Native American Heritage

Native American Heritage Native American Indians are an important part of the culture of the United States.

Ralph Willet Dixey (Bannock tribe), Peter Jim (Shoshone tribe), 1897.
02/02/2026

Ralph Willet Dixey (Bannock tribe), Peter Jim (Shoshone tribe), 1897.

Sitting BullSitting Bull c. 1831 – December 15, 1890 was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of res...
01/31/2026

Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull c. 1831 – December 15, 1890 was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.

Before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw many soldiers, "as thick as grasshoppers", falling upside down into the Lakota camp, which his people took as a foreshadowing of a major victory in which many soldiers would be killed. About three weeks later, the confederated Lakota tribes with the Northern Cheyenne defeated the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876, annihilating Custer's battalion and seeming to bear out Sitting Bull's prophetic vision. Sitting Bull's leadership inspired his people to a major victory. In response, the U.S. government sent thousands more soldiers to the area, forcing many of the Lakota to surrender over the next year. Sitting Bull refused to surrender, and in May 1877, he led his band north to Wood Mountain, North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan). He remained there until 1881, at which time he and most of his band returned to U.S. territory and surrendered to U.S. forces.

After working as a performer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota. Due to fears that he would use his influence to support the Ghost Dance movement, Indian Service agent James McLaughlin at Fort Yates ordered his arrest. During an ensuing struggle between Sitting Bull's followers and the agency police, Sitting Bull was shot in the side and head by Standing Rock policemen Lieutenant Bull Head and Red Tomahawk after the police were fired upon by Sitting Bull's supporters. His body was taken to nearby Fort Yates for burial. In 1953, his Lakota family exhumed what were believed to be his remains, reburying them near Mobridge, South Dakota, near his birthplace

Chief Earth Woman was a nineteenth-century Ojibwa woman and a significant figure in Ojibwa history. She claimed that she...
01/31/2026

Chief Earth Woman was a nineteenth-century Ojibwa woman and a significant figure in Ojibwa history. She claimed that she had gained supernatural powers from a dream, and for this reason, accompanied the men on the warpath. While some Ojibwa warrior women responded to necessity, Chief Earth Woman chose to become a warrior, entering battle with the Sioux. Her dreams provided her fellow Ojibwa warriors with protection, and guided them through the battle. She confided with the leader that her dreams predicted the movements of the Sioux, aiding the Ojibwa in battle. In the battle, she succeeded in scalping an enemy, earning her traditional honors. Ruth Landes' research in the 1930s described Chief Earth Woman as one of few women to command a war party and receive the honors of a man, and later research by Colleen Sheryl McIvor places Chief Earth Woman within the tradition of the Anishinaabe Ogichidaakwe, or woman warrior.

She was born around 1878 near Waterloo, Ohio as Birtha Snyder, Snider or Snidow. She married a man named "White Owl" in 1893, and she frequently traveled from Ohio to Michigan. She lived in a place called "Old Man's Cave" while in Ohio.

Chief Earth Woman's story is often associated as a parallel to those stories of Lozen and Running Eagle.

These four Chiefs were Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Red Cloud. Each of these forefathers played an important...
01/30/2026

These four Chiefs were Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Red Cloud. Each of these forefathers played an important role in shaping their tribe's customs and history. Because of their influence over the shaping of Native American history, they are often referred to as the real founding fathers.!
Left-Right : Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud.

Sioux Chief Long Wolf & Family", ca. 1880.~ “A Stranger Hears Last Wish of a Sioux ChiefLong Wolf went to London with Bu...
01/30/2026

Sioux Chief Long Wolf & Family", ca. 1880.
~ “A Stranger Hears Last Wish of a Sioux Chief
Long Wolf went to London with Buffalo Bill's show and died there in 1892. Thanks to the struggles of a British homemaker, his remains will be returned home.”
May 28, 1997 |WILLIAM D. MONTALBANO
TIMES STAFF WRITER
BROMSGROVE, England — “After a restless century in a melancholy English graveyard, the remains--and the spirit--of a Sioux chief named Long Wolf are returning to his ancestral home in America because one stranger cared.
The stranger is a 56-year-old English homemaker named Elizabeth Knight, who lives in a small row house with her husband, Peter, a roof repairer in this Worcestershire village near Birmingham.
"I am a very ordinary sort of person," she said.
The sort who writes letters, not e-mail, who makes no long-distance phone calls, has no fancy degrees, has little worldly experience, who never gets her name in the papers. The sort who turns detective and historian and raises a transatlantic fuss because her heart is moved and her sense of fair play is outraged.
This is the story of how heirs of Middle England and the Wild West have joined forces to fulfill a dying wish made more than a century ago.
For Knight, the story began the day in 1991 that she bought an old book in a market near her house. There was a 1923 story by a Scottish adventurer named R. B. Cunninghame Graham that began this way: "In a lone corner of a crowded London cemetery, just at the end of a smoke-stained Greco-Roman colonnade under a poplar tree, nestles a neglected grave."
In the grave, under a stylized cross and the howling image of his namesake, lies Long Wolf. He died at 59 in a London hospital on June 11, 1892, the victim of bronchial pneumonia contracted in what was then a crowded, dark, gloomy, industrial city as far as anywhere on Earth from the Great Plains of North America.
"I was moved. I kept taking the book down, imagining Long Wolf lying there amid the ranks of pale faces

