It was a foggy and humid Friday in 1913 when a ship carrying the president of the United States and his party headed to a site in New York Harbor for a momentous ceremony.
In another ship, nearly three dozen Native American chiefs in ceremonial dress were headed to the same place.
They all met at a high spot at Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, to break ground for a giant 165-foot monument in honor of the first peoples of this land – the National Memorial to the North American Indian.
Rodman Wanamaker, wealthy son of a Philadelphia department-store magnate, had devised a plan to build a structure to commemorate what he considered the country’s “vanishing race.” He was certain that Native Americans would not survive and he didn’t want the country to forget them. A song titled “Vanishing Race” was even written for the occasion and played by an army band.
Wanamaker was not the only one who seemed sure of their demise: Photographer Edward Curtis toured the country photographing Native Americans for the same reason.
By then, according to a newspaper article, of the 1.2 million people on the land when Christopher Columbus arrived, no more than 350,000 remained. Joseph K. Dixon, who had conducted historical expeditions for Wanamaker to study Native Americans, cited the reasons as “changed conditions, new diseases and forms of dissipation introduced by the white man. … the race is going fast and will soon become extinct.”
At the ceremony, President William Howard Taft – introduced as the “Great White Chief” – was joined by his wife, mayors, governors and military officers. Ordinary citizens lined the pathway to a platform set up for the ceremony. Newspaper accounts noted that from 30 to 33 Native American chiefs in feather headdresses, face paint and native clothing carried peace pipes and drums. Most of them were in the 70s and 80s, and had fought against the country’s military in some of its fiercest battles, particularly Little Bighorn.
This was said to be the largest gathering of Native American chiefs that the country had and would ever see.
I first learned about the proposed monument during an auction of items at the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament order more than a week ago. I came across a large booklet containing reproductions of newspaper articles, documents and photos chronicling the event. The memorial would include a bronze Native American man standing atop a granite structure with steps leading up to the entrance. Inside would be a museum with various types of housing and weaponry, art gallery, native clothing, exhibits and library.
Several of the newspaper articles used the term of the times “red man” in describing Native Americans. They all gave the impression of love and tolerance all around at the ceremony. A reporter asked Chief Two Moons about the battle at Little Bighorn in 1876 where he and his 900 Northern Cheyennes help decimate Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his army.
The chief’s response: “My white father told me to fight no more. I am a very old man. At the Little Big Horn it was fight, fight, fight all the time and now the white man and Indian smoke the pipe of peace and will never fight again.” Here’s an account of an interview with him in 1898 discussing the battle and his desire to fight no more.
Taft spoke first, a little past noon on Feb. 21, 1913:
“During the past two centuries the American Indian has won the right no longer to be regarded as a relic of prehistoric man but to be recognized as an existing force, with great and immediate and direct influence upon the settlement and development of this country by the white races and upon the course of historic events.”
Chiefs Hollow Horn Bear and Red Hawk, both of whom fought at Little Bighorn, were cited as speaker for the chiefs. Several articles noted that Hollow Horn Bear did not attend.
Here’s part of what Red Hawk said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. It is similar to what Hollow Horn Bear is quoted as saying in other newspapers:
“I am an American Indian. When the white man first came over here and discovered this country, we were here already, and I am here now. It was our belief then and it is my strong belief now, that we were created to reside in this country. I being one of the rulers of this country at the time that you came across the ocean thought you came here only as visitors. But from then on you greatly improved our country and here today you permit me to raise the glorious flag of the United States. I shall consider myself from now onward one of your citizens.”
On that day, the chiefs signed an oath of allegiance to the United States. Later, Dixon traveled to Indian reservations with a phonograph recording from the new president, Woodrow Wilson, seeking the allegiance of all Native Americans. For their loyalty, the Native American certainly got nothing out of the deal.
The gathering of chiefs was among the most historic – and perhaps, the most impressive – as the New York Herald noted on the morning just prior to the event.
Among them was Chief White-Man-Runs-Him, who led General Custer’s troops into the valley of Little Bighorn “where they were annihilated”; Chief Runs-the-Enemy, who led the Sioux under Sitting Bull; Chief Medicine Crown, a scout for the United States army, and Chief Bear Ghost, who appeared in Washington often to speak on behalf of Native Americans.
The new Buffalo or Indian head nickel was distributed at the gathering – with the image of Chief Two Moons on one side and a buffalo on the other.
The memorial had no financial backing from the United States government, which did donate land for the project. Wanamaker was expected to fund it privately.
Wanamaker was a man of many interests: He helped build his father’s department-store enterprise, was a patron of the arts, newspaper owner, aviation and golf enthusiast who helped create the PGA. He was so enamored with the talents of African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner that he funded two of the artist’s trips to the Holy Land.
Wanamaker proposed the idea for the national monument at dinner party at a restaurant in New York. Those attending, including Buffalo Bill Cody of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show fame, enthusiastically endorsed it. Sitting Bull, a mighty Sioux chief who fought incessantly against the U.S. army, including Little Bighorn, was part of the show for a few months in 1885.
“The Indian in history showed one of the greatest moral traits that mankind has – strength of character – and as a race they had more of this same strength of character than any other people that ever existed since the world began. Don’t you think such a race deserves to be remembered by their successors to the wealth and resources of America?,” Wanamaker was quoted as saying in a New York Evening Sun article.
“The Indian was lazy. He was content to take what fortune gave him. He was but a child of civilization. This is all, and he has gone. The tramp of civilization has trodden him under. Shall we forget him entirely, to meet him later on over the Great Divide and have to make accounting to him for our perfidy and cruelty.”
The memorial obviously was never built. Some say that World War I, among other things, got in the way. The United States entered the war in 1914.
A museum celebrating the contributions of Native Americans was opened in 2004 at the Smithsonian in Washington. There are Native American monuments across the country, even the Ocmulgee National Monument in my hometown of Macon, GA, opened in the 1930s. I recall going on school trips to the Indian mound, as we called it, an underground structure that always had a strange smell.
Native Americans obviously did not vanish. According to the 2010 census, 5.2 million people identified themselves as Native American or Alaska Native, either alone or in combination with other races. They were surely a race of survivors.
