Dr. Ben Jones:
This is History 605, where we discuss everything from Crazy Horse to cyberspace. I'm Dr. Ben Jones, South Dakota State historian, and of the South Dakota State's Historical Society, welcome to the show. Joining me today on this episode of History 605 is Philip Burnham. Philip Burnham has a PhD in American studies. He grew up in Illinois and taught at Rosebud Indian Reservation at Sinte Gleska University for several years and was correspondent at Indian Country Today. He's also lived and worked around the world in a lot of very interesting places, London, Paris, Senegal and Philip has published in American Heritage, The Washington Post, Military History Quarterly, that's a fine magazine. He's published books on Native American issues, one entitled Indian Country, God's Country: Native Americans And The National Parks. He also has a work on the Song Of Dewey Beard: The Last Survivor Of The Little Bighorn. Philip is retired now from George Mason University and lives in Albuquerque. Welcome Philip, to History 605.
Philip Burnham:
Thank you, Ben.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Some of our listeners may have heard of the Lakota warrior, Yellow Knife. And the first thing that intrigued me about the article that you wrote was that the subject of your article, We Consider Ourselves Human Beings: The Education Of Clarence Three Stars, Clarence Three Stars is yellow knife's son. I just thought that the cultural transition that Clarence undergoes in his lifetime is really quite remarkable. What drew you to Clarence Three Stars? How did you find out about this man and what made him interesting and compelling subject for you to do your research and writing on?
Philip Burnham:
Well, originally I wanted to gather the life stories of a number of native people, male and female, who had experienced the age of assimilation, roughly speaking from the years of about 1880 to about 1930, before the Indian Reorganization Act. An age when assimilation was through schools and through churches and through the military was something that was not only encouraged, but in many ways required by the federal government. I was planning a book and I was going to devote a chapter to each individual who I found who in some way had something to do with the assimilative process. I came across Clarence Three Stars' name in Luther Standing Bear's My People The Sioux, which some of your listeners may be familiar with.
It's a great account a Lakota man who lived during this period and wrote a lot about it. But I wanted to get beyond people like Luther Standing Bear, who were well known and look at some of the people whose names have been totally lost to history. In starting my investigation into a Clarence Three Stars, I realized that he had done so many interesting things and had so many interesting experiences, that I really didn't need to find seven, or eight, or 10 other people. I could write a whole book about his life, a biography, and it would really do what I had originally set out to do. So, the genesis really came by the luck I think, or the good fortune of having read Luther Standing Bear, and Clarence Three Stars is mentioned almost in passing in the book, but the more I found out about Clarence, the more convinced I became that he was worthy, not only of an article, but an entire book. Sure enough, since that time, which is about seven years ago, that's certainly proven to be the case.
Dr. Ben Jones:
So trek with us a little bit on the ... what's Clarence's story? He starts out life on what is becoming a reservation, goes east for school and then goes back to Pine Ridge. Then the change over time, just in his lifetime, is rather remarkable. It's a daunting environment to navigate for any human being and he does fairly well [crosstalk 00:04:56].
Philip Burnham:
For any human being, certainly, and in the case of Clarence, he was born in 1864. He was 14 or 15 years old when Richard Henry Pratt came through Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations, recruiting Indian children for his new school, Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. At the time, as far as I can discern, Clarence, whose name, Lakota name and translated into English was Pax, the dog, he had an uncle named Three Stars with whom he lived, spoke no English. Clarence took the steamer and the train out to Carlisle when he was 14 or 15, not knowing a word of English and spent five years at Carlisle, was in the first entering class of Indian students. Most of whom that first year were from Pine Ridge and Rosebud.
He was there for five years. He did several of the outings or what were often summer work experiences that Carlisle students were expected to undertake, to improve their English and learn something about the English speaking world outside of school. He worked for six months at John Wanamaker's Emporium in Philadelphia, which at the time was arguably the greatest commercial department store in the country, or at least one of them. He ended up walking away from the store when he was not satisfied with the job, didn't really like the experience of living in a big city and went back to Pine Ridge, as you say, and eventually after teaching at Pine Ridge Boarding School, became a day school teacher for many years in the non-residential schools of Pine Ridge that served Lakota children and taught not only in English, which was really what teachers were supposed to be teaching in, but also taught in Lakota, which was strictly speaking against Indian Bureau policy. But he did it because he knew that his students could use it.
He'd been through the experience himself of going off to get an education different than the education he had as a young boy, but speaking a second language, and he tried to put that to use by using his Lakota and English in tandem while he was teaching at the day schools. Then his life goes on from there and there's certainly more to talk about in that vein too.