Elsie Vance Chestuen was born in 1873, her Indian name was Chestuen. Her mother was Dilth-cley-ih, daughter of the Apach...
01/27/2026

Elsie Vance Chestuen was born in 1873, her Indian name was Chestuen. Her mother was Dilth-cley-ih, daughter of the Apache Chief Bidu-ya, Beduiat known as Victorio. Elsie's father is unknown, her mother married Mangus who was the son of Mangas Coloradas, Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches.Elsie was sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School on 4th November 1886 when she was 13 years old,she was enrolled as Elsie Vanci. Carlisle and other schools like this have been a contentious issue with the Native Americans, many say that children were forced to leave their families at very young age. They were forced to change their Indian names and give up their cultures, languages, and religion.
Elsie was only at Carlisle school for 3 years.On the 30th of May 1889, when she was 16 years old, she was sent to Alabama due to illness, she stayed with another Indian lady called Mollie. Elsie must have moved back to her home at some stage, as she died at Fort Sill on April 15th 1898, from tuberculosis. She was 26 years old, Elsie Vance Chestuen, is buried at the Beef Creek Apache Cemetery in Oklahoma.

These are the one's who discovered AmericaAnd should be taught in our history booksNot the false storyline they give abo...
01/27/2026

These are the one's who discovered America
And should be taught in our history books
Not the false storyline they give about Columbus discovery America

Be tolerant of those who are lost on their path.Ignorance, conceit, anger, jealousy, and greed stem from a lost soul.Our...
01/25/2026

Be tolerant of those who are lost on their path.
Ignorance, conceit, anger, jealousy, and greed stem from a lost soul.
Our ancestors taught us that not everyone who walks beside us walks with understanding.
Some are wounded. Some are disconnected. Some have forgotten who they are and where they come from.
In Native teachings, we are reminded that anger is not strength, and greed is not power.
True strength is patience.
True power is compassion.
True wisdom is knowing when to stand firm and when to offer grace.
To our Native people:
Your spirit has survived storms meant to erase you.
Your roots run deeper than hatred, deeper than misunderstanding.
You carry the prayers, songs, and resilience of generations.
Do not let the lost pull you from your path.
Walk with dignity. Speak with truth. Live with balance.
Your ancestors are watching, and your descendants are listening.
🌿 Honor the past. Protect the present. Shape the future.
🪶 We rise by remembering who we are.
— Native Cultures Consortiums
💬 If this message speaks to your spirit, share it.
❤️ Leave a reaction to honor Native wisdom.
🔁 Let this reach those who need to hear it today.

Before modern cities…there was deep connection.Native American tribes believedthe Earth was not inherited from ancestors...
01/20/2026

Before modern cities…
there was deep connection.
Native American tribes believed
the Earth was not inherited from ancestors,
but borrowed from children yet to come.
That belief shaped how they lived,
how they hunted,
how they respected life.
Imagine if we thought that way today.
👉 Comment “FUTURE” if this hits you
👉 Share to remind others
🪶 Protecting tomorrow starts with remembering yesterday.

"O my children! my poor children!Listen to the words of wisdom,Listen to the words of warning,From the lips of the Great...
09/27/2025

"O my children! my poor children!
Listen to the words of wisdom,
Listen to the words of warning,
From the lips of the Great Spirit,
From the Master of Life, who made you!
"I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
I have given you bear and bison,
I have given you roe and reindeer,
I have given you brant and beaver,
Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl,
Filled the rivers full of fishes:
Why then are you not contented?
Why then will you hunt each other?
"I am weary of your quarrels,
Weary of your wars and bloodshed,
Weary of your prayers for vengeance,
Of your wranglings and dissensions;
All your strength is in your union,
All your danger is in discord;
Therefore be at peace henceforward,
And as brothers live togethe

A LAUGH FOR TODAY❤When NASA was preparing for the Apollo moon landings of the late 60s and early 70s, they did some astr...
09/27/2025

A LAUGH FOR TODAY❤
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo moon landings of the late 60s and early 70s, they did some astronaut training along a Navajo Indian reservation in the SW. One day, a Navajo elder and his grandson were herding animals and came across the space crew. The old man, who only spoke Navajo, asked a question, which the grandson translated: "What are the guys in the big suits doing?" A member of the crew said they were practicing for their trip to the moon." Then, recognizing a promotional opportunity for the spin-doctors, added, "We will be leaving behind a special record with greetings in many languages and such. Would the old man be interested in giving us a greeting to include?"
Upon translation, the old man got really excited and was thrilled at the idea of sending a message to the moon with the astronauts. The NASA folks produced a tape recorder and the old man recorded his message at which the grandson fought back the urge to laugh... but he refused to translate.
After Apollo 11 had successfully landed on the moon and brought its astronauts homes, a new group were training in the desert when one of the NASA officials recognized the Navajo elder and his grandson and went to tell them that the old man's message was indeed on the moon which was met with laughter.
Finally, the NASA rep caught on that not everything was as simple as he had originally thought and asked for a translation. With a chuckle the youngster replied: "Beware of white man; they come to steal your land!"

Gray Hawk. Lakota? Early 1900s. Photo by F.B. Fiske. Source - State Historical Society of Nebraska
09/27/2025

Gray Hawk. Lakota? Early 1900s. Photo by F.B. Fiske. Source - State Historical Society of Nebraska

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