I Love Native American

09/01/2025

He left home chasing cattle, not crowds.
In early 1902, he and a friend hatched a plan to strike it rich cowboying in South America. That was the dream, anyway. The destination—and what came after—would be something entirely different.
Will sold his stake in the family cattle business and began a journey that would stretch far beyond what he’d imagined. He traveled first to Hot Springs, Arkansas, then down to New Orleans, where he boarded a steamer bound for New York City. From there, he sailed to Southampton, England, then boarded a Royal Mail ship headed south across the Atlantic—stopping in Cape Verde, Rio de Janeiro, and Montevideo—before finally stepping ashore in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Two and a half months at sea.
Nineteen days later, his friend gave up and headed home. But Will stuck it out. He stayed through the winter, picked up work where he could, and eventually booked passage on a livestock ship bound for Durban, South Africa. That September, he wrote to his father from a horse farm. By November, he was hauling mules near Ladysmith, chasing the next opportunity.
Then, on December 5, 1902, Will Rogers wandered into a world of canvas tents and smoke and sawdust.
A Wild West show.
They said the owner was from Texas. The name rang a bell. Will asked around, found the man in charge, and introduced himself. Was he really from Texas? And—more importantly—were there any jobs wrangling horses or working livestock?
The man squinted and asked, “You any good with broncs? Rope tricks?”
Will said he could rope a bit—better with a lasso than with a bucking horse. The man tossed him a rope.
Nearly a decade earlier, a young Will Rogers had visited Chicago with his father during the World’s Columbian Exposition. While the grand white buildings and modern marvels of the fair caught most people’s eyes, Will’s attention locked on a show outside the gates—Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
In that arena, he saw the world’s greatest trick roper—Vicente Oropeza, a charro from Mexico—spin a rope like it was alive. Will was mesmerized. He bought the program, read it until it fell apart, then returned home to Indian Territory and practiced for hours, day after day, chasing the magic he’d seen.
Now, in a dusty showground halfway across the world, he stepped into the ring.
He started with a wide crinoline whirl—the rope circling overhead, loops widening with each pass. Before he could finish the sequence, the showman cut him off.
“You’re hired.”
That man was Texas Jack Jr.
When Rogers heard the name, something clicked. He remembered it—from the worn program he’d read over and over. Texas Jack. The man who’d written the piece on cowboys and buffalo hunts. The friend of Buffalo Bill.
Will asked if he was that Texas Jack.
Jack Jr. grinned and shook his head. No, he wasn’t that Jack—but he told the story. About how the original Texas Jack Omohundro had rescued him as a child from a Comanche camp. How he’d taken the name in honor of the man who gave him a life. He hadn’t been born into cowboying, he said. He’d chosen it. Chosen to carry on the legacy—and now, he was offering Will the same chance.
Only later did Rogers realize what he’d missed.
In a letter home, he wrote with a mix of frustration and amusement:
“I will tell you how I missed making $250…
The owner does a trick with a rope (the big whirl where he lets out all his rope around him) and he has been offering 50 pounds, that is $250, for anyone that could do it. And he has been offering it for five years—outside America.
Well, I didn’t know anything of this 50 pounds. I just walked into the show that morning, done the trick, and he gave me a job. But now, since I belong to the show, I can’t get it.
Oh, but I was mad.”
Still, he stayed.
Will Rogers had left Oklahoma to earn a living as a cowboy.
Instead, he found something else entirely.
In another letter, he confided what he was beginning to realize:
“I am going to learn things while I am with him that will enable me to make my living in the world without making it by day labor.”
And he did.
Texas Jack Jr. taught him how to hold a crowd. How to build suspense, how to deliver a moment. How to turn raw roping into refined performance. How to own the stage with charm and confidence.
He gave Will a job—and a new name:
The Cherokee Kid.
He hadn’t planned to chase the spotlight. But that dusty showground in South Africa set him on the path.
Will Rogers—the rope-spinning, wisecracking, unshakably genuine voice of America—was born that day.
The cowboy who joined the show became a star. Then a household name. Then something rarer still. By the 1930s, he was Hollywood’s highest-paid actor, America’s most popular radio host, and its most widely read newspaper columnist—all at once.
He made people laugh. He made them think. And, more than almost anyone, he made them trust him. Will Rogers became one of the most beloved, most human voices this country has ever known.
And it all began with a rope, a trick, and a job offer to a Cherokee boy far from home—on a windswept showground in Ladysmith, South Africa.

08/30/2025

The Last Winter of Freedom – A Kiowa Family’s Story, 1902
In the bitter winter of 1902, deep in the sacred Wichita Mountains of southwest Oklahoma, a small Kiowa family made camp — holding onto their way of life as the world around them changed forever.
Tsonetah, an aging warrior and elder, refused to abandon the old ways. With him were his daughter Nali, her husband Red Elk, and their young son. Their canvas-and-hide tipi stood by a stream flowing from Mount Scott, where deer still roamed and wild turkey could still be hunted. The buffalo were gone, but tradition remained.
Snow came early that year. Government agents came too, pressing them to relocate. But at night, under the flicker of firelight, Tsonetah told his grandson stories — of sky people, medicine men, and the buffalo spirits that once thundered across the plains.
Nali stitched warm clothing from worn army blankets. Red Elk traded pelts for cornmeal with a Choctaw man who still understood.
When spring returned, they agreed to move to the reservation. But in the boy’s memory, that final winter stayed alive — the smell of wood smoke, the rhythm of the drums, the frost on the tipi walls.
It was the last season his family lived free on their own land, guided only by tradition, spirit, and sky.

