Kickapoo tribe

Kickapoo building a traditional sweat lodge in Mexico. (Photo courtesy Wikipedia)

By James Giago Davies Native Sun News Today Correspondent

RAPID CITY—Several Algonquin tribes were settled in just south of the Great Lakes when Columbus reached the white sand beaches of San Salvador in 1492. One of these tribes, the Kickapoo, would be rendered iconic Americana, by Al Kapp’s L’il Abner comic strip in the 1930’s. Kapp’s “Kickapoo Joy Juice” was moonshine, but it soon became a carbonated soft drink which is still sold, in many fruit flavors, mostly in Asian markets.
The Kickapoo bear little resemblance to that iconic imagery. They are split into a number of tribes, with a combined population of about 5,000, scattered from the Rust Belt to the Coahuila border state of Mexico, and as such are one of the few tribes that retain an indigenous identity inside and outside the United States. The Kickapoo were well aware of their close relationship to nearby tribes, particularly the Sauk and Fox tribe of Jim Thorpe, due to common customs, spiritual practices, and folklore heroes. But like many tribes, the Kickapoo did not see they were just one tribal expression of an immense Algonquian linguistic family. When the first Algonquins reached North America, and where they came from, we do not know for certain, but the kinship is proven by shared language, meaning that at some point in the ancient past, the Algonquians were one people, one tribe, speaking one language. This tribe split into other tribes, and they split into still more tribes, until after thousands of years, Algonquians had spread across northern North America, and contain some of the more noted tribes in American history: Gros Venture, Blackfoot, Cree, Miami, Ojibwe, Cheyenne, Shawnee and the Illini.
While the Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree and Gros Venture adopted a plains hunter/gatherer lifestyle, the Kickapoo maintained a semi-sedentary lifestyle, and farmed along the Wabash River in present day Indiana. This is where it appears they made first contact with Europeans, specifically the French explorer LaSalle in 1682.
From the outset, the Kickapoo maintained relatively harmonious relations with white people, and whether this served them well, or resulted in the tragic history to follow, is a matter still open to debate. After America won independence from England, white settlers began to move into Kickapoo territory in large numbers. This resulted in three treaties, all of course broken, necessitating yet another treaty, until the Kickapoo “sold” their lands and moved north to live with their cousins the Wea.
In 1811, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh went to war with the United States. This was especially difficult for the US because they were fighting a desperate war at the time with the British, and the Kickapoo joined their cousins the Shawnee and fought on the side of the British. Easily understood, given they figured a British win meant the American settlers might now vacate Kickapoo territory. In the end, a spiritual leader, not a warrior, Kennekuk, led the tribe during the forced removal to Kansas Territory in the 1830’s.
The policies of the US during the first half of the 19th Century look obvious in retrospect but were not obvious to the tribes afflicted at the time. First the tribes gave away their traditional homeland a piece at a time, then they got desperate and fought back, and then they were forced to move to the Indian Territories west of the Mississippi, and then the railroad wanted those lands and so they had to surrender large parts of their home once again. Any land tribes were not currently using was declared “surplus,” in violation of whatever treaty was held with that tribe and opened for white settlement. In this way, tribes were fractionated and scattered, and the Kickapoo became the textbook example of that corrupt process.
There are four major groups of Kickapoo remaining west of the Mississippi, although pockets of Kickapoo remained east of the Mississippi and are not federally recognized. The Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas has just over 1,600 members. It is in Brown County in northeastern Kansas. The reservation is only five by six miles, but the tribe maintains over 50 tribal programs and owns and operates the Golden Eagle Casino in Horton and manages a tribal farm and ranch operation. The tribal Constitution was ratified in 1937 patterned on the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. This consists of a Chairman, Vice Chairman, Treasurer, Secretary and three council members.
The Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma has 2,719 enrolled tribal members. The Dawes Act broke up their tribal communal lands in 1893 and the tribal government was eliminated by the Curtis Act of 1898. For almost a half century the tribe struggled to survive as a people, but the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936 allowed them to form a tribal government. The tribe operates Kickapoo Casino Harrah, and Kickapoo Casino Shawnee, both earning tens of millions in revenue. Due to strong ties to the Kickapoo living in Texas and Mexico, many of the Oklahoma Kickapoo have Hispanic surnames.
The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas was federally recognized in 1977 and were recognized as an official subgroup of the Oklahoma Kickapoo in 1982. In 1985 the tribe established a government-to-government relationship with the federal government and received 118 acres at Eagle Pass along the Mexican border. Tribal membership is just under 1,000. The tribe has deep connections to Hispanic culture. The tribe operates the Lucky Eagle Casino, a convenience store, and has ranches in both the US and in Mexico.
In her landmark 1881 book, A Century of Dishonor, Helen Hunt Jackson devoted just a few paragraphs to the Kickapoo, and some of her observations are uncharacteristically uncharitable:
“The Kickapoos now remaining in Mexico separated from the tribe more than twenty years ago, and settled among the southern Indians in the Indian Territory, on or near the Washita River, whence they went to Mexico, where they still live, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government of late to arrange with Mexico for their removal to the Indian Territory, and location upon some suitable reservation. Their raids across the border have been a sore affliction to the people of Texas and it is important that the first promising occasion should be taken to secure their return to the United States and their establishment where they may be carefully watched, and restrained from their depredatory habits, or summarily punished if they persist in them. The Kickapoos remaining in Kansas are peaceable and industrious, continuing to make commendable progress in the cultivation of their farms, and showing much interest in the education of their children.”
Jackson’s assessment conflicts with others that claim the Kickapoo were being used to fight the Comanche and Apache raiders. Whatever the case, the Mexican Kickapoo are one of the least remarked upon stories in tribal histories, and who they are, and what they represent is not clear to most other tribes, let alone the world at large. They are a binational people, and they are closely tied in blood and activity to the Texas and Oklahoma Kickapoo. They have lived near the town of Muzquiz in Coahuila off and on since 1850. Other smaller groups live nearby in Sonora and Durango. The Kickapoo have about 17,300 acres. The land is relatively dry but watered by the Rio Sabinas. Many of these Kickapoo cross the border as migrant farm workers and return to Mexico to winter. They are officially affiliated with the federally recognized Kickapoo tribes in the US. A 1985 law allowed tribal members to choose US or Mexican citizenship: 145 chose US citizenship and 500 chose Mexican citizenship. Unlike the American Kickapoo the Mexican Kickapoo do not maintain casinos, and despite the heavy Hispanic influence, they maintain their traditional cultural ceremonies and share these practices with their relatives in the United States.
More than any other tribe, the Kickapoo represent a tribal identity that transcends nation state borders. Whether members speak English in Kansas or Spanish in Sonora, the Kickapoo are one people, who survived a history that stole their traditional home and threatened to fractionate them into nonexistence. Whatever comfort, success, and security the tribe enjoys now, Kickapoo throughout history paid a steep price, and Kickapoo families sharing warm lodges along the Wabash River bottomlands 500 years ago could not know that the descendants of their loved ones would be spread across several thousand miles, deep into hostile deserts, speaking foreign languages while struggling to maintain identity in unimaginably alien cultures.

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

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