'There are Indians in Indiana': Stinesville native has spent decade learning about his local Native American roots
Editor's note: This story from The Bloomington Herald-Times is being published here as a courtesy for readers of IU in the News.
'There are Indians in Indiana': Stinesville native has spent decade learning about his local Native American roots
By Lauren Slavin
It wasn’t that Christopher Headdy didn’t appreciate his grandmother’s gift. He just didn’t understand it.
Headdy’s grandmother presented the 12-year-old with a beautiful blanket depicting Native American chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, who fought against the white European settlers who waged war to push the Indians off their land.
He thanked her, but asked why she would get him an Indian blanket.
“She said, ‘Because you’re an Indian,’” Headdy remembers. “She marked me right there.”
For the first 12 years of his life, Headdy thought his dark skin and black hair were nothing more than physical attributes. He’s spent the past decade tracing bloodlines and listening to stories that have completely changed his view of his hometown of Stinesville.
Stinesville and neighboring Gosport have a hidden history, the 25-year-old-said. A history Headdy’s wife can sum up in a single sentence.
“There are Indians in Indiana,” Tess Headdy said.
Rewriting history
Toward the end of the year, Americans celebrate two holidays that Karmelita Plains Bull said only add to the injustices native peoples have faced over the past centuries. The first is Columbus Day, a federal holiday observed the second Monday in October.
Indiana should follow the example of some states and municipalities and recognize the holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day, said Plains Bull, Tess Headdy’s mother and a Crow American Indian from Montana. Instead, schoolchildren are taught the story of Christopher Columbus’ journey from Spain to “find” America.
“Like we were lost, somehow,” said Christopher Headdy, Plains Bull’s son-in-law. Alaska this year proclaimed the second Monday in October as Indigenous People’s Day. It’s been called Native American Day in South Dakota since 1990.
The other celebration comes a month later. The fourth Thursday of November is depicted in popular culture and textbooks as a shared meal between the Indians and first American settlers. The real Thanksgiving story isn’t one of a meal, Plains Bull said, but a massacre followed by “manifest destiny” that displaced thousands of Native Americans.
“These kids are being taught the wrong information,” 52-year-old Plains Bull said. “It’s dangerous when we rewrite history.”
Plains Bull has been an advocate for Native Americans her entire adult life. It’s been hard work, and often disappointing. Though November has been nationally proclaimed Native American Heritage Month, Indiana’s government has not extended the recognition to the Hoosier state.
One way a city like Bloomington could begin healing its relationship with local Native Americans, Plains Bull said, would be to establish a cultural center that celebrates the history of Indiana’s first peoples.
“Indiana does not have a sense of native culture at all,” Headdy said. “Their highest form of education comes from a John Wayne film.”
A cultural center would also be a resource for local Native Americans who have become disconnected from their historic roots after years of stigmatization. Prior to the implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, Native American children were often taken from their tribal homes and adopted into white families. Generations later, the descendants of these children may have no knowledge of their heritage.
“Families don’t have to suffer,” Plains Bull said. “They can reconcile themselves and be comfortable with who they are.”
Indians in Indiana
Indiana has a rich Native American history — a history that largely disappears after the mid-19th century.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 required the Miami, Potawatomi, Delaware, Shawnee and other tribes living across Indiana to move west to states such as Kansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.
“Like all other Native American groups, they were encouraged to leave or were forcefully removed,” said James Madison, an Indiana historian and professor emeritus in Indiana University’s department of history. “There were very few long-term Native American settlements in this part of Indiana.”
Indiana’s Miami natives were mostly settled in Peru and Fort Wayne. Generations before he was born, Christopher Headdy said, his Miami relatives lived in northwestern Monroe County. Though most Miamis in Stinesville were relocated, those who were wealthy enough to purchase land hid from the government until they felt it was safe to live in the open, Headdy has been told by the few family members who still remember their history.
“They wanted to be here because this is their home,” Headdy said.
To stay in Indiana, Headdy’s Miami ancestors gave up their Native American identity, trying to pass as dark-skinned whites.
“Many decided that their prospects would be better if they were to be white … part of the majority, not the minority,” Madison said. “You have kids born and growing up in Indiana in the 20th century who have no idea of their Native American heritage.”
It’s only decades later that Headdy’s relatives are willing to speak openly about their pasts. What Headdy knows of his heritage has been gleaned from years of genealogical research and oral history passed down by the Miami natives of Peru he has become connected with while seeking information.
There are no federally recognized Native American tribes in Indiana, though a Miami tribe settled in Oklahoma and a Potawatomi tribe of Michigan and Indiana settled in Michigan can request help from the United States Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Headdy refuses to hide his Miami identity. Whether at a powwow or in public, he wears his copper breastplate and matching armbands, and a belt made of a fox’s pelt rests on his shoulder. The fox, he said, finds evil spirits and repels them from its wearer.
A medicine pouch made from a turtle’s shell hangs from his neck, as does a necklace made from a black bear’s claws. Headdy will weave red-tailed hawk feathers through his hair to honor his grandfather, and on special occasions wears a headpiece of blue heron feathers to represent his great-grandfather, a spear fisherman.
Headdy makes many of his garments himself.
“This is the most accurate I can get now to Miami regalia,” he said.
‘This was our home’
A limestone monument carved by Frederick Hollis marks Gosport’s 10 O’Clock Line, where Chief Little Turtle threw his spear into the ground and cast a line to draw the boundaries separating Miami and Indiana territory.
“Like a lot of treaties, it became a pile of rocks in the dirt,” Headdy said.
There are more than 1,545 recorded archeological sites in Monroe County, State Archeologist Amy Johnson said. The arrowheads, broken pieces of pottery, stone and wood tools and human remains found at these sites show archeologists that native people lived, worked and prayed there well before recorded history.
“There is Native American history all around our state,” Johnson said. “There’s certainly a lot more to learn out there.”
The 10 O’Clock Line isn’t the only reminder of the native people forced off their land, Headdy said. It’s just the only one non-natives have recognized.
Not far from the monument, an uneven hill rises above recently harvested fields. Native Americans and archeologists discourage revealing the exact locations of potential artifact sites, which have been vandalized and looted in the past by black market treasure hunters.
The hill has never been declared sacred land or an archeological site, but a relative has told Headdy that the Gosport hill is a burial mound. Miami natives would carry baskets and baskets of dirt to pile upon the bodies of their dead, over time building up the mound.
A second mound near Stinesville served another purpose, Headdy said he was told. The tribe’s Meda priest would live at the top of the mound, where the pipe carrier could protect the surrounding village, pray for his people and doctor illnesses. For the same reasons ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, the Miami built their mounds so the pipe carrier could live closer to the heavens, Headdy said.
“This was where we existed. This was our home,” Headdy said. “This is about as Miami as you get.”
Indiana law protects archeological and historical Native American sites, and requires landowners who discover artifacts and human remains to notify the Indiana Department of Natural Resources for an archeological survey.
Both mounds are on private property, and not accessible to the descendants of the tribes Headdy said once lived there. If artifacts uncovered at those sites led archeologists to determine that the mounds have historic significance, those artifacts would belong to the property owners.
“If I don’t tell anybody … then it just gets forgotten. It’s just a pile of dirt someone drives past,” Headdy said.