The American Indian has historically been the one ethnic group with the largest population serving in the military.

If you have any stories or information about Native American Women Veterans, please email them to

NAWVresearch@yahoo.com.

Early Wars and Women Warriors

The French and Indian war (1756-1763) involved the Algonquin and Iroquois tribes.  Traditionally both Algonquin and Iroquois women were taught to defend and protect the tribe. The literature to support this is not evident.  But George Walford, the editor to the Ideological Commentary wrote an article in the June 1994 issue entitled “Women as Warlike and Brutal as Men” in which he explores this idea. [1]

Among the Iroquois and perhaps among the Cherokee (where they decided the fate of captives) the women declared war, and among several Plains Indian tribes they led the victory dance, displaying the scalps taken by the warriors. Sometimes the women's part was to mangle the wounded. The Omaha women mutilated the bodies of the fallen, while some of the Upper Dakota allowed their women to torture prisoners to death. One author is quoted as remarking that the feminine touch supposed to soften the evils of war was too often applied with a hot coal[2]

Merwyn Garbarino, a Native American historian wrote that the Iroquois went to war to obtain slaves or sacrifices to the supernatural.  She states that due to the matrilineal society of the Iroquois women decided whether a captive died or became enslaved.  Women in that decision making processes were the principle torturers.[3]

 

Garbarino does state in her book that the Crow tribe did in fact have Warrior women who counted coup and scalped enemies that were killed.  Also the Crow tribe expected the wives of the warrior men to be supportive in war and that through their husbands’ performance; the women were raised up in social status upon their husbands’ actions in battle. [4] 

 

Another example of women warriors is Sacagawea.  Sacagawea was the first American Indian woman to be recruited by the United States Army.  She was the first female soldier to serve on the front line and she was the first female scout for an expedition in to the Western plains territory.  She was also a Shoshone Indian.  Not until the twenty first century, did the American public recognized her heroic deeds or her contribution to the United States succession.

 

In 1805, President Jefferson sent Army Capt. Meriwether Lewis, Lt. William Clark and the Corps of Discovery to explore the newly acquired land west of the Mississippi River. The two men had very little knowledge of the land or of the people that lived in this area.  The all-male and mostly soldier group was to map, observe and record everything and to find a navigable water route to the Pacific Ocean.

 

A French trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau had recently won an Indian-slave girl in a bet.  This 15 year-old-girl would change the course of the United States.  By 1805, Sacagawea was in her seventh month of pregnancy and was bound to follow Charbonneau.

 

Charbonneau would be hired by Lewis and Clark as their interpreter.  Sacagawea would follow her owner/husband and give birth to her son Jean Baptiste on February 12 of 1805 while on expedition.

 

The fact that Lewis and Clark would not only rely on Sacagawea when they came to Shoshone territory, but she is also accredited for saving them and their men from drowning. Her relationships with other tribes protected them along the way.  One entry by Lewis suggests that she saved his and his men’s lives in a white water incident by pulling them to shore with a baby strapped to her back.

When entering her Shoshone homeland, Sacagawea would meet the Shoshone chief and be reunited with her family.  The chief was her brother, Cameahwait, and because of this fact, the Lewis and Clark expedition received a safe passage to the Pacific where they succeeded in their journey for the President.

Like the soldiers, Sacagawea lived as they did but the only difference she had a baby not a gun strapped to her back.  Without her assistance, the expedition would have not been a success and that is an undisputed fact.

 

The American Revolution (1775-1783) army census does not mention any Native American women as soldier.  Dr. Bellafaire has on record at the Women in Military Service for American Memorial Foundation a story about an Oneida woman named Tyonajanegan and her part in the Battle of Oriskany. 

 

Tyonajanegan fought along side her American Dutch husband and after he was shot in the arm, she continued to load his gun and helped him fire at the British. [5]

The Great Plains Wars and Assimilation

The second chapter will focus on the years 1865 to 1914.  During these years the Great Plains wars were fought and many American Indian women did fight for their land.  The enemy was and will always be the United States Army.  The United States of America has long since acknowledged the injustice done to the native inhabitants of this continent.  Since 1492 the onslaught and genocide of American Indians by the immigrants to this continent is evident.  The longest war fought by the United States Army was the war against the American Indian in the Western part of the United States. Some will say the war still is being fought but in the courts and not on the battle fields.

 

All told between 1866 and 1890, the Army fought more than 1000 engagements against Indians.  Sixty-nine officers and 879 enlisted men were killed, and 1058 officers and enlisted men wounded.  In 1870, the federal government estimated that, to the date, the United States treasury had been tithed more than $1,000,000 per dead Indian, and Secretary of War Robert Lincoln subsequently estimated that the campaigns the Army waged against the Indian between 1872 and 1882 cost $223,891,264.14.

  Knowing that as many as 200 tribes have been destroyed and that thousands of families were taken from their land in a forced assimilation, historians question why any of these people would serve in the United States’ military? 

The United States would believe that the "Indian" realized that they had lost and assimiliated. The Defense link article suggests that the American Indian people got over their bitterness and stood up to the patriotic call:

 

In spite of years of inefficient and often corrupt bureaucratic management of Indian affairs, Native Americans stood ready to fight the “white man’s war.” American Indians overcame past disappointment, resentment, and suspicion to respond to their nation’s need in World War II.  It was grand show of loyalty on the part of Native Americans and many Indian recruits were affectionately called “chiefs.” Native Americans responded to America’s call for soldiers because they understood the need to defend one’s own land, and they understood fundamental concepts of fighting for life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. [6]

The truth will be evident in the 1960's with the American Indian Movement and the Seige at Wounded Knee, the BIA offices and the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier.  The veterans of these tribes did not fight  for the government of the United States but for their land, their people and their traditions.  The first nations of this land will always stand up to protect its shores and to this date, the Native American population has had the highest percentage of volunteer military soldiers serving during wartime than any other ethnicity in the United States. 

The Civil War was happening the same time the Indian Wars out west.  In 1864, the Sand Creek Massacre occurred where 450 unarmed Cheyenne Indians were murdered by a Colorado militia.  With the environments being violent on both sides of the United States it is an assumption that women had to learn to protect and defend their homelands, tribes or cultures.  The data is not available to show if the Army allowed Native American women as Indian scouts, nurses or as soldiers. 

 

My thesis is not done and my hope that personal papers, letters or oral histories will provide some details to this part of history.