The Tragic Love Of Flying Shadow Woman And Track Maker

"The Falls Of Saint Anthony" by Henry Lewis.

Love And Death Between Enemies
Flying Shadow Woman And Track Maker
Edited by Dakota Wind
The story of the love between the Dakȟóta warrior Track Maker and the young Anishinaabe woman Flying Shadow has appeared in print twice, once in Charles Skinner’s Myths And Legends Of Our Own Lands, 1896, and again in Terri Hardin’s Legends And Lore Of The American Indians, 1993. Both books are out of print. This story is retold here with edits. It has not been verified by living oral tradition, but it bears similarities (i.e tragic deaths of lovers, conflict) to living stories such as Painted Woods and Spirit Wood.

BDÓTE, M.N. - The Anishinaabe and Dakȟóta had come together at Bdóte (“Where Two Waters Converge*”) to cement friendships and celebrate. A young Anishinaabe, Flying Shadow Woman, was sad when the time came for the tribes to part, for a Dakȟóta man, Track Maker, had won her heart.

In those days, inter-tribal marriages were not unknown. If she married him and went to live with his people, it might well be possible that every Dakȟóta would be against her should the tribes wage war. War between the Anishinaabe and the Dakȟóta was closer than neither Flying Shadow Woman nor Track Maker anticipated.

The Anishinaabe left with feelings of good will. Flying Shadow Woman had received a token of love from Track Maker and kept it close.

"The Falls Of Saint Anthony" by George Catlin.

Two Anishinaabe warriors lingered behind their band, and for reasons of their own, killed a Dakȟóta man after this congenial gathering. News of the murder reached the Dakȟóta village which provoked an immediate retaliation, and a war party of 300 was swiftly formed. Track Maker counted himself first among the war party as it was his brother who was shot and killed, and though he loved Flying Shadow Woman, he could not remain behind. The war party descended upon the unsuspecting Anishinaabe who had made camp between Owámni (“Whirlpool,” aka St. Anthony Falls) and Wakpá Wakáŋ (“Spirit River,” aka Rum River).

The Anishinaabe camp was unaware of the murder of the Dakȟóta man. 

"Ojibwe Encampment" by Paul Kane.

The Dakȟóta fell upon them and exacted furious revenge. In the midst of the violence Track Maker beheld Flying Shadow Woman who rushed into his arms with a cry of relief, but serenity was denied her. Track Maker embraced her but for a moment until he bowed his head and fortified his will to annihilate her people for the murder of his brother. Track Maker abandoned Flying Shadow Woman to claim retribution. He never looked back. He did not kill her, but he refused to save her.

The Dakȟótas' thirst for vengeance was slaked only when the last Anishinaabe lay dead.

The war party took a hundred scalps that day, and upon their return celebrated their victory.

Track Maker returned with more scalps than any other warrior, and the Dakȟóta welcomed him home as a hero, but he kept a solemn distance from all, and refused to share in the celebration. The memory of Flying Shadow Woman’s face haunted him thereafter. He saw her in the river, in the leaves, in the clouds, and even in the faces of deer when he went hunting.

At last, one day, a war party was mustered. Track Maker was the first to join, and on the field of battle he was the first to engage the enemy by running directly into them. He laid his axe about the enemy until he fell, pierced by a several arrows.

He smiled as he died.

Though this is a very short story retold with edits, two people graciously offered guidance:

Lise Erdrich, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, lives and works in Wahpeton, ND, and has worked in American Indian health and education for over twenty years. She is the author of the children’s picture books Sacagawea, Bear Makes Rock Soup, and many other acclaimed works.

Dawí, Huhá Máza, is a lineal descendant of the Kap'óža Bdewákhaŋthuŋwaŋ Oyáte. A traditional bow and arrow maker, and Dakȟóta language student, Dawí lives in occupied Bde Óta Othúŋwe (aka Minneapolis).
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* Where the Wakpá Mní Šóta (Smoking Water River, aka “Minnesota River”) converges with the Ȟaȟá Wakpá (Falling Water River, aka “Mississippi River”).

Enemies Or Allies: Conflict On The Great Plains

"Fur traders in canada 1777," by William Faden, 1776.

Enemies Or Allies

Conflict On The Great Plains

By Dakota Wind

GREAT PLAINS - This paper originally appeared in the Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation's quarterly "The Past Times," Vol. IX, No. 4. 

Sometime in 1615 French explorers made first contact with the Algonquin-speaking Anishinabe. The Anishinabe, like many native peoples, refer to themselves as “The People, and like other tribes, break themselves down into bands. This particular tribe or band of Anishinabe call themselves Ojibwe, meaning “Puckered Moccasins,” in reference to how they made their moccasins. The French couldn’t easily say Ojibwe and instead referred to them as “Chippewa.”

France’s new world empire was built on the fur trade and they badly needed Indian allies to help sustain it. Went the French came up the St. Lawrence River, they encountered the Chippewa. The Chippewa were stunned with their first encounter and their oral traditions reflect stories of men they thought were bears at first “walking off of a floating island,” and when the trappers took a meal of wine and biscuits the Chippewa thought they were drinking blood and eating wood.

They Came For Gold Then Stayed For Fur
At first Europeans came for gold, when little or none was found, natural resources like fur became a substitute. The French wanted furs for trade and profit, the natives wanted guns to hunt and expand their territories.