Dr. Ben Jones:
I guess when I think of that in a civic way, what type of role would he play as a teacher at a school within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation? What type of government preceding the Indian Reorganization Act, that comes along in the 1930s, so prior to all that, how did the tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs govern Pine Ridge Indian Reservation? Was he disempowered by the way this was being done? Did he feel like he had to break out? I mean, clearly he stayed there, so there's some motivation there for him to and live in his own hometown.
Philip Burnham:
Right, he did stay and he stayed, unlike Luther Standing Bear, who eventually left and went on to work in films in Hollywood. Clarence decided to stay on the reservation and he later became a politician, and a lawyer, and even tribal president. To get to your question, the reservation was ... before the Indian Reorganization Act in the early '30s, there was a council of elders, Lakota elders who held a certain amount of political power, but they were basically under the thumb of the Indian Bureau and the head bureau of Indian Affairs and the interior secretary.
Basically, they were subject to the laws that were passed in Washington and this was something that Three Stars himself was regarded by a number of the agents, or later called superintendents at Pine Ridge, as a troublemaker. He was described as such, as his father Yellow Knife was in correspondence. It was not a particular a designation that he liked, though I sense that he was rather proud of it over time, because there were a number of things that he found wanting in the way that the reservation was administered.
For people who don't really know much about reservations, it's extraordinary, when you go back, when I went back through all the agents' correspondence, their agents' reports that were done every year on an annual basis, describing what Indian people had to do in order to make a living during this period, after they were put on the reservation and before the Indian Reorganization Act, and still in many ways is true, in terms of the amount of power that the interior department has on reservations like Pine Ridge, but to kill a cow in order to have a feast, you had to get a permit, to cut wood you had to get a permit. Everything during this assimilationist period was particularly very strongly regulated by the agent who was the local representative of Washington. The yoke that this put on Indian people was something that Three Stars himself grew to resent a great deal and led him to become involved, not only in teaching students, but involved in politics as well.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Well, speaking of teaching students, how would he teach about these issues to his students? In your research, did you come across lessons, or lectures, or notes of anything like that, or how he would present this to them?
Philip Burnham:
I don't have any evidence that he taught his students that the Indian Bureau was excessively governing their lives. But I mean, for instance, to give you an example, he had a part of his syllabus when he was teaching in the day schools, was he created an imaginary government and had it staffed by different students. Somebody was treasurer, somebody was a police officer. It was like a municipal government that they were expected to staff and produce, I think, some kinds of laws and that they were expected to follow.
It was all written up in a very patriotic way. I should add. I guess I wouldn't say outright that he fomented in his students any kind of outright disrespect for the Indian Bureau. I think he understood that they had to abide by certain regulations in order to get by, in order to make a living in order to make use of English language, which they were learning but he did teach them. He gave them a strong sense of bilingualism. I mean, if nothing else, he taught them and he reminded them in case anybody needed reminding, that there were always at least two ways to say anything, given that you had two languages in the classroom, which was very unusual for an Indian Bureau teacher around the turn of the century.
Dr. Ben Jones:
So, would you call him someone who was fighting to retain the language despite the interior department trying to take that away?
Philip Burnham:
Definitely. He certainly did so and he he worked for a while. He was hired to translate some of the original Lakota writings of George Sword, who was the police captain on Pine Ridge for a long time, but was an extremely knowledgeable man about traditional Lakota ways and who held many anthropologists with his writing down in Lakota of traditional Lakota ways. For a while, Three Stars was hired by James Walker, a well-known physician around the turn of the century who helped fight tuberculosis on Pine Ridge and was very successful at it for a number of years. He helped Walker, for a while anyway, translate some of swords work from Lakota into English. So, I guess yes, he was interested in preserving the language.
He fought to preserve the power of the local political council. He died only a couple years before in the Indian Reorganization Act, so he didn't see what happened at that point, though I think he would've been disappointed in many ways. He also got involved in political issues such as World War I.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Oh, how so?
Philip Burnham:
He was opposed to the drafting of un-allotted Indian men. In other words, young men who had not been given an allotment and had not gone through the process of showing that they wanted to become a full-fledged United States citizen. He believed that they should not be subject to the draft, which I should add was not a very popular opinion in Bennett County, where he lived at the time and in all of Pine Ridge and in all of the country. Anybody who protested in any way against the war was subject to prosecution through the sedition act. And many people ended up going to jail for it. He did not, but he was called a traitor by a number of people, some of them non-Indian and some of them Indian who felt that the cause of World War I was a perfectly worthy one.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Right. Well, it strikes me, I guess he's being intellectually honest. He's saying if we can't vote, if we can't own land outside the reservation, or within the reservation, or we're not seen as an individual instead of a member of a tribe, then this isn't our war, I guess. Would that be his argument?
