First America – Military Might | Episode 4
OPENING
There’s this famous painting about the end of the Revolutionary War. In the painting George Washington is standing in the middle of an official looking room, surrounded by a sea of wigs. A sword swings from his hips. And in an outstretched hand, Washington is holding a piece of paper. It’s his resignation letter.
Normally someone quitting their job isn’t the type of thing memorialized in a painting, but it was an important moment in American history. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army disbanded. The soldiers that had fought and won the War went home–including Washington.
Our founding fathers didn’t want a big, centralized military. You have to remember, British soldiers occupied colonial towns. They shot and killed people in the streets. Our founders thought a big military would lead to the abuse of power. So the army they did keep around was small — tiny even. At one point, the United States only had 80 enlisted men.
If that’s how it started… Well, how’s it going now?
[newsy montage of things about the military. Imagining it being layered under VO]
Today, the United States spends more money on our military than any other country.
It feels like we’re constantly at war. And whenever we finally end a conflict,
[very short clip about withdrawal from Afganistan]
[very short clips about war with Iran]
How did that happen? How did we go from founding fathers who didn’t want a big military to having the most expensive, most powerful one in the world?
[THEME MUSIC]
You’re listening to First America–the true story of how the United States came to be. And how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. From Pushkin Industries and Critical Frequency, I’m your host Rebecca Nagle. Gohini daqwadoa. Tsalagi Ayetli gela. Citizen of Cherokee Nation.
On the heels of the American Revolution, the young government wanted to expand. And they had their eyes set on the land that is now Ohio. But the tribes there were pushing back.
The war that came next forever changed two nations–the Myaamia and the United States.
George: Well, lemme take my glove off so we can actually touch the Nameewa Siipiiwi, but it’s frozen over completely in this spot.
I’m with George Ironstrack. He’s a historian and educator at the Myaamia Center and a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Their name for themselves is Myaamia.
George: Yeah. Which I’m not gonna walk on ’cause it’d be a classic. You know, George falls in and dies story.
We’re standing in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana.
George: we’re looking at the Nameewa Siipiiwi with the St. Mary’s River And up here it’s still almost completely frozen over from the really big cold spell that had,
So sorry. And nobody falls in. That’s, I think priority number one. Worried about Rebecca.
I’m like, oh no.
While George was careful not to step on the ice, I almost fell in.
Rebecca: Um, okay. I won’t take a step backwards.
Why do you still like to come down to the river itself?
George: the landscape all around, uh, kiihkayonki has been so built up. but when you come down to the level of the river, there’s less disruption.
Rebecca: What does it feel like?
George: Um, it just feels right, like it feels like, home.
I feel … I just feel like whole as a person when I come to these places.
For the Myaamia, this place was home. It was where their ancestors were buried. Where their stories and teachings told them they belonged.
George: Myaamia people struggle to live not in that place that shaped us. We’re intertwined with it.
Rebecca: Why did Americans want this land?
George: I mean, financially they needed it. Um, after the American Revolution, they just needed money.
The farmland is really rich. it’s really good soil, which still to this day is some of the best farmland in the United States.
Rebecca: And at kiihkayonki am I saying that right? Mm-hmm. do you guys like know how many people were living there at the time?
George: An estimate would be like 5,000 people, which is 6,000 people, which is like
Rebecca: a pretty big town on the continent of North America at the time. Yeah. Like both Native and European.
George: Mm-hmm..
To fight U.S. expansion, the Myaamia formed an alliance with more than half a dozen Indigenous nations. In English, this was called the United Indian Nations or the Northwestern Confederacy. But in Myaamia it had a different name.
George: The, uh, Taawaawa Siipiiwi alliance
U.S. leaders started to worry this alliance was strong enough to get in their way.
George: the Mihši-maalhsa, the Americans, come to see Kiihkahyonki our capital city they come to see that as like the center of this conspiracy. And so they believe that to, to bring this, uh, resistance to an end, they need to invade that center and build a fort
Rebecca: Can you say the name for the Americans again?
George: Yeah. // we called them the Mihši-maalhsa or the big knives
What was the United States willing to do to build a fort in Kiihkahyonki— to occupy the center of the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance?
It wasn’t easy. Like the three little pigs or Goldilocks and the three bears, it would take three American generals to build that fort.
The story of the first one, after the break.
