Thread by @jfhigh

#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
Day 5

I was gonna write something on fire medicine (fire control via fire) but while I was writing it, I watched The Harder They Fall. I often put on stuff in the background to write, usually music, sometimes movies.

This was a mistake, because this movie was incredible, and you should watch it. Now, while it's not a historical tale by any means, it did borrow a lot of historical figures, and while I've heard of most of them, the depiction of one stood out to me in particular.

Cherokee Bill (who briefly speaks Tsalagi Gawonihisdi in the film) had a Black father and Tsalagi/Black mother, both of whom also had some European ancestry due to many of the infamous reasons.

Cherokee Bill was a member of the Cook gang, let by Bill Cook (and including his brother Jim) who were also part Tsalagi. Now, they were infamous for roaming what is today Oklahoma...

..which is a result of Indian Removal (Trail of Tears being the most famous incident thereof), and the Tsalagi peoples had gone from thriving communities who had their own written language and newspaper,

to being dispossessed of land and pushed into a territory with dozens of other Tribes, as well as folks who had escaped slavery.

I've talked before about how, even though I like spaghetti Westerns (don't kill me), I'm cognizant of how problematic they are for me and my ancestors--but also for Black folk, and the many mixed Black/NDNs out there.

Almost always the cowboys and gunslingers are depicted as white! In reality, some of the most consequential cowboys and outlaws from this era were Black, mixed Black, and mixed NDNs--or all of the above, as was the case with Cherokee Bill.

But these particular icons of the era of the 'Wild West' weren't just outlaws, there were also big "cowboy" traditions among various Tribes, including, but not limited to, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, Nde (my own), and Yat'siminoli.

It's important to remember that the Yat'siminoli of today, like many NDN Nations are a gathering of older Nations under one identity--often for survival or coordination with Treaty laws.

Florida was treated somewhat like California (as both were initially invaded by Spaniards) and missions were developed with the intent to convert NDNs to Catholocism, not out of altruism, but

in the hopes they would then become subservient and provide Spaniards with much needed labour to help with their attempts to develop their settlements.

So in 'Talahasi' (you can guess where that is now) developed a tradition of NDN cowboys that was well underway in the 17th Century.

Ultimately, these skills helped the various groups in Florida survive. The traditions spread, particularly when NDN cowboys fled from cruel Spaniard overseers.

They went to work at various cattle ranches across the area, and because of these skills, were welcomed a lot of the time. Some also developed their own ranches and raised livestock for themselves.

And the whole time they were thriving as NDN cowboys, they were preserving their own cultural traditions.

There were also a lot of hard times, and as you can guess, white folk warred on them and stole their livestock, and they dealt with the same hardships that any other cowboys had to deal with.

Today, Yat'siminoli call themselves the Unconquered Peoples, and their history of being NDN cowboys is a huge part of that, and the NDN 'role' in the Wild West was a lot more complex than how we're usually depicted in film.

P.S.
I forgot to mention that Cherokee Bill attended Carlisle Indian School, the most important Residential School in American History, and while my focus is on telling stories that uplift our history, as opposed to focusing on tragedies, I'm gonna talk about this more soon.