native.BrokenClaw.net

The following guidelines are intended for visitors and newcomers to Native American Indian pow wows and festivals. I compiled this list from various printed material, other online pages, and from personal experience. Always remember that pow wows are based on ancient and sacred ceremonies, filled with traditions which have been passed down for […]

One can find plenty of websites which maintain a calendar of pow wows. The difficulty is that the job can be so overwhelming, since there is no central database, they must rely on organizers and participants to submit updated information. As a result, most listings are incomplete or outdated. By limiting this page to the […]

The Pawnee Indian School in Pawnee, Oklahoma, was one of many federally funded boarding schools built around the turn of the century for the purpose of assimilating Indian youth into white American culture. Since native children were considered too “slow” for advanced education, the boarding schools were actually institutions of vocational training, run by […]

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So what can you do? First of all, don’t expect someone else to do it for you. If the tribe in question still exists, and they have a website, they probably already have a notice on their home page that they do not do genealogy research.
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Some native American sites, however, do have a […]

Since first posting my article about the Susquehannock, I have received numerous messages from people who have Susquehannock ancestry. Several of them were requesting my help in finding some direction in tracing that lineage. Unfortunately, I can provide no assistance. Native American history relied entirely on oral traditions. The written records we have today began […]

How many times have I heard someone say that they are part Indian, and how many times does the tribe mentioned turn out to be Cherokee? I’m not referring just to personal experience, but also to people and characters heard on radio and television. Whenever someone makes a statement like that to me, and then […]

The following text was transcribed for the Web from a pamphlet published by Earl Big Soldier Plumley sometime after 1972. He wrote the words syllable by syllable, using common English spelling fragments. The pamphlet is still used at the Otoe Baptist Church in Red Rock. These hymns are not the only ones that Mr. Plumley […]

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by Merrill J. Mattes
During the peak season emigrants camped in Robidoux Pass in great numbers; one emigrant counted three hundred wagons camped here one evening. At the same time many emigrants abandoned their overloaded wagons here and made their way further west by pack animals, so the Robidouxs had easy pickings in cast-off merchandise. […]