———–———-MIDROLL———————
The first American general to try and build a fort in Kiihkayonki was named Josiah Harmar. He was known to drink a lot, but also to punish soldiers for small infractions, like a rusty weapon.
At first, Harmar didn’t have much of an army to lead. Remember, after the Revolutionary War the US army was less than a hundred men.
And so the federal government gathered up more soldiers and sent General Harmar about 300. Since the army was so small, over 1,000 militia men came to help out. And together, they headed North to Kiihkayonki.
George: Their goal was to leave that village struggling to survive the coming winter.
By the time Harmar got there, most Myaamia people had fled.
George: But there’s some small skirmishes that occur, but there’s not really a battle. Um, but they very quickly occupy the town.
The Americans quickly turned to destruction. In one day, American soldiers burned 20,000 bushels of corn.
Rebecca: 20,000 bushels. Like I can’t, I have no concept.
George: And that the corn isn’t just food. Right. There’s like a relationship with that plant., like we have stories that talk about if you’ve like, mistreat that plant, there’s like, there’s bad outcomes for you.
George says the way this military history gets told often focuses on men.
George: the homes were constructed and owned by women. The farm fields that were attacked and burned were planted and cared for by women.
And so, really this war was a war in many ways, on women, on their economy, on their lives.
In the chaos, a trunk that contained basically the national archives of the Myaamia people was burned. To this day, there are parts of their history that they don’t know.
George: We have a story, um, it’s our oldest, uh, historical narrative called the coming out story but the, the stories of what came before that are lost to us,
[music change]
The American soldiers thought they’d won. But Myaamia warriors had been watching them from a distance. And they saw the Americans looting.
because Myaamia people are wealthy, through the fur trade we could gain wool blankets, silver jewelry of all different kinds. Myaamia people love to bedazzle ourselves, men and women in all different kinds of jewelry.
so you can imagine in the panic of leaving, a lot of those valuables were left behind.
The Myaamia warriors decide to use the Americans’ greed against them.
they sprinkled the ground with trinkets and then waited for the militia to start picking everything up, and then they hit them with an ambush.
By the end of the fighting, that small force that the US scraped together–over 200 of them are killed or wounded.
And like disorder and panic spreads everywhere. The militia basically terrified and that terror spreads within the whole, um, the whole body. And so Harmar decides that they should probably just leave. Like he’s not gonna be able to build able a fort.
today we call it the the Battle of Kiihkayonki, ’cause that’s what it is. It’s a battle of our city, of our capital city.
But history books call it Harmar’s defeat. Because instead of building a fort at Kiihkayonki, Harmar and his men retreated.
At this time, a man named Major General Arthur St. Clair was in charge of the Northwest Territory–that was the area of land the US was fighting to control. He was a wealthy immigrant from Scotland, and he was not ready to give up.
George: Yeah it’s kind of, uh, classic Office politics, you give the order and the the guy you tell to do it doesn’t do it well. So you’re like, fine, I’ll just do it myself. And it just goes even worse.
And so about a year after Harmar’s defeat, the United States sent the second general to attack Kiihkayonki.–General Arthur St. Clair. Congress had created a brand new regiment and gave St. Clair about twice as many regular soldiers. And like they did the first time, members of state militias joined in. They all gathered at a fort on the edge of Myaamia homelands.
To try and weaken the alliance before his main attack, St Clair sent out smaller raiding parties.
In one of those raids, about 80 Myaamia women were taken captive.
Kara: So at a time where they were trying to kind of peel off aspects of the Myaamia um, Confederacy, um, they were using these women and children really as pawns
This is Kara Strass. She directs tribe relations at the Myaamia Center. Kara says the Americans made a list of the women’s names.
Kara: And so we have, um, a list of names like Amehkoonsahkwa, Ehkweekanka, or
Oonsaayaankweeta, Pakantamwa, but there are also names that were given that now that we look back and recognize, like these names make no sense
And so that’s names like [aantiiši alaapilo], let literally means look that way. It’s a command. Like Myaamia names are not two words. Like if you knew, um, Myaamia language, you know, this is a command of something.
Um, [ciihkaahkwe waapami], uh, “look nearby.” Oh, [peminkiši alaapilo], “look up.” Or, um, one that’s maybe my favorite is [keetwia], which literally just means “what?” Um, but they added the person marker onto it. So they literally just took the word what, and then made it into something that sounds like a name.
