My Connection to Native America

NATIVE AMERICAN

It was Ragani who said to me, "Dennis, don't quit being who you are to become a chanter.  Bring what you have been doing and who you are with you."  I had already produced 6 CD's with with a Native American flavor, so she suggested that I roll that right into my Kirtan and yoga music.

Why Native American?  My mother's lineage is colorful and far more complicated than my father's.  He was of German descent via Pennsylvania and Ohio who ventured to Northeast Kansas in the mid 1800's.  They were all farmers,--a very hard working bunch.  I have the original Hawk dinner bell that hung from the windmill to call the farm workers for lunch and dinner when they were in the fields.  Tracing my father's family was easy.  All I had to do was go to the little town of Effingham, Kansas.  Most of the people buried in that cemetery are relatives of mine.  There are huge marble grave markers with H-A-W-K engraved on them.   Everybody in Atchison County where I grew knew of the Hawks.

CHEROKEE

My mother was born Ellen Lee Marie Willis.  Her mother was a Guthrie from Scotts-Irish Cherokee descent.  There was a fairly large group of Scotts-Irish Cherokee who made their way from the Oklahoma Reservation prior to and during the Civil War.  Some of the Southern Cherokee owned slaves and the tribe sided with the South during the  Civil War.  In protest (and fear for their lives) my Scotts-Irish Cherokee ancestors made their way to St. Joseph, MO.  There's actually a street on the south-side of St. Joseph, MO called Cherokee Street.  One of my great uncles on the Guthrie side, who was a piano tuner, lived on that street.  We would go and visit him when I was a small kid.  The Guthrie name is still prominent on the rolls of the Southern Cherokee.  As far as blood quantum goes who knows?  The Scotts-Irish had been intermarrying with the Cherokee since the 1600's.  The Cherokee didn't make much of blood quantum however.  John Ross, the principle chief and hero during the Trail of Tears when the Cherokee were force-marched from their homes in North Carolina and Georgia was only 1/8 Cherokee.  He would not have qualified for an "Indian Card" today.  Here are a couple of really poor pic of my grandfather William Guthrie.  One of my great uncles on the Guthrie side told me that we are part of the same Guthrie family as Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land.  Maybe?  As one of my musical friends responded, "That would explain alot Dennis."  Ha!

Great Granpa Wm Guthrie is in the back row.  My mother, Ellen Lee, is in front with her head in her hands.

Looking European and being a Cherokee descendant is a tough gig.  It has to do with this phrase (one that we Native American musicians have heard over and over) "My great grandmother was a Cherokee princess."  The Cherokee princess is simply not true because being a prince or princes is a European title.  On the flip side of this issue, the Cherokee tribe was huge in comparison with the others in America, numbering 40,000 people in the early 1800's.  After the Trail of Tears, the tribe became scattered throughout the country and intermarriage was common.  Many people died on the trail of tear with estimates of up to 4,000.  There were many more who simply got off the trail.  Others hid in the woods and mountains of Georgia and North Carolina.  But to this day, if you ARE a Cherokee descendent and Creator chose to paint you white? You WILL be  diminished by other Native American people.  As Kathy Miller from the Stockbridge-Musee band of Mohican's once said, "You can never be enough Indian."

MESKWAKI - THE KEEPERS OF THE RIVER

My grandfather was Meskwaki/English.  The Willis name is English.  My great grandmother (the stern one in the picture below) was Meskwaki.  Her maiden name was Moutry. {Often times Native American people would take on Anglo names to avoid discrimination, or names were given to them by the American Government simply because the soldiers couldn't pronounce the names that Native people called themselves.  Native Americans were also given European names to make them more "civilized" in the eyes of the European invaders.  A third reason for name change was to give "Christian names to the "heathen."}

The Meskwaki were pushed from the East coast to the Detroit area and then shuffled with the Ojibwe to Wisconsin. (circa 1650)  They were of the same language group as the Anishinaabe Ojibwe.  Eventually (about 150 years later...early 1800's) they ran for their lives with Black Hawk's band to what is now Iowa.  Then they were herded  off to a Reservation located near Topeka, Kansas called Reserve, Kansas.  Meskwauki were  the "keepers of the river."  They were misnamed 'Fox" by the French.  'Keepers of the River" meant that they would charge a tariff for safe passage for the French fur traders who used the rivers for commerce.  The French didn't like this agreement at all.  The French King put out an edict of extermination on the Meskwaki.

There was a large village (over 8,000 Meskwaki) on Little Lake Butte Des Mortes near what is today Neenah, Wisconsin.  The French came up the Fox River from Green Bay (the Fox River is one of the few Rivers in the US that runs from North to South).  The French had just obtained shoulder-held cannons from the home land.  They disguised themselves as a hunting party and came near the shore.  Many tribal members came out to greet them.  The french soldiers pulled off the tarps and started firing their canons.  The Menomonee tribe had aligned with the French and they attacked from the West catching the tribe in a cross fire.  So many Meskwaki were killed that day that they piled them in a huge pile and put dirt on their bodies in this mass grave.   Thus the name of the Lake - Butte des Mortes (the hill of the dead.) The year if this massacre was 1730.

Ironically, even though I was born in Northeast Kansas, I presently live about a mile from this site an often take walks across the trail bridge that spans Little Lake Butte Des Mortes.  The earth cries in that spot.

My home town was Aitchison, Kansas located between Kansas City and St. Joseph Missouri.  I've never strayed far from the river.  Ironically I married a Mohican (Stockbridge-Musee band of Wisconsin).  The Mohicans are "the people of the waters that are never still"

Dedication: C.J. Doxtater, Robert Blackwolf Jones, Basil Braveheart, Migiizique - Midred Schuman, John Cappert, Nikki Cappert, Vern American Horse.