Indigenous Firsts: A History of Native American Achievements and Events (The Inclusive History & Heroes Collection) - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Yvonne Wakim Dennis (Cherokee/Sand Hill/Syrian) is an award-winning author of nonfiction books for children and adults, many written with Arlene Hirschfelder, including Native American Almanac, Native American Landmarks and Festivals, the award-winning Children of Native America Today and A Kid's Guide to Native American History; and she also wrote a biography of Sequoyah. She currently serves as the Education Director for the Children’s Cultural Center of Native America and is a columnist for Native Hoop Magazine. She resides in New York City.

Arlene Hirschfelder was the author or editor of over twenty-five books about Native peoples, including Native American Almanac, Native American Landmarks and Festivals,Native Americans: A History in Pictures, andThe Extraordinary Book of Native American Lists. She worked at the Association on American Indian Affairs (a civil rights organization) for over 20 years, and she co-curated exhibits at the Sequoyah National Research Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston, Illinois. Her family in Teaneck, New Jersey, miss her greatly.

Paulette F. Molin, a citizen of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe from White Earth, is an award-winning author and curator. Her writings include The Encyclopedia of Native American Religions and The Extraordinary Book of Native American Lists, both coauthored with Arlene Hirschfelder, as well as American Indian Themes in Young Adult Literature. She and Hirschfelder also co-curated exhibits such as Contemporary Native Women Opening Doors to Change at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian. She lives in Hampton, Virginia, where she has served as an educator and completed writings and curatorial work on boarding school history.

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MILITARY FIRSTS

“Native people are keenly aware of what we’ve given to this country. Across what would become the United States, Native people fought rapacious European powers and, when the time came, fought an expanding American government in order to protect themselves and their homelands. In the 19th century, the United States fought more wars against Indian tribes than it did against ‘foreign’ powers….” 

—David Treuer, The New York Times, August 31, 2021

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                                     Medal of Honor: Indian Scouts

1869. Co-Rux-Te-Chod-Ish, Mad Bear (Pawnee), a U.S. Army scout, was the first Native American to receive the Medal of Honor (MOH). Awarded on July 8, 1869, the citation reads: “Ran out from the command in pursuit of a dismounted Indian; was shot down and badly wounded by as bullet from his own command.” His actual name, Co-Tux-A-Kah-Wadde, Traveling Bear, was misinterpreted and the incorrect one cited. Fifteen other Native American Army scouts are identified as MOH recipients (Apache, 10; Black Seminole, 4; and Yavapai, 1).

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1770. Crispus Attucks (c. 1723–1770), Natick/African American/, was identified as the first casualty of the Boston Massacre, the first in the cause of the American Revolution against the British. The Attucks surname has been translated as “deer” in the language of his mother’s people In 1888, the Boston Massacre Monument, also known as the Crispus Attucks Monument, was installed in Boston Common in his honor and that of other massacre victims.

1774. The Stockbridge Militia, composed primarily of Mahican, Wappinger, and Munsee Indians, was the first Native unit to fight against the British during the revolution.

War of 1812

William McIntosh (1775–1825), Creek, was the first Native American to be commissioned brigadier general in the U.S. Army. Andrew Jackson bestowed the commission for McIntosh’s contributions to Jackson’s forces at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and other contributions. He sent warriors to fight in the War of 1812, Creek War of 1812, and the first Seminole War of 1817–1818.

Civil War

A little known but crucial part of the story was that more than 20,000 American Indians fought on both sides of the conflict. Many thought their participation would guarantee their survival, protect their lands, and enhance their autonomy. Instead, for them the post-war period was tragic. A reunited nation turned its vision towards westward expansion, overrunning Indian lands and decimating their populations.

—American Indians and the Civil War

1863. Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters began serving in the Civil War, becoming the largest all-Indian regiment in the Union Army east of the Mississippi River. The Company consisted of 146 men, 139 of them Anishnaabek, indigenous people of the Great Lakes. The Anishnaabek include Odawa/Ottawa, Ojibway/Chippewa, and Potawatomi tribal nations.

1863. Garrett A. Gravaraet (1842–1864), Anishinaabe/German, was the only American Indian officer of Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters. 2nd Lt. Gravaraet, who was fluent in Anishinaabemowin, English, and French, was a teacher at the government school in Harbor Springs, MI, and a talented musician. He recruited men, including his own father, Henry, into Company K, which then officially mustered in 1863. Lt. Gravaraet, who was wounded at the Siege of Petersburg, died at the Armory Hospital in Washington, D.C. on July 1, 1864. He was later buried at Mackinac Island, Michigan, where his father, who died at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse in May 1864, is also commemorated with a gravestone.

1864. Henry Berry Lowry (also Lowrie) (c. 1848 - ?), Lumbee, was the leader of a band that waged guerrilla war in North Carolina during the Civil War. He became a legendary figure among his people, compared to Robin Hood for helping the poor and fighting against oppression by the rich and powerful. During the war, the Lowry band included family members, other Indians, African Americans, and Union soldiers who had escaped from Confederate imprisonment. The band continued to operate until Henry Berry Lowry’s disappearance in 1872 and the death of his brother Stephen the following year.

1864. Stand Watie (Degataga, “he stands”) (1806–1871), Cherokee, was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the Confederate army, the only American Indian to achieve that rank during the Civil War and was named commander of the Indian Cavalry Brigade a short time later. The war occurred only a few decades after the tribe’s removal to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), rupturing the tribal nation between the Union and the Confederacy, with Watie leading the Confederate Cherokee. He was the last Confederate general to concede to the Union army, surrendering at Doaksville, Choctaw Nation, on June 23, 1865. Before retiring from public life, Watie served as a delegate in negotiations for the Cherokee Reconstruction Treaty in 1866.

1865. Ely S. Parker (Hasanoanda, later Donehogawa) (1828–1895), Tonawanda Seneca, student of law, civil engineer, and tribal leader, was the highest ranking American Indian in the Union Army during the Civil War, a lieutenant colonel, at the time of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in 1865. He served as General Ulysses S. Grant’s military secretary, drafting the terms of surrender. General Robert E. Lee, noting Parker’s American Indian identity, is said to have commented, “I am glad to see one real American here.” Parker later recounted, “I shook his hand and said, ‘We are all Americans.’” At the end of the war, Parker’s rank became brevet brigadier general. After Grant was elected President of the United States, he appointed Parker to serve as U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1869, the first American Indian to serve in that position.

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First Native American War Nurses, Spanish American War

Catholic nuns Susan Bordeaux (Mother Mary Anthony), Ellen Clark aka Ellen Clifford (Sister Mary Gertrude), Annie B. Pleets (Sister Mary Bridget), and Josephine Two Bears (Sister Mary Joseph) became known as the first Native American war nurses in 1898. They were part of a small religious order founded by Father Francis Craft, a Roman Catholic priest with medical training and military service, who worked in Dakota Territory (present day North and South Dakota), notably at Rosebud, Standing Rock, and Fort Berthold.

By the time the Spanish American War broke out, Father Craft had offered his services and those of his order’s four remaining nuns to the War Department. They initially nursed the sick in military hospital wards at Camp Cuba Libre in Jacksonville, Florida, for six weeks. After transferring to Camp Onward in Savannah, Georgia, they sailed to Camp Columbia in Havana, Cuba, in December 1898. Living in...