The Myaamia women knew their names would be used to coerce Myaamia leaders. So, they gave fake names.
Kara:and the Americans had no clue, right? They’re just writing down, um, phonetically what they were hearing.
Rebecca: Do you find humor in it?
Kara: I, yeah, in a way. I think it does feel like this has to be one of the worst experiences of these Myaamia women’s lives, right? They’re in the middle of warfare. Um, that that’s total right that’re being used as pawns, and yet they have the strength to do something, to push back on that and to do it in a way that’s pretty humorous.
George: St. Clair, when he heads north from Fort Washington, it’s with a bigger group, uh, Um, but they move a lot more slowly.
Um, and so in the end, the, decisive battle of this invasion happens near the headwaters of the Wapa, the Wabash RiverBut St. Clair actually thought he was on the St. Mary’s River.
Rebecca: Oh. So he didn’t know where he was.
George: He didn’t know where he was at all. He was way off.
St Clair may have not known where he was, but the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance did.This time, they don’t want to have the battle near a village where homes can be destroyed. And so they headed out from Kiikayonge to meet the slow moving — and lost — American army.
George had me join him at the battle site. Today, it’s in a small town in Ohio.
Rebecca: Oh, oh, he wants me to park right here.
Okay. St. Clair’s defeat 1791.
Where my producer Kim and I parked was right in front of a historical marker. I could read it through the windshield.
Rebecca: Wow. As American settlers pushed West Conflicts resulted and attempts at peaceful settlement failed.
Yeah, that’s what we looked at when we parked. Okay. Do I want a hat? I think I want a hat. I think you want a hat.
It was a cold December day in Ohio.
Kim: We’ve got one hot hands left.
Today, the place of this famous battle is a park.
Along with George, we met up with two local archeologists who have studied the site. Kevin Nolan and Chistine Thompson.
Kevin Nolan: My favorite spot is down, down there
One night during their meandering invasion, St Claire decided to camp near the Wabash River. Christine and Kevin showed me the spot.
[ ambi of us walking]
Kevin: And one of the things that you can see, uh, if you’re looking over to the Southwest, there’s this little ridge.
So they picked a very bad spot to see people trying to surround them on three sides.
St Clair’s men spread out, with the Kentucky militia in one area and the army regulars in another. The Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance found them sleeping next to the Wabash River. This Indigenous force is led by the Myaamia, but includes Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatamie, Lenape, Shawnee, Wyandotte, Haudenosaunee and Cherokee fighters.
Christine Thompson: The historical accounts, talk about how they were standing shoulder to shoulder when they started the battle as they formed this crescent. And so I always, I always tell kids, you know, fourth or fifth graders, um, okay, if there was 1400, um, native fighters and they were shoulder to shoulder. You know, and we will give them each three feet. How long is that? And a couple smart ones were like, oh, that’s close to a mile.
and they completely surrounded St. Clair’s army in 15 minutes.
Kevin Nolan: So as Dawn is, is coming, the Kentucky militias over there. And so they’re just getting outta bed. They’re half dressed.
The Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance attacks the Kentucky militia first.
Kevin Nolan: They’re screaming and running across this flat plane. it’s November. It just snowed the night before. So it’s slippery.
They’re wet. They’re scared, they’re potentially bloody. It’s snowy. Uh, and, and people are trying to kill them, and they have to climb that 20 foot hill under fire.
The Kentucky militia starts running towards their fellow soldiers in the main camp.
Kevin Nolan: And as the noise starts to wake up and alert the main camp, they start firing down, but they’re firing into the Kentucky militia,
From a high spot overlooking the main camp, Indigenous warriors started firing down. The Americans tried shooting back, but they aimed too high. For generations, when people cut down trees in this small Ohio town, they would find lead in the wood.
At this time, guns could take 30 seconds or more to reload. Kevin says once the fighting got close range, guns were pretty useless.
Kevin Nolan: on the native side, after a while, they would switch to bows because you can load, uh, put another arrow in, in about five seconds.
And…the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance strategically killed the American commanding officers. The Indigenous warriors knew those officers–personally, they’d been trading and negotiating with them for years.
George: And so targeting the officers was also like, oh, I remember you. You’re that one who that one time said that thing to me, and now we’re gonna settle it.
Kevin Nolan: From then on, it’s just a scramble for the US and they don’t have the organization anymore. ’cause a lot of their officers have been picked off. The guns have been rendered moot and it’s just disorganized chaos.
