Listening to the Native American Story With Jewish American Ears

"All white people look alike--and they're all Christians".

"Indians are the picturesque backdrop to real American history, but they're not around anymore".

It's time Jews and Indians got beyond the unconscious stereotypes. Perhaps a place to start would be to listen to Jewish and Indian voices.

"Schver tzu zeyn a Yid." ("It's hard to be a Jew"--an old Jewish saying)

"It's hard being an Indian. You have to live three lives--the traditional one, the survival one, and the modern world that keeps coming at you all the time." (Rose Albert, Taos Pueblo, 1986, p. 5.)

History

Consider what we share in history and in experience. 1492 was the year of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the European "discovery" of the New World. Listen to Columbus: "In the same month in which their Majesties [Ferdinand and Isabella] issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month they gave me the order to undertakewith sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies." From the beginning, Jews and Indians have shared history.

America began to expand westward, and Jews were part of this expansion. Like the Christians heading west to make their fortune, many Jews also came into conflict with the Indians whose lands they sought to exploit. For instance, Marcus Goldbaum moved to the United States to make his fortune, and frequently prospected in the southern Arizona Territory; in 1886, he was killed by a band of Apaches and his body found by a military patrol. Other Jews served in the United States Army and fought against Indians, most notably against the Cheyenne leader, the chief Roman Nose.

Still other Jews fought for the rights of their Indian neighbors in many ways. Moses Baruh, a druggist in Pendleton, Oregon, gained the friendship of local Umatilla Indians, learned their language and became the tribe's adviser and court interpreter. Solomon Bibo defended the rights of Acoma Indians in New Mexico in their land claims conflicts with the neighboring Laguna Indians and the Marmon family.

Jews on the frontier often faced the problem of too few available Jewish women. Some entered into relations with Indian women of varying degrees of permanency, from transient affairs to marriages that lasted the lives of the partners. Solomon Bibo, a merchant from Germany, established a trading post at Acoma Pueblo and eventually married a granddaughter of a former Acoma chief. Bibo later became governor of Acoma in 1885, the only non-Indian ever to serve as a leader of an Indian tribe in the United States.

Jews were instrumental in developing a mercantile economy in much of the region, and much of the trade involved Indians as customers. Jewish merchants established trading posts among the Navajo, and on other reservations as well, often serving as interpreters and translators between the United States and Indian tribes. Skinwalkers, a murder mystery by author Tony Hillerman, set in the Navajo Nation and featuring a Navajo detective, features a character who is the daughter of a Jewish merchant and his Navajo wife.

Survival

Consider our struggles to survive. As Jews, we feel within us what it meant when, Charles Burke, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, used the Religious Crimes Act to make the practice of Indian religious ceremonies a punishable offense and launched a public campaign to vilify native religions in 1921.

We also feel within us the response of Pueblo Indians in New Mexico in 1924 to the ongoing campaign against their religion: "Our religion to us is sacred and is more important to us than anything else in our life. . . . Our happiness, our moral behavior, our unity as a people and the peace and joyfulness of our homes, are all a part of our religion and are dependent on its continuation. To pass this religion, with its hidden sacred knowledge and its many forms of prayer, on to our children, is our supreme duty to our ancestors and to our own hearts and to the God whom we know."

We've been there too.   next page -->