Omaha people

Little Snake, an Omaha interpreter.

By the Fourth Treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1831, the Omaha ceded their lands in Iowa to the United States, east of the Missouri River, with the understanding that they still had hunting rights there. In 1836 a treaty with the US took their remaining hunting lands in northwestern Missouri.[8]

During the 1840s, the Omaha continued to suffer from Sioux aggression. European-American settlers pressed the US government to make more land available west of the Mississippi River for white development. In 1846 Big Elk made an illegal treaty allowing a large group of Mormons to settle on Omaha land for a period; he hoped to gain some protection from competing natives by their guns, but the new settlers cut deeply into the game and wood resources of the area during the two years they were there.[9]

For nearly 15 years in the 19th century, Logan Fontenelle was the interpreter at the Bellevue Agency, serving different US Indian agents. The mixed-race Omaha-French man was trilingual and also worked as a trader. His mother was Omaha; his father French Canadian. In January 1854 he acted as interpreter during the agent James M. Gatewood's negotiations for land cessions with 60 Omaha leaders and elders, who sat in council at Bellevue. Gatewood had been under pressure by Washington headquarters to achieve a land sale. The Omaha elders refused to delegate the negotiations to their gens chiefs, but came to an agreement to sell most of their remaining lands west of the Missouri to the United States. Competing interests may be shown by the draft treaty containing provisions for payment of tribal debts to the traders Fontenelle, Peter Sarpy, and Louis Saunsouci.[10] The chiefs at council agreed to move from the Bellevue Agency further north, finally choosing the Blackbird Hills, essentially the current reservation in Thurston County, Nebraska.

The 60 men designated seven chiefs to go to Washington, DC for final negotiations along with Gatewood, with Fontenelle to serve as their interpreter.[10][11] The chief Iron Eye (Joseph LaFlesche) was among the seven who went to Washington and is considered the last chief of the Omaha under their traditional system. Logan Fontenelle served as their interpreter, and whites mistakenly believed he was a chief. Because his father was white, the Omaha never accepted him as a member of the tribe, but considered him white.[11]

Although the draft treaty authorized the seven chiefs to make only "slight alterations," the government officials forced major changes when they met.[10] It took out the payments to the traders. It reduced the total value of annuities from $1,200,000 to $84,000, spread over years until 1895. It reserved the right to decide on distribution between cash and goods for the annuities.[10]

Last Omaha tribal hunt, December 1876 to March 1877. After 34 camp moves, the hunters found bison 400 miles outside the Omaha Reservation.[12]^: 25–32

The tribe finally removed to the Blackbird Hills about 1856, and they first built a village in its traditional pattern. By the 1870s, bison were quickly disappearing from the plains, and the Omaha had to rely increasingly for survival upon their cash annuities and supplies from the United States Government and adaptation to subsistence agriculture. Jacob Vore was a Quaker appointed as US Indian agent to the Omaha Reservation under President Ulysses S. Grant. He started in September 1876, succeeding T.S. Gillingham, also a Quaker.

Vore distributed a reduced annuity that year, just before the Omaha left on their annual buffalo hunt; according to his later account, he intended to "encourage" the Omaha to work at more agriculture.[13] They suffered a poor hunting season and severe winter, so that some were starving before late spring. Vore gained a supplement to the annuities which he had distributed, but for the remaining years of his tenure through 1879, distributed no cash annuities of the $20,000/year which was part of the treaty. Instead, he supplied goods: harrows, wagons, harnesses and various kinds of plows and implements to support the agricultural work. He told the tribe that Washington, DC officials had disapproved the annuity. The people had no recourse, and struggled to raise more produce, increasing the harvest to 20,000 bushels.[13]

The Omaha never took up arms against the U.S. Several members of the tribe fought for the Union during the American Civil War, as well as each subsequent war through today.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Omaha began to reclaim lands east of the Missouri River, in an area called Blackbird Bend. After lengthy court battles and several standoffs, much of the area has been recognized as part Omaha tribal lands.[14] The Omaha established their Blackbird Bend Casino on this reclaimed territory.[15]