The army ran away. The Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance killed or wounded over 80% of U.S. soldiers during what’s now known as St Clair’s defeat. To this day, it is one of the highest casualty rates the US has experienced in war. Ever.
This one battle effectively wiped out the US Army.
George: my ancestors put dirt in those soldier’s mouths to say,if you’re gonna get our homeland, this is the only way you’re gonna get it.
Close to a thousand people following General Arthur St Claire died that day.
George: I don’t, I don’t celebrate this victory. Um, this is really horrific violence. I also don’t like blame my ancestors for that, like the violence was back and forth.
You know, when I think about the loss of life, I know what, like the culture demands of a family, every time a hole like that is created. And actually I think of it for the Mihši-maalhsaki as well. Every person who fell there, uh, in the service of American Empire, left a gap in their family. And, you know, war is, war is hell, right?
Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s no winning.
Saint Claire’s defeat, or the Battle of the Wabash as the Myaamia call it, was so decisive the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance thought that would be the end of it.
George: And so they really, I, I think thought for a while that, oh, this’ll do it. This’ll stop the Mihši-maalhsaki from coming because who can endure this level of loss and come again? Um, and who can, is like the colonial system, like this empire can endure that loss and come again.
After St Clair’s defeat, on the U.S. side, there was a lot of finger pointing. The militia blamed the army, the army blamed the militia.
Congress wanted to investigate what happened, but had never done that before. Leaders were unsure of what authority they even had. After some debate, Congress created a committee. That house oversight committee conducted the first ever Congressional investigation.
During the hoopla, George Washington called a meeting of all his department heads. That group would later be called the Presidential Cabinet.
The George Washington who had resigned from the army at the end of the last war and watched his troops go home…had a change of heart. He wrote to Congress and told them he needed an army capable of defeating the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance. And Congress gave him one.
So that whole vision of not having a big army — our founders decided to let it go. They needed an army not so different from the one England had. They needed the army of an empire.
This war marked another first for the country. Congress funded this fight against the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance, but they never formally declared war. Some experts call it the first undeclared war the US ever fought. And it became precedent for all the undeclared wars we’ve fought since.
The U.S. spent a year rebuilding. They created a new, centralized military, called the Legion of the United States. They decided this army would fight with well trained, professional soldiers — not back country militias. And instead of having only dozens or hundreds of soldiers, the new army would have thousands. The army bought more supplies. They held war games. And to build a fort in Kiihkayonki, they recruited General number 3.
Rebecca: Can you tell me who Anthony Wayne is and what we know about him?
George: In our language, we call him alaamihsenwa, the wind. He kind of rose to prominence as a military leader during the American Revolution. Was called mad because he like hopped on a soldier’s back and led a charge up a hill during a battle.
And was trusted by George Washington to reorganize the military.
Winning a battle is about like tactics and individual bravery, but winning the war is about bureaucracy.
And the General may have been known as Mad Anthony Wayne, but he was patient. Instead of leading a charge straight to Kiihkayonki, he spent years building a series of forts, slowly advancing into Myaamia home lands.
George: So Wayne eventually builds a fort at the site of the Battle of the Wabash, where St. Clair was defeated. Um, and literally they have to clean the bones away of St. Clair’s soldiers to begin to build this fort.
They named it Fort Recovery. George, Christine and I toured a reconstructed version of it.
Rebecca: It almost, to me feels like a prison yard, like the way that there’s like an open space and then these towers at each corner
George: Yeah, I think that’s a, that’s a good comparison
The fort had a wall made out of spiked logs with two guard tower looking buildings on each side.
Rebecca: I mean obviously like it was built for war.
In the system of U.S. forts, Fort Recovery wasn’t a big deal. It was really just a supply fort. When the U.S. was invading Indigenous territory, it would build these forts 20 miles apart because that’s about how far a pack horse could travel in a day.
Christine Thompson: They built the first story on Christmas Day and they were in such a rush to get that because, because Wayne warned ’em, we’re not gonna be surprised again,
And they weren’t. When the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance did attack, the Americans were ready.
George: They couldn’t, um, they couldn’t take the fort. And. I think maybe 17 men died, uh, from the alliances side.
More Americans died in that battle than Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance members. But for Indigenous leaders, those 17 deaths were devastating.
