By Mary Moore Mason
I have always been fascinated by Native American history and culture. Perhaps this is because my namesake ancestress, Mary Moore (later Brown), aged nine, was, in 1786, captured by Shawnee Indians, sold as a slave across the Canadian border and later rescued and brought back to Virginia where her story, The Captives of Abbs Valley, written by one of her sons, became mandatory reading by my extended family.
Or perhaps it was because I grew up watching Hollywood Westerns featuring war-bonnet-wearing, tomahawk-wielding native warriors racing into battle on horseback while wrongs were being righted by the mask-wearing Lone Ranger and his native sidekick Tonto, more recently and controversially portrayed by Johnny Depp.
Then I began to actually meet what were then called Indians, now Native or First Americans, initially by become pen pals with a Cherokee Boy Scout met on a Virginia camping trip and later when befriending a member of the state’s Pamunkey tribe who took me home to meet his dad, the tribal chief, residing in a modest bungalow, where he entertained us by playing on his pipe organ.
It soon became obvious that America’s indigenous culture was far more varied than the one projected by Hollywood or, more recently, in feature films and documentaries depicting poverty, alcoholism and drug problems, although they still exist. For the descendants of the people who had inhabited the vast American continent long before recorded history are now part of 575 separate nations and tribal groups, each with its own distinct culture and territory.
Over the years I managed to visit some 14 of these nations and tribes in such diverse places as Florida’s vast, swampy Everglades, the deserts of Arizona, the coastal forests of Washington and the towering Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. And on almost every occasion I heard an amazing story of resilience, creativity and/or entrepreneurship.
EXPLORING THE EVERGLADES WITH THE SEMINOLES
For instance, when I first visited Florida’s Seminole Nation, almost all their income seemed to come from guiding Everglades swamp tours and holding alligator-wrestling matches for the benefit of tourists. Then, in 2007, they paid $965 million to become the first North American natives to purchase a major corporation, the Hard Rock International empire, now consisting of 240 restaurants, hotels and casinos in 69 countries. Meanwhile, they continued to bring visitors into their natural habitat via the interpretive Ah-Tak-Thi-Ki museum on their Big Cypress reservation about 60 miles west of Fort Lauderdale.
The money for their Hard Rock purchase resulted from fighting and winning court cases to establish gaming rights within their homeland – thus paving the way for many other native groups across the USA to do the same. The story is even more remarkable when you consider that the nation was reduced to only 200 members after the majority of their residents were forcibly relocated by the iniquitous 1830 Indian Removal Act into ‘Indian Territory’, now the state of Oklahoma.
I later travelled to Oklahoma to learn about other native nations also relocated via the ‘Trail of Tears’. Among them are the Chickasaws, whose south-eastern homeland included Mississippi – a statue of their legendary Chief Piomingo is found in Tupelo, best known as Elvis Presley’s birthplace and soon to be home to a Chickasaw Museum. Now, the Chickasaw Nation encompasses 13 counties in south-central Oklahoma. Within its boundaries are casinos, golf courses, live-music venues, waterfall-fed swimming pools, ziplining and horseback-riding facilities and, in Sulphur, the Chickasaw Cultural Center. While there I saw a fascinating film about tribal member Pearl Carter Scott who became the youngest licensed aviatrix in American history.
Next on their agenda is the 2025 opening of a $400 million OKANA resort close to Oklahoma City, where the nearby First Americans Museum, opened in 2021, focuses on the 39 American Indian tribes headquartered in Oklahoma – more than any other state (members of another 28 tribes also live in the state).
Based in nearly 11,000 square miles in south-eastern Oklahoma, the Choctaws are also thriving – they employ around 10,000 people in their seven casinos, resorts and other businesses. Meanwhile, back in one of their original homelands, Choctaw, Mississippi, the local Choctaw band’s Pearl River Resort encompasses three casino hotels, an inn, and a water park and its native-owned Dancing Rabbit golf courses are award-winning.
THE MULTI-FACETTED CHEROKEE NATION
But perhaps most remarkable are the Cherokees, based in Tahlequah, about an hour’s drive south-east of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Not only do they vie with the Navajos as America’s largest native nation, numbering 460,000 members there, in part of its native homeland, Cherokee, North Carolina, and elsewhere, but their nation encompasses such sites as the Cherokee Capitol, a jail, a heritage centre and a historic native village (the former two now closed for reinterpretation). It’s also home to Northeastern State University, which, evolving from an earlier female college, is fronted by a statue of legendary Sequoyah, the first indigenous American to develop a written language for his people.