In 1989, the Omaha reclaimed more than 100 ancestral skeletons from Ton-wo-tonga, which had been held by museums. They had been excavated during archaeological work of the 1930s and 1940s, from grave sites with burials before and after 1800. Before having ceremonial reburial of the remains on Omaha lands, the tribe's representatives arranged for research at the University of Nebraska to see what could be learned from their ancestors.[5]

Researchers found considerable differences in the community before and after 1800, as revealed in their bones and artifacts. Most significantly, they discovered that the Omaha were an equestrian Plains culture and buffalo hunters by 1770, making them the "first documented equestrian culture on the Northern Plains."[5] They also found that before 1800, the Omaha traded mostly in arms and ornaments. Men had many more roles in the patrilineal culture than did women: as "archers, warriors, gunsmiths, and merchants," including the major ceremonial roles. Sacred bundles from religious ceremonies were found buried only with men.[5]

Omaha tipi. The Omaha earth lodge was substituted with a moveable tipi during hunts on the open plains.

As the tribe migrated westward from the Ohio River region in the 17th century, they adapted to the Plains environment. They replaced the Woodland custom of bark lodges with tipis (borrowed from the Sioux) for the buffalo hunting and summer season, and built earth lodges (borrowed from the Arikara,[21] called Sand Pawnee,[22]) for the winter. Tipis were used primarily during buffalo hunts and when they relocated from one village area to another. They used earth lodges as dwellings during the winter.

Omaha beliefs were symbolized in their dwelling structures. During most of the year, the Omaha lived in earth or sod lodges, ingenious structures with a timber frame and a thick sod covering. At the center of the lodge was a fireplace that recalled their creation myth. The earthlodge entrance was built to face east, to catch the rising sun and remind the people of their origin and migration upriver from the east.

The Huthuga, the circular layout of tribal villages, reflected the tribe's beliefs. Sky people lived in the northern half-circle of the village, the area that symbolized the heavens. Earth people lived in the southern half, which represented the earth. The circle opened to the east. Within each half of the village, the clans or gentes were located based on their members' tribal duties and relationship to other clans. Earth lodges were as large as 60 feet (18 m) in diameter and might hold several families, even their horses.

When the tribe removed to the Omaha Reservation about 1856, they initially built their village and earth lodges in the traditional patterns, with the half-tribes and clans in their traditional places in the layout.

The Omaha revere an ancient Sacred Pole, from before the time of their migration to the Missouri, made of cottonwood. It is called Umoⁿ'hoⁿ'ti (meaning "The Real Omaha") and considered to be a person.[17] It was kept in a Sacred Tent in the center of the village, which only men who were members of the Holy Society could enter. An annual renewal ceremony was related to the Sacred Pole.[16]

In 1888 Francis La Flesche, a young Omaha anthropologist, helped arrange for his colleague Alice Fletcher to have the Sacred Pole taken to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, for preservation of it and its stories, at a time when the tribe's continuity seemed threatened by pressure for assimilation. The tribe was considering burying the Pole with its last keeper after his death. The last renewal ceremony for the pole was held in 1875, and the last buffalo hunt in 1876.[17] La Flesche and Fletcher gathered and preserved stories about the Sacred Pole by its last keeper, Yellow Smoke, a holy man of the Hong'a gens.[16]

In the twentieth century, about 100 years after the Pole had been transferred, the tribe negotiated with the Peabody Museum for its return. The tribe planned to install the Sacred Pole in a cultural center to be built. When the museum returned the Sacred Pole to the tribe in July 1989, the Omaha held an August pow-wow in celebration and as part of their revival.[16]

The Sacred Pole is said to represent the body of a man. The name by which it is known, a-kon-da-bpa, is the word used to designate the leather bracer worn upon the wrist for protection from the bow string (of the weapon of bow and arrow). This name demonstrates that the pole was intended to symbolize a man, as no other creature could wear a bracer. It also indicated that the man thus symbolized was one who was both a provider for and a protector of his people.[17]