CAYUGA
One of the five original tribes of the mighty Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee), the name Cayuga means “People of the Great Swamp” or else “People of the Mucky Land.”
During the Revolutionary War, the Cayuga had fought on both the British and the American sides; however, the majority of the Iroquois elected to support the British in the hopes that a British victory would put an end to encroachment by the settlers onto Native territories. The power of the Iroquois posed a real threat to the plans of the Americans, and in 1779 the future president, George Washington, devised a military campaign specifically aimed at the Confederacy. Over 6,000 troops destroyed the Cayuga’s ancestral homelands, razing some 50 villages to the ground, burning crops so that the people would starve, and driving the survivors off the land. Many of the Cayuga, along with other tribes, fled to Canada where they found sanctuary and were given land by the British in recognition of their aid. Although the Seneca, the Iroquois, the Oneida, and the Onondaga tribes of the Confederacy were given reservations, the Cayuga were not. Earlier, however, small bands of Seneca and Cayuga had relocated to Ohio, and many other Cayuga joined them because they had no home. The Cayuga—along with the rest of the Haudenosaunee—signed the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794, which ceded lands to the new United States Government. Thereafter, the floodgates opened for the former Cayuga lands, and settlers arrived there in droves.
CAYUSE
Of the Penutian language group, the original meaning of the word Cayuse has been lost in the mists of time. However, because of the tribe’s particular skill in breeding horses and also in dealing them, their name has become synonymous with that of a particular small pony that they bred. The Native American name of the Cayuse is Waiilatpu. Associated with the Nez Perce and Walla Walla, the Cayuse lived along the Columbia River and its tributaries from the Blue Mountains as far as the Deschutes River in southeast Washington and northeast Oregon.
The Cayuse lived in a combination of circular tentlike structures and rectangular lodges. Extended families made small bands, each with its own headman or chief. The horses that became such an important part of the life of the tribe were introduced to them in the early part of the 18th century. Trading was not restricted to horses, though; the Cayuse bartered with the coastal tribes items such as buffalo blankets for shells. Later, they would trade with the white men: furs for guns and tools.
The Cayuse War of 1847–1850 was ignited by an outbreak of one of the European diseases for which the Native American tribes had no immunity: measles. The disease was first contracted by the Cayuse children who attended the mission school, and it spread to the adults.
The people who had started the mission school were not popular, and it seems that they had made little attempt to establish good and meaningful relationships with the Cayuse, with whom they had lived and worked for ten years. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, were Presbyterians and had started the Waiilatpu Mission in 1836. The couple took little notice of the traditional ways and customs of the Cayuse and were zealous in their pursuit of converts. Moreover, it was rumored that they had made money for themselves from resources which should have belonged to the Cayuse: furs and land sales.
At the outbreak of measles, then, a chief and another Cayuse visited the mission in search of medicine, already angry with Whitman since, as well as any other grudges they had against him, they blamed the mission for the disease. Whitman was attacked and killed. Shortly afterward, the angry Cayuse attacked again, killing Narcissa along with ten other white people.
An army was organized by Oregon County officials, who retaliated by raiding a Cayuse settlement and killing some 30 people. The Natives in the area, including the Walla Walla and the Palouse, allied with the Cayuse against the Oregon army. Cornelius Gilliam, the army leader, was shot by his own gun and his troops fled. In the meantime, the two Cayuse who had visited the mission for the medicine, Tomahas and Tilokaikt, had fled immediately after the incident. Tired of hiding, after two years they gave themselves in, hoping for mercy. But they were sentenced to death by hanging.
The Cayuse uprising caused change in Oregon, with new forts and military posts being built; this in turn exacerbated mistrust between the Natives and the white people, which led to more wars. In time, the Cayuse were forced onto a reservation in 1853, in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. Whitman was honored by having a town named after him in Washington.
CELT
A tool used as a scraper (for scraping hides, for example), as an ax for chopping meat, as a skinning knife, for woodworking, and also as a weapon of war, a Celt was made from hard stone, shaped in the form of a hatchet but without a handle.
CHANUNPA
This is the Sioux name for the ceremonial smoking pipe, and also the ceremony that features it. An ancient legend has it that the chanunpa was brought to the people by the White Buffalo Calf Woman, in order that it might enable the tribes to communicate with the sacred and divine worlds of The Great Mystery, or Wakan Tanka.
CHEROKEE
A member of the Iroquoian stock and language family, the Cherokee are one of the more prominent tribes in Native American history, and also had a crucial role to play in the shaping of the United States.
The oral history of the tribe records that the Cherokee migrated south from the Great Lakes, settling in southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, South Carolina, northeastern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama. There is no date accorded to the start of this migration. In their own language, the Cherokee refer to themselves as Tsalagi.
The Spanish explorer De Soto was the first European to encounter the Cherokee, in 1540. They had further considerable contact with the Europeans in the 1700s, and in the 1800s the white settlers referred to the Cherokee as one of the Five Civilized Tribes because it was deemed that the people had adopted enough of the characteristics of Europeans to be deemed “civilized” by European standards.
Respected by the whites in ways that perhaps other Indians were not, by 1825, 47 white men and 83 white women had actually married into the tribe. The Cherokee were the first of the Indian Nations to accept the European way of schooling and farming. By 1808, they had established a Cherokee police force, for example, and two years later had abolished “blood vengeance” (essentially, long-running feuds). Further, by 1820 the Cherokee had emulated the style of government belonging to the United States, and in 1825 had a designated capital city of the Cherokee Nation, a town that was formerly known as New Town and was renamed New Echota.
However, as well as benefits, the European settlers had brought with them other things that did the Cherokee no good at all. Of the population of 6,000 Cherokee people spread across some 64 settlements, smallpox claimed half that population between 1738 and 1739; further Cherokee people committed suicide, unable to live with the severe disabilities and disfigurements that came in the wake of the disease.
It was the Cherokee who were the first to turn their language into written shapes and symbols with the creation of a Cherokee alphabet by the prominent Cherokee tribal member, Sequoyah, who was born of a Cherokee mother and a white father. It is certain that his mixed-race background inspired the need to communicate in the same way as the white settlers, and be able to send letters home and receive information from far afield. Because of Sequoyah’s syllabary, we have access to documents written by the didanvwisgi—the Cherokee medicine men, who were the only ones who could