The Cherokees are also known for North Carolina’s history-focused outdoor drama Unto These Hills as well as for the numerous popular musical groups emerging from its younger members and for its political activism. The current Principal Cherokee Chief, Chuck Hoskin Jr, continues to remind the US Congress that, under the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, the US government promised the Cherokees a seat in Congress … and Kimberly Teehee, a former Native American advisor to President Obama, has been selected by the Cherokees to take up the role.
NEW ENGLAND’S AND VIRGINIA’S NATIVE HERTIAGE
If you visit the Claremore, Oklahoma, home of famous early-20th-century ‘Cherokee Cowboy’ actor and entertainer Will Rogers, you may be reminded of his famous quip: “My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but we met the boat” … and that might tempt you to visit those descendants of the native Wampanoag who, in effect, did meet the boat when the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620. Their heritage is honoured in the Plimoth Patuxet Museum just outside Plymouth, and there are other indigenous associations throughout the five New England states.
The Foxwoods Resort Casino complex located in Ledyard, Connecticut, and owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe has seven world-class casinos as well as one of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchens, and there’s also a nearby tribal museum; Maine’s Wabanaki tell their story in Bar Harbor’s Smithsonian-affiliated Abbe Museum; the Ethan Allen Museum in Burlington, Vermont includes a reconstructed Abenaki native village; and, if you visit the Sly Fox Den Too restaurant in Charlestown, Rhode Island, you can indulges in a native-inspired meal created by Sherry Pocknett, who was, in 2023, named the first indigenous woman to win an ‘Oscar of the Food World’, a James Beard Award as Best Chef: Northeast.
Or you can visit the Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes who have inhabited coastal north-eastern Virginia for up to 15,000 years. Their ancestors interacted with the English settlers who settled in Jamestown in 1607 and were members of the Powhatan Confederacy whose powerful namesake chief was the father of Pocahontas. And she, in turn, became the native face of the New World to England when, in 1617, she visited the Court of King James I with her tobacco farmer husband, John Rolfe.
A statue of Pocahontas stands now in Historic Jamestowne; on the grounds of the nearby Jamestown Settlement living history museum is a recreated native town tended by both indigenous and non-native staff; and among the statues of prominent Virginia women in Richmond’s State Capitol grounds is one of Pocahontas’ great niece, Cockacoeske, the 17th-century esteemed chief of the Pamukeys.
SACAJAWEA AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WEST
Speaking of influential native women, let’s hear it for Sacajawea, who helped famed explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark successfully complete their historic 1804-1806 journey of discovery from the Missouri river to the Pacific coast. You can find an interpretive centre and a statue of her, infant son Jean Baptiste cradled in her arms, in Salmon, Idaho, the homeland of her Agaidika-Shoshone-Bannock people. And you can encounter her again where she first met the explorers, in the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation villages on Lake Sakakawea, north-west of Bismarck, North Dakota.
Just south of Rapid City, South Dakota, Thunderhead Mountain is crowned by a massive sculpture – of Oglala-Lakota warrior Crazy Horse. It was commissioned by Chief Henry Standing Bear who, after viewing the giant US presidential heads on nearby Mount Rushmore, said: “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes too.” The work begun in 1948 by the late Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski has been continued since by his family. If and when it is completed, it will be America’s second tallest sculpture after the Statue of Liberty.
The surrounding Great American West states are also full of Native American attractions, including north-eastern Wyoming’s spectacular Devil’s Tower – sacred to the indigenous people and the place where the aliens landed in the memorable 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind – and south-eastern Montana’s Little Bighorn Battlefield where, in June, 1876, native warriors including Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull dramatically defeated the US 7th Calvary led by Lt General George Armstrong Custer. The Blackfeet Reservation on the edge of northern Montana’s Glacier National Park stages an annual July Indian Days Powwow and, to the far south-east, the summer’s-end native Crow Fair transforms the sleepy town of Crow Agency into the ‘Tipi Capital of the World’.