Beginning at the turn of 1600 traditional skirmishes over territories escalated into the one-hundred years long conflict, the Beaver Wars. The Iroquois allied themselves with the Dutch for their supply of guns, the Algonquin with the French. The Iroquois made war on the Huron in the Great Lakes and by 1649, with the assistance of disease, destroyed the Huron confederacy. As the Iroquois battered the Huron, the Chippewa braced for war and looked west to the territories of their enemies there.

A lot happened at the turn of 1600. Two groups of people either moved or were forced out of the lower Great Lakes region, the Hidatsa and the Catawba, both tribes Siouan speakers, both would probably cringe at being identified as anything Sioux. The Hidatsa moved west to the upper Missouri to live with the Mandan. The Catawba who have the oral tradition say that they were pushed south over the Appalachian Mountains by the Iroquois.

What the Chippewa called the Iroquois before Beaver Wars is no longer recalled. What they called the Iroquois during and after the wars is recorded as “Nadowaysws,” or “The True Adders.” The Chippewa called their enemies in the western half of the Great Lakes “Nadowaysuaig” or “Nadowaysuis,” translated as Snakes-In-The-Grass or the Lesser Adders. The French couldn’t quite say either word in Chippewa and instead used an adopted short form of the word, “Sioux.”

It was about 1640 when the Assiniboine Sioux broke away from the main body of the Great Sioux Nation. The Great Sioux Nation is made up of four Dakota tribes, the Mdewakaŋton, Sisetowon, Waĥpėtowon, Waĥpėkutė, two Wiceyena tribes, the Ihankton and Ihanktowana, and the Teton.

The Seven Council Fires
Members of the the Great Sioux Nation today refer to themselves as Oċėti Śakowiŋ, or the Seven Council Fires. The Seven Council Fires consist of the Dakota (Mdewakaŋton, Sisetowon, Waĥpėtowon, & Waĥpėkutė), Nakota (Ihaŋktowon & Ihaŋktowana; the French called them “Yankton” & “Yanktonai”), and the Lakota (Tetonwon, whom are the most numerous and are organized into seven sub-tribes: Huŋkpapa, Sihasapa, Itażipċo, Mniconjou, Oohėnuŋpa, Śiċaŋġu, & Oglala).

The Assiniboine have the oral tradition that recalls a fight over meat and broke off from the Yanktonai. This infighting occurred during the Beaver Wars and as the Chippewa were pushing west for territory and furs. Natural resources became scarce forcing people to fight back, move further west, or starve. In one generation, the Assiniboine moved northwest and allied themselves to the Plains Cree and Piegan. The Assiniboine were ever after known to the main body of Sioux as Hohė, or rebels.

In 1659-60 the French explorers Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart Sieur des Groseilliers journeyed west to Lake Superior and Lake Michigan followed by Jesuit missionaries twenty years later. In 1680 the Jesuits Hennepin and Duluth made contact with the Sioux in northern Minnesota at the height of conflict between the Sioux and Chippewa at Mill Lac. The Okdada Dakota moved west to the Missouri River where, in a generation, changed their lifestyle from sedentary horticulture and hunting to nomadic hunting so completely, changed their dialect, that they came to be called Oglala Lakota.

The Confluence Of Guns And Horses
Armed with guns from trade with the English, the Lakota arrived on the plains at nearly the same time as horses, 1692, and took complete advantage of both to the dismay of all tribes on the northern plains, all but the Cheyenne.

When the Sioux came to dwell on the plains the only tribe with whom they didn’t have an antagonistic relationship with were the Tsistsistas, who the Sioux referred to as Śahiyėna, or Cheyenne, meaning “Red Talkers.” The relationship didn’t remain friendly for long.

Horse stealing raids and skirmishes to gain and control territory became the lifestyle of the Lakota in the early eighteenth century. The first recorded horse stealing raid was against the Hėwaĥtoĥta, the Hidatsa, in 1706. Then a war with the Mandan followed.

In fact, so many horse stealing raids occurred in the first half of the 18th century that when Pierre La Verendrye made first contact with the Mandan there were no horses to barter for. La Verendrye walked his entire stay on the northern plains. 

War between the Sioux and Cheyene broke out around 1740 and lasted until 1766 when a war party of Oglala Lakota attacked a Cheyenne village near present-day Fort Yates, North Dakota. The Cheyenne retaliated by setting fire to the plains. The Oglala’s horses broke free and they were forced to abandon camp and run cross country. The Oglala were forced to run in the flames as the fire caught up to them. They who survived the running the fire jumped into Long Lake. This band of Oglala became known afterward as the Śiċaŋġu, whom the French called Brulė, or Burnt Thigh. The Sioux and Cheyenne put aside their differences and became allies.
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Bibliography:

Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1888-'89, paper by Garrick Mallory, edited by J. W. Powell.

Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smothsonian, 1894-'95, paper by W. J. McGee.

Siouan Sociology, by James Owen Dorsey prepared in the 1890s. Paper published in The Sioux Indians: A Socio-Ethnological History, an introduction by John F. Bryde, Ph.D., edited by Sol Lewis, 1973.

Yanktonai Ethnohistory and the John K. Bear Winter Count, paper by James Howard, Plains Anthropologist, 1976.