George: But that level of loss, it was actually too high for the men involved. Like you, you didn’t wanna lose that many soldiers.
Rebecca: it sounds like there’s a difference in the view of how much life is expendable.
George: Yeah. Yeah. I think, the American military can just throw more soldiers at it. And, the alliance// just didn’t, they didn’t see soldiers as expendable in that way.
Because the harm done to the community, but that loss of life is too high a price to pay.
And so a lot of folks who were connected to the Alliance a little more loosely, they left after this battle.
The alliance didn’t fall apart, but a lot of important people pulled back. Including a prominent Myaamia military leader named Little Turtle in English.
George: it kind of sealed for him the understanding that they, we weren’t gonna be able to defeat the Americans. if they kept coming after, after we, what we did to them at the Wabash, how can we, how can we beat them? Like, Yeah, they’re just gonna keep coming.
The leaders of the alliance actually meet, and Little Turtle makes it very clear pitch for peace, that violence wasn’t the way to resist American Empire. Hmm. Um, that there was gonna have to be another path.
The alliance continues to fight, but it shrinks in size. There’s one last battle, but it’s pretty anti-climactic.
George: it’s like barely a skirmish, 15 to 20 minutes of hard fighting. And basically the Americans, uh, take the field
At this point, the tribe has been at war for 15 years.
George: and you have successive burnings of villages, farm fields, stored grain. Um, you have women and children taken captive, but also, made into refugees. So you have a depth of disruption of life, ways that impacts definitely one generation and probably two generations of Myaamia people, and really shapes their understanding of what it means to resist through warfare. Um, so there’s a, I think a, an understanding they’re gonna have to resist American Empire using other tools
Rebecca: Why not warfare?
George: Because they couldn’t pay the price of total war
Rebecca: Yeah. I think sometimes I hear the sentiment that if indigenous people had known what was coming, they would have fought harder. Mm-hmm. and I’m wondering if you have a response to that.
George: Like, I, I mean, to not be flippant about it, uh, //they have// has no idea how hard people fought. Um, and the very, very difficult decisions they had to make to not fight anymore. It would’ve been easier to die, right? In some cases. And they made the hard choice not to die. Um. And we’re here today because of that.
but it, I think it, it’s a common stereotype like, oh, well, if you had just been better, if, you know, if you had just invented guns and gunpowder, you would’ve been able to win it neglects kind of all the forces at play.
Rebecca: I think it’s a way to tell the story without having to grapple with how extreme the violence was.
George: from a Myaamia perspective, military resistance wasn’t the way forward. But there were lots of other forms of resistance, forms of fighting that people took up. And we are still here. Therefore, I would argue, we won those battles.
And what adaptive resistance argues is, it’s possible for native people to intentionally change the way they’re living in order to resist certain aspects of American imperialism. Um, so that you might give ground in one area. So for example, religion, you might begin to join a Catholic church And you might even come to believe some of those things. But then in other aspects of your life, you might maintain tribal governance, you might maintain tribal lands
Rebecca: I think one of the things that I think about a lot when I’m looking at the decisions that my ancestors made I think sometimes it’s hard to understand from the way we talk about these issues today, because we frame things as like what is just, and that we’re fighting for justice. And when I look at the decisions of my ancestors, what I see them fighting for is survival.
George: I would just add that I don’t think they were fighting only for survival. Like in that moment, what they’re doing is we’re just trying to survive this moment, but it’s with the goal of providing a path forward for something better for their children and grandchildren, right
And that’s the part that I think, um, you know, native people, like we innately know that, but the broader public doesn’t kind of see it. Like, why would they agree to these things?
After 15 years of war, General Anthony Wayne won. He built a fort in Kiihkayonki.
George: So the, the fort that’s eventually built there is kind of named in his honor. Um, he’s like, no, no, don’t name the fort after me. And then they, they named the fort after him. Um, and of course then that extends to the, the city. In English of course it’s, the town is called Fort Wayne.
And that’s how Fort Wayne, Indiana got its name.
In the treaty, the Myaamia actually kept most of their land. They agreed to that fort and ceded hunting grounds in Ohio. But most Myaamia villages were able to rebuild and stay put. They adapted so that they could remain in their homeland. At least for a time.
———————–MIDROLL———————
With US-backed wars in Iran and Gaza, strikes against Syria and Yemen and the invasion of Venezuela, a lot of people are concerned with what the U.S. military is doing. But so much of what we’re seeing today goes back to this early history.
