As has been mentioned previously, Hannah Le Corbeau in House of Cards is based primarily off of Dr. Susan La Flesche, the daughter of Joseph La Flesche, the last Principle Chief of the Omaha Tribe. Her father is based off of Joseph, of course, because he is an endlessly fascinating man.
The Omaha believe in the power of the divine. The Great Spirit. God. Wakon'da. They also believe in the power of holy artifacts. The sacred pipes, niniba waqube, the peace pipes, niniba waxube, the sacred white buffalo hide, Tethon'ha, and in the center, the sacred pole they call Umon'hon'ti, the Real Omaha.
The white men who came believed in these things too, enough to make the practice of magic with them illegal, or any practice of native magic or healing.
Yet, in 1888, the Omaha still had all these items. The Omaha is a tribe of clans and sub-clans, a complex social system. Each clan has a purpose, and within these clans the purpose is refined. Joseph was the "adopted eldest son" of Big Elk, the former Principle Chief, of the Hon'ga, or Leader Clan. By 1888, he had been the Principle Chief for a long time, and the leader of a political split within the tribe between the traditionalists and the progressives. He thought the only way the tribe was going to survive was through assimilation, and he followed that path with his own family, sending many of his children away to schools and eventually converting to Christianity and giving up his a wife or two, although whether he actually gave them up seems up for debate. There is reference to Francis, Joseph's son, as a young man having to face his mother's repudiation, but nothing from him about it.
By 1888 though, the government had prohibited Buffalo hunts. Many of the religious items and rituals were tied to the hunt, and required items from the hunt. (In order to achieve the hundred great acts to become a member of the Night Blessed Society, which one must be to become a chief, one of the quests requires the gathering of the items for Umon'hon'ti.) Francis was then working with Alice Fletcher, an ethnographer while at the same time a campaigner for assimilation, to record the history of the tribe.
Yellow Smoke was a Chief in his own right, and of the clan that had the care of Umon'hon'ti, the Hun'ga Clan. Francis approached Yellow Smoke. Some people believe he then stole the sacred pole from the tribe. Some people (a minority, even today) believe he convinced Yellow Smoke to give it to him, to take for safe keeping in the white man's brick house (the Peabody Museum). The record we have comes mostly from Francis and Alice's points of view. According to them, the situation was thus: Yellow Smoke was the last member of his line to care for the sacred pole, and since the rituals could no longer be performed, the pole was to be buried with him when he died.
This didn't sit well with Francis, who wanted it preserved. He also wanted the rituals associated with it preserved. He *may* have convinced Yellow Smoke to give him the care of the pole, but Yellow Smoke wouldn't tell him the rituals. It was sacrilege, you see, and the price for revealing them was death.
Joseph convinced Yellow Smoke to come tell him. He convinced Yellow Smoke to allow Francis and Alice to be present at the telling.
In 1888, to get the rituals from Yellow Smoke, Joseph swore he'd take the consequences on himself. Alice says, "The old man had consented to speak but not without misgivings until his formal principal chief said that he would 'cheerfully accept for himself any penalty that might follow the revealing of these sacred traditions,' an act formerly held to be a profanation and punishable by the supernatural."
And so it was done. You can read about it today, in Alice's own words, and Francis's too.
In 1989, the Omaha got Umon'hon'ti and Tethon'ha back from the Peabody Museum. Today, the rituals can happen again. Umon'hon'ti is the center, and he is back with the tribe.
Francis seemed frustrated in his letters after his father's death, especially this one to Professor Putnam at the Peabody, from December 3, 1888.
My dear Professor,Your note with check for fifty dollars through Miss Smith is received. I write this only to acknowledge and send you my thanks for the same, as no doubt Miss Fletcher has written you how I secured the sacred pole, idol, or whatever name it can be given, and why we did not send it to the Museum and kept it out there. The question of securing the full ritual and songs of that sacred article has become a serious and puzzling one since the death of my father shortly after the passage of that relic out of the tribe.
The people are yet in the shackles of superstition and it will be hard to make them believe that my father's death was in no way the result of the taking away of the pole. Father once met with an accident which crippled him for the rest of his life. It happened soon after he refused to regard certain of the ceremonies connected with this very article and Indians said that it was from his disrespect for the sacred pole. But still there may be some way of getting a few of the songs at hand. Of these we have two.
Sincerely,
Francis La Flesche.
Alice explains it a bit better in 1911. Her description makes me believe there was a penalty to be paid.
The scene in that little room where sat the four actors in this human drama was solemn, as at the obsequies of a past once so full of human activity and hope. The fear inspired by the Pole was strengthened in its passing away, for by a singular coincidence the touch of fatal disease fell upon Joseph La Flesche almost at the close of this interview, which lasted three days, and in a fortnight he lay dead in the very room in which had been revealed the Sacred Legend connected with the Pole.
When Joseph died, his daughter Susan had just finished her final exams at medical school. She didn't get the telegram until 3 days before he died - she never got to say goodbye.
For gaming purposes, I gave Hannah enough trials without a dead father too. But I'll admit, this story fascinates me. I believe in Magic, of course.
Posted by Liz at September 5, 2006 10:28 PM