ARIZONA, HOME OF THE NAVAJOS, HOPIS AND APACHES
No state has more of a Native American profile than Arizona, with one-quarter of its land within the boundaries of 22 federally-recognised nations. Among them are the Navajos, whose more than 27,000-square-mile territory extending into New Mexico and Utah is the country’s largest and one of its most prosperous tribal territories, obtaining its wealth from gas, oil, coal, casinos and tourism. You can take Navajo-guided jeep and horseback rides through – and overnight in – spectacular, film-set Monument Valley (where the View Hotel’s Trading Post sells such outstanding native creations as woven rugs and silver and turquoise jewellery), hike and camp in the Canyon de Chelly, and take stunning photos in vivid Antelope Canyon.
When I visited the Navajo Nation capital, Window Rock, several years ago I chatted with tribal leaders in the octagonal capitol building and briefly met an elderly Code Talker whose Navajo language messages defied Japanese code breakers and thus helped America and the Allies win World War I. Then I headed for the Hopi villages perched high on hilltop mesas in the centre of Navajo lands. There, a local guide explained their religion, including the Katsina spirits which inspire the creation of the highly-collectible wooden Katsina dolls.
I was also taken to a small museum where a bulletin board display included a clipping proclaiming that the Hopis had successfully taken Marvel Comics to court for defaming their religion by depicting the colourful Clown Katsina as a villain. And, as I left the area, I couldn’t resist purchasing a T-shirt labelled: “Don’t Worry – Be Hopi!”
Outside Tucson – known for its indigenous-inspired cuisine and arts and crafts stores – is the ancient Tohono O’odham Nation where the desert farmers practice creative water techniques well-suited to our era of global warming and income is derived from the Desert Diamond Casinos.
South of Phoenix, home to the Heard Museum, a treasure house of traditional and contemporary arts and crafts, the Gila River Indian Community is home to both the Akimel O’otham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) people and to the Wildhorse Pass and other resorts that encompass spas, casinos, horseback riding, golf and more. And, on the eastern border with New Mexico, the White Mountain Apache Reservation offers skiing on peaks up to 11,000 feet, superb trout fishing, elk hunting, casinos and more.
NEW MEXICO AND THE PACIFIC WEST COAST
New Mexico is particularly known for its picturesque pueblos, or native villages. Using Albuquerque’s Indian Pueblo Cultural Center as a base, you can visit 19 of them, beginning to the south at mesa-top Acoma and ending to the north at attraction-filled Taos, two of America’s longest occupied communities. Along the way are communities producing outstanding pottery, encompassing casinos and, in the case of the Tesuque Pueblo, encompassing Camel Rock Studios, the first native-run one. Among its productions is the Dark Winds TV series starring two Native American actors as Navajo detectives.
Also unmissable is Santa Fe, where indigenous crafters sell their wares at the base of the Governor’s Palace, the oldest continuously-occupied government building in the USA, and where the world’s largest juried native craft show has been held for more than 100 years.
The Pacific Coast states are also rich in Native American heritage. For instance, more than 631,016 American Indian and Alaska Native people now live in California, making it the state with the largest such population. Among them are the 163,464 American Indian and Alaska Native people living in Los Angeles, making it the US city with the largest indigenous population.
The Greater Palm Springs cluster of cities, built around the hot springs enjoyed by the Aqua Caliente Indians for centuries, offer an interesting co-existent culture of native and non-native people. The latest attraction of Palm Springs itself is the opulent 5.8 acre Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza, which includes a luxurious spa, shopping and a museum scheduled to open in November 2023.
Also notable among the state’s indigenous attractions is the Paskenta (Obsidian) Distillery at the Rolling Hills Casino, set in the shadow of Mount Shasta in the state’s north-west corner and owned by the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians.
Not only is that state home to 29 federally-recognised tribes but Seattle is the only major American city named after a native chief (Seathl), leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish people. You can find his grave and the Suquamish Museum on the Kitnap Peninsula west of Seattle. And in Oregon there are nine tribal groups including descendents of the Chinook who interacted with the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Alaska’s rich indigenous heritage is most easily experienced by visiting Anchorage’s Alaska Native Heritage Center, which includes on its grounds six quite-different native dwellings staffed by interpreters. And don’t forget the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC – when visiting, make sure to sample native foods from five different areas of the country in the museum’s Mitsitam Native Foods Café, voted the ‘Best Café in DC’.