There are other wars and moments in US history that make our military bigger. World War II. The Civil War. But the first, big shift happens really early, during this war with the Taawaawa Siipiiwi alliance. And we didn’t build the military out to defend freedom or liberty. We built it so the US could expand.
Stefan: Um, you’ve maybe heard the phrase Total war before
This is Stefan Aune. He’s a historian at Williams College.
Stefan: Total War would describe making kind of population centers the object of military campaigns as opposed to just defeating armies in the battlefield. Uh, but if you center native indigenous history. That kind of total warfare is there from the very beginning, and in those strategies you have kind of inherently the possibility for indiscriminate violence, the killing of non-combatants.
When we think about how the US fights wars — how we target or protect civilians, whether or not we commit war crimes — there’s this double standard from the very beginning. And it starts with how we fight Indigenous people.
Stefan: I call this the Savage exception,
Rebecca: Hmm
Stefan: is the idea that in the quote unquote Savage War, the rules of war did not need to apply as much.
And the U.S. kept using this “Savage Exception”.
During the Vietnam War, soldiers used the term “Indian Country” as lingo for any place that was enemy territory.
[News footage of My Lai massacre playing under VO]
Stefan: There’s an interview with the soldier who describes, uh, Indian country as the place where there’s no civilian. Indian country is the place where you can kind of just fire on anything. And of course, Vietnam is defined in part by some of these really brutal civilian massacres, the most famous being the My Lai massacre.
The same thing happened during the “war on terror.”
[News footage of Bush torture program playing under VO]
Stefan: I mean, a classic example is, uh, when the Bush administration is trying to justify its torture program. their lawyers cite wars with the modoc people.
Rebecca: I’m curious like with Venezuela or the bombing of boats in the Caribbean did you see any parallels in those events with um like what you’ve studied in the history of Indian Wars
Stefan: you know, Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, nor have they declared war on Iran. certainly if you take the long history of US military history, there’s been more undeclared wars than declared wars.
[news archive of members of Congress complaining about military action without their approval]
Trump’s military actions may be controversial, but they aren’t new. US Presidents have been fighting undeclared wars since George Washington.
[music change]
That 15-year war between the United States and the Myaamia — it had a long-lasting impact on the United States. It is why we have a centralized military. Why it’s so big. Why the President can fight wars without Congressional oversight. Why those wars have been plagued by human rights abuses. And why we can never seem to end them.
A few years ago the Miami Tribe bought back land in Fort Wayne, Indiana — In Kiihkayonki.
[ambi of us finding it in the car, maybe seeing the sign]
I got a tour with George and Kara, and a group of people who work there.
[ambi of us all greeting each other]
On the land, there’s a house from when it was a family farm. The tribe has added a community building and hiking trails through the w oods.
Claudia Hedeen: We’ve got mushrooms on property. We have, um, uh, ramps here.
Claudia Hedeen [heh-DEEN] showed me along the trail. Dani Tippman pointed out their maple trees.
Dani Tippman: And then we’ll have maple syrup,
Doug Peconge [puh-CONG-ee] showed me their lacrosse field.
Doug: And the, the, the great thing about this game and how it really connects us as a community is you hear Myaamia twangie out there when we’re playing. So you hear people saying, “Mahanto,” scoop it. “Mililo,” give it to me
You get that connection back to the way, you know, our relatives played when they were here 150, 200 years ago.
The tribe put this land into trust — which means it’s under tribal jurisdiction, not the state’s. It’s just a few dozen acres. But it’s a place Myaamia people can come home to.
George: We can truly exist in that area with a kind of freedom that we haven’t had since before Anthony Wayne’s invasion.
George Ironstrack says after that 15 year war, the Myaamia thought they would be able to stay in their homeland. And they did — for a couple generations. But then in the 1840s…
George: The army was once again came into Myaamionki to Miami Villages, rounded people up, held them in what you could fairly call concentration camps.
The U.S. forced them to move — first to Kansas, and then to Oklahoma.
George: thinking of my ancestors arriving in November with no houses.
People are sick, people are dying, and they made it through that winter, and that could not have been easy. It, you know, you’re just scraping out an existence. Um, and the only thing I think that motivates native people in situations like that is thinking about the community.
Some people stayed behind in Indiana, but most of the tribe settled in Oklahoma. At one time, the tribe had less than 100 citizens. And with all that loss, Kara Strass says something happened to the Myaamia language.