Philip Burnham:
Exactly. That was his argument. Actually, I've never seen any correspondence of his saying that he was opposed to the war per se but as you put it, if would be doughboys were not subject to the same rights and privileges of American citizens, then it was not their war to fight and that was the stance that he took. His son Paul, he had seven children in total, his son Paul was eventually drafted and did serve and went overseas but he was capable of ... One of the interesting things, fascinating things about Three Stars is how he really spanned the spectrum. People oftentimes divide reservation Indians, especially during this period into either being progressives or traditional. In some ways he had strong elements of both. That was true, not only of Three Stars, but of many Indian men and women on reservations across the country during this assimilation period.
Dr. Ben Jones:
What was his view later in life of the school that he went to, the Carlisle School, did he-
Philip Burnham:
He had mixed emotions. He actually went in 1899, which was about 15 years after he left the school. He got up on stage at a commencement gathering, celebration in the gym and gave a short speech explaining briefly detailing how much he liked Carlisle and how much he'd profited from it. So, he felt pride about having gone to Carlisle, as many Carlisle students did. At the same time, I've run across references in the agents' correspondence, where he talked about the fact that he was at times sorry, that he'd even gone away to school. He was ambivalent about his boarding school experience, as many Indian people, boys and girls were. He was subjected to some humiliation when he was at Carlisle. The discipline was rigorous, although he had a quite a close relationship with Pratt, who was the superintendent of the school for most of its existence.
But at the same time, he had difficulties at school and, and eventually left his job at Wanamakers and left the school together. He learned how to speak and read and write English, which led him in into other places that he could not have gone in his adult life. To give you just one example, he became a lawyer through a correspondence school in Washington, called the Columbia Correspondence School. Taught day schools by day and studied law at night and in about 1912, 1913 became the first state's attorney of Bennett County, which for an Indian person was extremely unusual.
I mean, it was written up in the newspapers it was so unusual to have an Indian lawyer, much less an Indian lawyer who you had been elected to office and was a judge in Bennett County for a couple years and put his learning in the law to work because he was also one of the early advocates for getting some kind of compensation for the Black Hills, which the Lakota had given up in 1877, at least by the act that was passed in 1877, through a process that was not very honest, in terms of the treaty signing, but he became one of the early advocates and went to Washington and attempted to, with others, start the ball rolling in terms of seeing something in return for the land that they gave up there.
Dr. Ben Jones:
So, the federal suit that culminates in the 1980 Supreme Court case, is that kicked off with his efforts here, or is that ...
Philip Burnham:
Well, he's one of the early leaders, yeah. I mean, that process goes on for a long time and it was settled in 1980. But it took decades for the tribe to be able to try it in the court of claims, the interior department didn't even consider it a serious suit until the early 20th century. But he was in Washington arguing for something for the Black Hills as early as 1897 and possibly before. I come across a lot of correspondence in the early 20th century too. It shows that up until about 1920, he was still one of the leaders in getting some kind of redress for the Hills. But he dies about a decade later. After about 1920, he's not one of the major players in the suit.
Dr. Ben Jones:
So, how would you think that he would think of the decision of the Supreme Court in 1980? Something you said makes me think that he would've been willing to have taken the purchase price?
Philip Burnham:
Well, he might well have because the idea ... that's a difficult thing to say, because it's hard to read what's possible and what's not. He was certainly assimilated enough into mainstream American culture, I think to understand the value and the power of a dollar. I mean, he worked for John Wanamaker for six months. He also ran a dry goods store for many years in the Corn Creek, Allen area of Bennett County. So, he was a merchant in a side career. He owned his own ranch, he traded land after he was allotted in, I think it was about 1912. Bennett County all allowed him to expand a little in terms of how he could earn a living. So, he was aware of the power of a dollar. He might have been willing to accept monetary compensation, which I think was probably what was in the minds of most Lakotas at the end of the 19th and early 20th century and as your listeners may well be aware and they probably are, the Lakota tribes, United tribes have refused to take any of the monetary compensation.