08/29/2025

LONG HAIRTraditionally, long hair was always a symbol of masculinity. All of history''''s great warriors had long hair, from the Greeks (who wrote odes to their heroes'''' hair) to the Nordic, from the American Indians (famous for their long shiny hair) to the Japanese. And the longer and beautiful the hair was, the more manly the warrior was considered. Vikings flaunted their braids and samurai wore their long hair as a symbol of their honor (they cut their braid when they lose honor).When a warrior was captured, his mane was cut to humiliate him, to take away his beauty. That custom resumed in what is today military service. There when new soldiers begin their training the first thing they do is cut their hair to undermine their self-esteem, make them submissive and make them see who''''s boss.
The Romans were the ones who "invented" short hair so to speak, between the 1st and 5th centuries AD.. In battles they believed this gave them defensive advantages, since their opponents couldn''''t grab them by the hair. This also helped them to recognize each other in the battlefield.
Short hair on men is a relatively new "invention" that has nothing to do with aesthetics.
But today we often see men being humiliated, sometimes called "gay" for wearing long hair, not knowing that short hair is actually the "anti-masculine" and is a repressive social imposition, while long hair symbolizes freedom

08/29/2025

Happy 73rd birthday to Graham Greene🎉🎈
❤️I think you will be proud to wear this t-shirt : https://789store.com/native-blood
Graham Greene – Canadian First Nations actor acclaimed for roles in Dances with Wolves and The Green Mile.
GRAHAM GREENE - FIRST NATIONS Canadian actor who belongs to the ONEIDA tribe. He has worked on stage, in film, and in TV productions in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his 1990 performance in ""Dances with Wolves"". Other films you may have seen him in include Thunderheart, Maverick, Die Hard with a Vengeance, the Green Mile, and Wind River. Graham Greene graduated from the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in 1974 & immediately began performing in professional theatre in Toronto and England, while also working as an audio technician for area rock bands. His TV debut was in 1979 and his screen debut in 1983. His acting career has now spanned over 4 decades & he remains as busy as ever. In addition to the Academy Award nomination for Dance with Wolves, he has been consistently recognized for his work, and also received nominations in 1994, 2000, 2004, 2006, and 2016.

08/28/2025

A Native American man looking over the newly completed transcontinental railroad in Nevada, 1869.

This striking 1869 image captures a Native American man standing above the freshly completed section of the transcontinental railroad in Nevada, silently witnessing the vast transformation of his ancestral land.

The railroad, hailed as one of the greatest engineering feats of its time, symbolized a new era of American expansion, progress, and westward movement. But for Indigenous peoples, it often marked displacement, cultural upheaval, and loss.

Many Native tribes referred to the railroad as the “long black snake” a symbol of unnatural intrusion, slithering across sacred landscapes with smoke and noise. Others called the train the “iron horse,” a powerful machine that replaced the traditional horse and brought settlers, soldiers, and irreversible change.

The contrast in the photo is haunting: the winding river that had shaped this valley for millennia, and the straight, rigid line of the tracks, one representing nature, the other conquest. Two worlds on a collision course

08/23/2025

Sioux Indian Teepees. A tipi (also teepee or tepee) is a cone-shaped tent, traditionally made of animal skins upon wooden poles. Modern tipis usually have a canvas covering. A tipi is distinguished from other conical tents by the smoke flaps at the top of the structure. Historically, the tipi has been used by Indigenous people of the Plains in the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies of North America. They are still in use in these communities, though now primarily for ceremonial purposes rather than daily living. A similar structure, the lavvu is used by the Sámi people of northern Europe.
Tipis are often stereotypically and incorrectly associated with all Native Americans in the United States and Indigenous peoples in Canada, despite their usage being unique to the peoples of the Plains. Native American tribes and First Nation band governments from other regions have used other types of dwellings. The tipi is durable, provides warmth and comfort in winter, is cool in the heat of summer, and is dry during heavy rains.Tipis can be disassembled and packed away quickly when people need to relocate and can be reconstructed quickly upon settling in a new area. Historically, this portability was important to Plains Indians with their at-times nomadic lifestyle

08/21/2025

08/20/2025

“I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”
– Red Cloud, Chief of the Oglala Lakota tribe.
Sources: Photograph taken by John K. Hillers, circa 1880 / Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut / Wikimedia Commons

08/19/2025

Did you know:
Native American Indians used pumpkin as a staple in their diets centuries before the pilgrims landed.
They also dried strips of pumpkin and wove them into mats.
Pumpkins were grown alongside corn and beans as one of the mythological
Three Sisters of agriculture. Indians would also roast long strips of pumpkin on the open fire and eat them.
When settlers arrived, they saw the pumpkins grown by the Indians and pumpkin soon became a staple in their diets.
As today, early settlers used them in a wide variety of recipes from desserts to stews and soups.
The origin of pumpkin pie is thought to have occurred when the colonists sliced off the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and then filled it with milk, spices and honey.
The pumpkin was then baked in the hot ashes of a dying fire.

08/18/2025

With the love we share with others there is never goodbyes, for our love is eternal and will always, and forever live in our soul. When our body goes back to the loving arms of Mother Earth and our spirit soars upwards to Father Sky, this love in our soul will guide us to our loved ones that have passed before us. Love is always our connection to the soul of others, so our loved ones are never gone from us. The First Nations do not have a word in their language for goodbye but we were taught by our elders and Ancestors to say until we meet again. Niyanan sakihakan kakike nika pimatisi Niyanan manitohkan. (Our love forever live in our spirit)

08/17/2025

Warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity. —Sitting Bull (c. 1831 - 1890), Hunkpapa Sioux.

08/15/2025

Justice for Tribal Elders: Issues Impacting American Indian and Alaska Native Older Adults