show. The once illustrious leader had become a mere shadow of the influential medicine man he used to be.

In 1890, Sitting Bull (Lakota name, Tatanka Iyotake) was shot to death by Indian police officers who had been sent to arrest him. His killers were Sioux “Metal Breasts” (police-badge holders), Lieutenant Bull Head and Sergeant Red Tomahawk.

In that same year, Indian resistance to the white man’s dominance was finally broken at the massacre of Wounded Knee Creek on the American Great Plains. There, about 320 fleeing Sioux men, women, and children were killed by federal troops and their Hotchkiss rapid-fire cannons. The soldiers boasted that this was their vengeance for the slaughter of their comrades, Custer and his men, on the ridges overlooking the Little Bighorn River. Thus ended over 200 years of sporadic wars and skirmishes between the invading American settlers and the besieged resident tribes.

But how did Native Americans get established in North America in the first place? What kind of life-style did they have before the white man first set foot in North America?b What led to their final defeat and subjection? And what is the present situation of the Indians in a country now dominated by the descendants of the early European immigrants? These and other questions will be discussed in the articles that follow.

Where Did They Come From?

“WHAT did we call ourselves before Columbus came? . . . In every single tribe, even today, when you translate the word that we each had for ourselves, without knowledge of each other, it was always something that translated to basically the same thing. In our language [Narragansett] it’s Ninuog, or the people [in Navajo, Diné], the human beings. That’s what we called ourselves. So when the [European] pilgrims arrived here, we knew who we were, but we didn’t know who they were. So we called them Awaunageesuck, or the strangers, because they were the ones who were alien, they were the ones that we didn’t know, but we knew each other. And we were the human beings.”—Tall Oak, Narragansett tribe.

Theories abound as to the origin of the Native Americans.a Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, was one of several, including Quaker William Penn, who believed that the Indians were Hebrews, descendants of the so-called ten lost tribes of Israel. The explanation accepted by most anthropologists today is that whether by land bridge or by boat, Asian tribes moved into what is now Alaska, Canada, and the United States. Even DNA tests seem to support this idea.

Native Americans—Their Origins and Beliefs

Native American editors Tom Hill (Seneca) and Richard Hill, Sr., (Tuscarora) write in their book Creation’s Journey—Native American Identity and Belief: “Most native peoples traditionally believe that they were created from the earth itself, from the waters, or from the stars. Archaeologists, on the other hand, have a theory of a great land bridge across the Bering Strait, over which Asians migrated to the Americas; these Asians, the theory maintains, were the ancestors of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere.” Some Native Americans tend to be skeptical about the white man’s Bering Strait theory. They prefer to believe their legends and narratives. They view themselves as the original inhabitants rather than as exploring migrants from Asia.

In his book An Indian Winter, Russell Freedman explains: “According to Mandan [a tribe that was near the upper Missouri River] belief, the First Man was a powerful spirit, a divine being. He had been created in the distant past by the Lord of Life, the creator of all things, to act as a mediator between ordinary humans and the countless gods, or spirits, that inhabited the universe.” Mandan belief even included a flood legend. “Once, when a great flood swept over the world, the First Man saved the people by teaching them to build a protective tower, or ‘ark,’ that would rise high above the floodwaters. In his honor, every Mandan village had a miniature replica of that mythical tower—a cedar post about five feet high, surrounded by a plank fence.”

The Mandans also had as a religious symbol “a tall pole wrapped with feathers and fur and topped with a hideous wooden head, painted black.” Who could this represent? “This effigy represented