How he would feel about that now, if he were alive, I don't know but I think there was a time when, if the money would've been substantial, that people on the reservations might have been very tempted to take it. It's an open question.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Sure. Another thing that may very well be an open question, it strikes me that between the culture his father grows up in and the culture that he grows up in and passes away in, remarkably different. I wonder, is there any way for him to know what his father thought of him, what his father would've thought of his son's circumstances and how his son proceeded through life?
Philip Burnham:
I think, in the sense that he might have had reflected knowledge about his father, yes. His father died when he was five. His uncle, Three Stars with whom he lived, well until he went away to Carlisle, I'm assuming that that was probably his father's brother, the way that Lakota families work, he was probably adopted by his father's brother. I would guess that he was raised much the way that Luther Standing Bear was raised, in a traditional Lakota way before he was 14 and would've had a sense of Lakota boyhood, somewhat similar to what his father would've known. Although, of course, he was born in 1864 so the late 1860s, early 1870s were different, even for people living in the Pine Ridge, Rosebud areas and in Northern Nebraska, would've been different than they would've been even a generation before.
Still, I think he probably had a good taste of it, certainly Lakota religion, he would've, I think learned a lot of the things that a Lakota boy learns in terms of riding a horse and reading a trail and doing any variety of things, the games that they typically played in order to harden themselves against the elements. I think he would've had a good sense of the ambiance that his father grew up in. But as you say again, he entered into a whole new world and decided to, whatever ambivalence he felt about boarding schools, sent a couple of his children to boarding schools which suggests that he found that they offered something that traditional Lakota ways couldn't offer, at least in the world he was living in.
Dr. Ben Jones:
I guess my last question is, we talk about the the poorly thought through policy of the United States government in relation to indigenous peoples along the way from 1607 until, I don't know, some might argue today. What would Clarence Three Stars, if he could have designed the policy in 1900, how might he have shaped it?
Philip Burnham:
Well, I think he would've given much greater credence to Native cultures in terms of the way Indian children were educated, children and young people, in spite of the fact that he became fluent in English and wrote it quite well and spoke it very well and became a translator and worked for many Washington groups that came out, junkets that came out, for various reasons to the reservation. He acted as a translator and so he was a go-between very much between the two cultures but he would've called, I think for greater cultural sensitivity and even more than sensitivity, respect for the native kids that were being assimilated, or maybe a better word would be making bicultural people rather than assimilated ones.
:
I think he would've been more respectful of traditional political beliefs. He was a supporter of the old tribal council, all the way through the '20s when it was still in dispute, what was going to happen with it. I think he would've been disappointed with the Indian Reorganization Act, which Pine Ridge, the Oglala at Pine Ridge, did accept eventually as many tribes did because it put too much power in the hands of the secretary of interior and the head of the BIA. I think he finally posed allotment in his ... Well, in his early adult life, he first approved it, but later came to regret that approval, I think and came to oppose it because it cut up the Indian land base in a way that he recognized too late was not a credit to ... which made life very difficult economically for people living on their reservation. I think he would've been opposed to a number of things like that, at the same time that he recognized that being bicultural had advantages and learning something like the law and reading Blackstone would help and might help with things like getting something in return for the Black Hills and for any other case that might come up.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Right. Well, Philip, this has been a wonderful conversation ranging from Yellow Knife to Blackstone. I don't know that there's any other form where that might occur, but you article again, which was entitled, We Consider Ourselves Human Beings: The Education Of Clarence Three Stars appeared in the South Dakota History journal volume 50, number two last summer, summer of 2020. So, wonderful article.
Philip Burnham:
If I could add just one quick thing, Ben.
:
I'm always looking for more information about Clarence Three Stars, Clarence Three Stars Senior, that is, he had a son named Clarence too, but if anybody has photos or letters or anything like that, you can always find me on www.philburnham.com. I'm always receptive to anything like that.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Yeah. Well, we look forward to what may come of the future work with him. It sounds like Luther Standing Bear may have a star in the universe next to him as we watch this cultural shift.
Philip Burnham:
He might well, or three stars.
Dr. Ben Jones:
Yeah, three. Very good, sir. We'll end with that and thanks for joining us here on history 605.
Philip Burnham:
Thank you, Ben.
Dr. Ben Jones:
So thanks to our sponsor, The South Dakota Historical Society Foundation and our partner of the South Dakota public broadcasting. But most importantly, thanks to you, the listener of this show. As always, if you like the show, please share it with friends and help us get the word out. The South Dakota Historical Society can be for out on the web at history.sd.gov and we'd appreciate you checking us out. Now, go do some history.