time as a Mestizo.
Again it features a half-white going after ruthless whites. One has
to wonder why he needed
to be a half-breed? The
answer is why would a White be against other Whites; making him only
half-white gives him a reason to oppose them.
Cher’s
song “Half Breed” tells us how she “learned to hate the word.”
That was released in 1973, and reflects
this negative perception.
She
did supposedly attempt to claim Cherokee ancestry, but in later
years denied it. She was attacked for continuing to sing the song,
but the attacks could be more related to her singing it in a fake
headdress.
“Keoma”
came out in 1976 and featured a half-breed who returns after the
Civil War to save his land and its people from ruthless Whites,
another on that theme.
England’s
JK Rowling called her half-human people “half-breeds.” They
were also half wizards, and this, perhaps (I don’t know her
personally nor did I read the books),
was an indirect tribute to the Indian world.
As
late as 1990, cavalry refugee Kevin Costner
as John Dunbar
is provided with a white captive to marry rather than a Native
Indian
bride
in the Oscar-winning Dances
with Wolves.
Again,
this was used to save them from long and awkward phase communication
issues. No half-breed was used here; however, we see a White
embracing her Indian life and her desire to shun memories of her
life as a White.
The Meriam-Webster
dictionary notes that “half-breed” is an offensive term to mean
offspring of parents of different races, especially of Indian and
White. Wikipedia notes that this is especially used in the U.S. to
mean half Indian and Half White, while Rowling could use it in
Britain to mean something else.
The
Free Dictionary online noted this: “This term is usually used with
disparaging intent and perceived as insulting, implying that a person
of mixed race is somehow different or inferior. However, half-breed
is also used as a neutral
descriptive term.”
Historically, it has been
used as a neutral term, simply to identify someone and perhaps only
to indicate the role they’re playing in history. But because
Europeans first saw these natives as nothing better than animals
compared to their Christian civilization, “half-breed” became a
word the Indians hated.
Today
many tribal peoples are at least half White. Tribes
cannot
make
tribal members out of
people below one-quarter
Indian;
there is concern that being Indian is being married into extinction.
Reservation
leaders often struggle between two sides: Progressive and
Traditional. But this essay is not saying that the more Indian blood
you have, the more traditional you are. It is, however, possible that
half-breeds were used to help tear the Indian world in two; either
side with the Whites (progressive) or be driven into extinction
(Traditional). This issue is responsible for the Massacre of Wounded
Knee in 1890.
Every historic half-breed
was a distinct individual raised in a manner that affected how he or
she sees or saw the world. The whole concept of divided loyalties
made them appear derogatory by one side or the other when it appeared
they had only their own best interests at heart. It is in the best
interest of historical relevance to keep their positions intact.
Negativity
toward half-blood people began once the Indian wars had ended;
half-breeds were thought to be those people who took advantage of
both sides of their families, lazy no-goods who lived on the Indians
government dole, while inciting them into asking for more “than
they deserved.” Gradually, half-breeds came to be seen, if seen at
all, as having a negative influence on the Indians, and on the
government’s desire to take away their excess land and open it to
development. Quanah Parker fought against allotment and felt leasing
the land was better for his Indian people, and ultimately,
reservations were restored.
But
after the Indian wars, half-breeds lost their voice, and came to see
that taking money for the land
and
walking away from their Indian heritage might be their
only route left.
It
may be politically correct to remove “half-breed” as a term from
our language today.
But learning the
realities of being “half-breed” in historical records helps
us to understand the complex
history of this country.
The use of “breed” is considered derogatory not because of the
person’s blood, but because of the comparisons to animals, and
because of divided loyalties, a reality they could never quite
escape.
This
is a simplified look at a complex topic, but one that has been
ignored in most historical sources. I challenge writers not to
neglect but to include these voices in your work and recognize the
role they played in western events.
My novel, coming out soon,
is now called “Saving Boone, Legend of a Kiowa Son.” It had
previously been published by All Things that Matter Press, who argued
that I keep “Saga of a Half-Breed.” Their issue cover was so bad
I did not promote it and finally canceled that contract.
Read Part 1 now: click here!
