Return of a lost warrior

PAWNEE, OK— Much of the Pawnee world was in turmoil back in the 1870’s. Disease and hardship had reduced a once mighty warrior tribe to a fraction of its former numbers, and what parts of eastern Nebraska they still held, they would not hold for long. White Fox was a young man, and would have been a celebrated warrior just a generation before, but now, like many warriors who had once led the twice yearly buffalo hunts, or raided far and wide for horses and women, he was surrounded by an alien culture, which made strange requests, requests which he welcomed, given the poverty and despair about him.

Slipping out unnoticed, White Fox accompanied two other Pawnee, White Eagle and Red Fox, on a long boat ride across the North Atlantic, where they landed in Europe, touring with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.

White Fox may have left the abject living conditions in Nebraska far behind, but there was nowhere in Europe where he could hide from disease. While performing in Gothenburg, Sweden, he soon contracted tuberculosis, and died in 1874, at the age of 28.

“What they did then,” said Roy Taylor, an enrolled member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and the eldest living descendant of White Fox, “was they beheaded this poor man, stripped his skin off of him and made a plaster cast, made it the center piece of a traveling show, charged admission.”

Taylor wants his ancestor’s remains and regalia returned. In 2014, the Nebraska Historical Society wrote a long story on the history of White Fox, but they did not speak with Roy Taylor, did not talk to any Pawnee, and ended the article asserting all that could be done, had been done. Some say the skin of White Fox was sent home, perhaps buried in a cemetery in Oklahoma, because there is a white cross in that cemetery with his name on it. Taylor decided to take legal steps, and he contacted a Chicago law firm, who took on his case pro bono in April, 2018: Roy Taylor, a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, plaintiff, versus Kingdom of Sweden and the National Museum of World Culture, a government agency under the Swedish Ministry of Culture.

“I am an 85 years old,” Taylor said. “I do get around okay. I went all the way to the 11^th Grade at Haskell Institute. I did so well in high school, they said, Roy, you don’t have to come back for the 12th Grade, please don’t come back. I got caught a couple times drinking beer and so I had to move on, unwillingly. At that time, the Korean War was really on, and so I joined the Marine Corps and I served honorably, and I’m a combat veteran, with the 1st Marine Division, I was only 17, just a young boy, raised by my mother and enrolled at Pawnee in Oklahoma, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had the opportunity to be in Pawnee, but its just a typical Indian town in Indian country. I did retire after many years with the BIA. I was a senior contracting officer under the US Government assigned to the BIA. I was in Albuquerque, I was in Washington, and here in Oklahoma. I did well with the Bureau. I got in on Indian preference so they waived the higher requirements for me, and they gave me credit for the Marine Corps, and I had enough federal employment time, including the Marine Corps so that I retired, and I have not worked for nearly 20 years now but I had a good life in the bureau. I went all over the US administering grants and contracts for education, for training, for anything the US government was funding and the tribes were determined to be eligible for. I have had a very eventful and profitable life…and I always felt grateful that I was able to get into federal service as a contracting officer at that level without ever having finished high school.”

The complaint, filed at the District Court in Washington, DC, is a civil action, calling for “…replevin and the repatriation and return of his ancestor’s regalia and other personal belongings, now wrongfully in possession of the National Museum of World Culture (NMWC)…”

Items listed for return were White Fox’s war shirt (a rare shirt that can only be worn by the most important men in the Pawnee Nation who demonstrated both courage and moral righteousness); White Fox’s leggings (decorated with seed beads in flower patterns); White Fox’s moccasins (also decorated with seed beads in flower patterns); White Fox’s Pawnee moccasins (a unique Pawnee design of darkened hide with high cuffs); White Fox’s earrings (large clusters of ball-and-cone); White Fox’s Necklace ( made from brownish bugle beads looped together and attached to a stash); and White Fox’s human remains (beheaded, and skin removed, but the remainder believed to remain in Sweden).

Taylor is quite proud of the job the Ackerman law firm did in drafting his complaint, however they have not been in contact with him about the result of the case. On August 2, 2019, Richard Leon, United states District Judge concluded: “plaintiff has not adequately alleged that NMWC is “engaged in commercial activity in the United States” as required under § 1605(a)(3)’s second clause.

– Plaintiff alleges that NMWC engages in commercial activity by advertising online in English through visitsweden.com, TripAdvisor, Facebook, and Twitter, see Am. Compl. at {| 13(A) B), but these actions do not “attempt to target the United States market.

1] CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is hereby GRANTED and plaintiff’s claims are DISMISSED with prejudice.”

When what you have lost is so deeply personal, it is hard to understand the case was dismissed not on its merits, but because the court lacked jurisdiction. This is how the law often works, and when tribes and tribal members prevail on technicalities, it is great, but White Fox is not an historical figure to Taylor; he is not a Wild West Show display or curiosity, and he is not some property that can be beheaded, and skinned and doled out for entertainment, or even for the good of science.

If Sweden possess the regalia and remains, and deny returning them based upon a court ruling, then they maintain the mentality that violated White Fox upon his death in 1974. Because Roy Taylor, is not deemed deserving of good faith response, despite his request not being unreasonable, acrimonious or without merit.

This is not to say that many artifacts from North American tribes have not been preserved and protected by European collectors and museums. They have, and many would have likely perished if left in turbulent circumstance where their protection was highly problematic. But in this case, denying Taylor closure on his ancestor was something notably out of step from a country considered to be one of the most just and compassionate on the planet.

Since the case was dismissed with prejudice, Taylor cannot refile. The option exists to plead his case through the appropriate channels to Sweden, but in most of the cases where artifacts are taken from this country, or taken from people who are from this country, as in the case of White Fox, holding a foreign nation accountable through the US justice system is not likely. In the meantime, the regalia and remains of White Fox, if they still exist, remain in some unknown location, perhaps not even in Sweden, their value as archaeological artifacts trumping any claim or heartfelt, justifiable concern tribal members like Roy Taylor have over their loss and ultimate fate.

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

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