Kara: in the late eighties. Myaamia people did not know any of our language. We didn’t even know the word Myaamia..
I’ve heard Myaamia people describe their language like the embers of a fire. The flame had gone out, but the coals were still there.
Kara: from Myaamia, people like our language was lost and we are reclaiming it entirely from documentation. Archives are at the base of everything that we do.
The tribe went through any record that contained a piece of their language and painstakingly reconstructed it.
Kara: So you know what has happened in the last 30 years, we’ve gone from no one speaking the language to hundreds of people who are certainly not fluent, but using it on a daily basis.
And so the Myaamia adults who are teaching their kids to play lacrosse, or make maple syrup or tell Myaamia stories or sing Myaamia songs – they actually didn’t grow up with that themselves.
Doug Peconge So I grew up disconnected from my community. I knew who my ancestors were. I knew I was Miami, but really what had happened is I just grew up being an Indian.
This is Doug again.
Doug Peconge It wasn’t till the cultural revitalization that I really started to become Myaamia. And so what this space does for our community is, is that, you know, our children and grandchildren will be able to grow up Myaamia. They will be born Myaamia.
Rebecca: What does it mean for you knowing that like you grew up without that connection to Myaamia people, but that future generations will grow up? Always having had it.
Doug Peconge Yeah. So for me, it starts with my kids. So, um, you know, growing up without the culture for me, I, I lacked that identity. Um,
my involvement in the language and culture started with them. Um,
But they grew up knowing that they were Miami. They know the language, you know, they know their culture.
Kara: I mean, my Myaamia identity always started with my grandmother.
Here’s Kara.
Um, and I think remembering that there were people who tried their very hardest
to remember and pass along what they had and what they had was very little. And what I heard from her and what I saw from her was that was a very individual process. Like she didn’t have other people always to help push that forward.
And that as this revitalization process happened, as our family got involved with it, it was almost like she could relax. Like she knew there was other people who were picking that up and would keep going with it. And I think that was really special that she got to experience that. ’cause her mother and grandmother didn’t get that.
They were, they were those generations that were trying to pass on things, but being very cautious about how to do it. And today we don’t. Always have to have that same level of caution, or at least not in our own community. Like we get to pick these things up and proudly be Myaamia and figure out what that means for us today, and also how we’re going to pass that on to future generations, to Danny’s point that, that we won’t lose these things ever again.
While the US side of this story tells us how our military got bigger, got more violent…the Myaamia side of the story tells us how to survive that violence. And even if we don’t see it in our own lifetime, how to protect the things that matter to us most.
[ winter gathering ambi]
Where the Miami tribe is headquartered in Oklahoma is only a couple hours from my house. One day last January, I drove up there to see George and Kara. The tribe was having a big gathering.
Rebecca: Hey, George, can I ask you a few questions?
George: Let me just check my daughter real quick. She’s tying up her cans.
Tribes in Oklahoma, we go to each other’s dances. So I ran into a bunch of people I knew.
[ambi of me saying hi to friends. I think there are a couple ppl I greet in Cherokee]
George: We’re here for our winter gathering, uh, stomp Dance and Social Dances,
It’s my favorite event of the year. Yep. I absolutely love it. It’s a busy time, uh, a lot of work. Um, but it’s just, uh, two to three days of nonstop culture and community.
I knew the work that George and Kara do to preserve Myaamia history and culture was important. But I don’t think I understood it until I saw them in their community. Young people peppered them with questions. One person called Kara her fairy god mother. Even adults asked them for help pronouncing certain words. That revitalization that we talked about, they’re leading it.
George: So you’ve got, uh, a lot of women sitting around, um, putting on shaker cans.
So that’s the shaking noise you’re hearing. Um, most of the shaker cans. Here tonight, are um, milk, uh, made from milk cans or, uh, or, um, evaporated milk cans are tomato sauce cans. So they’re, they’re metal, um, filled with Riverstone and there might be a few folks here tonight with turtle shells,
Some stomp dances are ceremonial, others, like this one, are social dances. They bring people together. During the stomp dance women shake shells–we’re kind of like the rhythm section–and men sing. The songs are call and response, and so for each song there’s a leader. When it was George’s turn to lead, I got up to dance.
Speaker 35: Start of song
Stomp Dance and Song.