Read more
on divided loyalties in “Civil War & Bloody Peace: Following
Orders, 2d edition” available at https://tinyurl.com/ugo3687.
Author copies of first edition available for $10 in the US, includes
shipping.
SOURCES (an unofficial listing):
“On
the Plains with Custer and Hancock: The Journal of Isaac Coaates,
Army Surgeon,” edited by W.J.D. Kennedy. Boulder: Johnson Books,
1997.
“Empire
of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the
Comanches, the most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History,” by
S.C. Gwynne. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Lots
of references to “half-breeds.”
“With
Crook at the Rosebud,”
by J.W.
Vaughn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1956.
“A
Century of Dishonor: A sketch of the United States Government’s
Dealing with some of the Indian Tribes,” by Helen Hunt Jackson.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995 (original printing in
1885).
“Warpath
& Council Fire,” by Stanley Vestal. New York: Random House,
1948. This
author felt that “a half-breed always felt more at home with the
Indians than with the whites” (66).
“The
Fighting Cheyennes” by George Bird Grinnell. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1915. Can
provide a map of the Sand Creek massacre from here, has been used in
other sources listed here as well. (171).
“Encyclopedia
of North American Indians,” edited by Frederick E. Hoxie. New
York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1996. Can
provide a photo of Quanah Parker from here, appears to be free use
(469).
“Life
of George Bent, written from His Letters,” by George H. Hyde,
edited by Savoie Lottinville. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1968.
“500
Nations: An Illustrated History of North American History,” edited
by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Possible
use of George Bent and wife photo (366).
“The
Native Americans: an Illustrated History, edited by Betty and Ian
Ballantine. Turner Publishing Inc., 1993.
“Drybone:
A History of Fort Fetterman, Wyoming,” by Tom Lindmier. Glendo,
Wyo.: High Plains Press, 2002.
“My
Life on the Plains,” by George Custer.
“Indians,
Infants and Infantry: Andrew and Elizabeth Burt on the Frontier,”
by Merrill J. Mattes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.
“The
Half-Breed,” Silent
Film.org., http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/the-half-breed
“Treaty
with the Chippewa, 1826”
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/chi0268.htm
Mendota
MMdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community, Mendotadakota.com,
https://mendotadakota.com/mn/half-breed-tracts-2/
Cher
the “Half Breed” - Does Cher have any Cherokee ancestry?
(dnaconsultants.com)
- an interesting read, and likely why she never claimed to have a
last name.
About the Author
Monette Bebow-Reinhard is an established book author, specializing in historical accounts, issues, and events. She began writing movie scripts in 1975 and from 1992 to 1995, she co-wrote scripts for the Bonanza series. She has won several minor awards and Monette has several novels on the market.
Monette's new Bonanza nonfiction history project is now revealed:
“I VERY HIGHLY (HIGHLY, HIGHLY) RECOMMEND Felling of the Sons to every Western genre enthusiast, especially those that hold Bonanza in high-esteem.—Patricia Spork, Reviewer, ebook Reviews Weekly.
Here's a link to Monette's Website where you will find some very interesting reading: https://www.grimm2etc.com. Also, connect with Monette via email at moloberein@yahoo.com.
Learn more about the half-breed experiences in
CIVIL WAR & BLOODY PEACE: Following Orders
"This is an attempt to get at the real and objective truth of military orders between 1862 and 1884, and beyond, by following a regular army private's orders during those years that he served. You will be walking through real records of history, with the people who made the U.S. what it is today."
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Born to 17-year-old Sadie McCurdy on that cold January day, Elmer's father was never known. Whether she had been with her cousin, Charles, or someone else, no father ever came forward to claim or raise Elmer. Sadie's brother, George, adopted Elmer to save her the shame of the situation. After he passed away from tuberculosis in 1890, Sadie and her sister-in-law, Helen, moved north to Bangor. It would be well into his childhood before events transpired so that 'Aunt Sadie' would explain to Elmer that Helen was his aunt, not his mother. Turning his world on its ear, the news sent Elmer into tumultuous teenage years of drinking and rebellion. The alcoholism would follow him his entire life.
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