Repost: An Indian Christmas carol

Gather ’round, friends, and hear the story of Canada’s oldest Christmas carol.

The lyrics were written in Wyandot, the language of the Huron Indians, a language now dead except among the scholars who study it.

And yet this 365-year-old hymn is still widely sung in Canada... in French and English.

The song is known by several names: “The Huron Carol,” “Noël Huron,” “’Twas In the Moon of Wintertime,” “Indian Christmas Carol.”

Its original Wyandot title is “Jesous Ahatonhia” (“Jesus, He Is Born”).

You might wonder: “Why would 17th-century Huron Indians sing a song about Jesus? Were they Christians? And what’s this about ‘the lyrics were written’? Did the Hurons have a written language?”

The answer to this riddle rests in the story of Jean de Brébeuf.

He was a French Jesuit priest who traveled to “New France” (Canada) in 1625 to convert the natives to Christianity. In 1626, Brébeuf went to live amongst the Huron tribes of the Great Lakes region.

He learned to speak their language.

Called back to France in 1629, Brébeuf returned to Huron country five years later with a few associates, determined to continue his missionary work.

Things did not go smoothly. It wasn’t until 1637 that Father Brébeuf made his first convert. But by 1647, thousands of Indians had accepted baptism into the Catholic faith.

Meanwhile, Brébeuf wrote extensively about the culture of the Hurons. It was he who gave the name “lacrosse” to the traditional Amerindian field sport. Brébeuf also developed the Wyandot language into a written form.

And so this gutsy French priest wrote “Jesous Ahatonhia” around 1642 – using his own literation – and taught the song to the Indians.

If you’d like to hear it, click here. Canadian folksinger Alan Mills recorded “The Huron Christmas Carol” in 1960, singing the first verse in Wyandot, repeating it in French, then singing the whole song in English.

POSTSCRIPT: The story ended very badly for Father Brébeuf... and the Huron Indians. Iroquois attackers from the south laid waste to Huron villages in 1649, ultimately displacing the entire Huron nation. Brébeuf and another priest were captured, tortured and killed.

The invading Iroquois possessed an ironic advantage. They’d acquired muskets from the Dutch, who offered them in exchange for furs. France also provided guns to the Hurons for their defense... but the Jesuit priests insisted that only Christian Indians get guns.

With half of the Hurons Christianized and the other half still “heathen,” the Huron tribes were outgunned by the Iroquois four to one.

The Catholic Church canonized Brébeuf (and other “North American Martyrs”) in 1930. St. Jean de Brébeuf, Apostle to the Hurons, is now the patron saint of Canada.

A free Apache flute download

President Obama today addressed more than 500 Indian chiefs in Washington, D.C. This reminds me to point out that November is American Indian Heritage Month.

Not to pat myself on the back... but last year, on this blog, I rocked the balls off of American Indian Heritage Month. Some of you might remember.

If not, you can still read about rock ’n’ roll Indians... or the Mohawk ironworkers... or the famous orator Chief Red Jacket... or Afro-Navajo recording artist Radmilla Cody... or the fascinating history of Canada’s oldest Christmas carol.

I won’t be kicking it like that this year. As a blogger, I’m a shell of my former self. Because now I got a real job.

Anyhoo... for American Indian Heritage Month 2009, the least I can do is point to a FREE MP3. Hope y’all dig Apache flute music.

Click here to hear “Flying Free” on my Vox blog. The artist is Andrew Vasquez. To download the track, click the title below.

“Flying Free” (MP3)
Album available at iTunes Music Store
Album available at eMusic
Album available at Amazon MP3

America’s first non-white vice president

Now that America has its first non-white president, let us take a moment and remember the first non-white vice president.

His name was Charles Curtis. He served as Herbert Hoover’s v.p. from 1929 to 1933.

Curtis was an enrolled member of the Kaw or Kanza tribe (for whom the state of Kansas is named). His father was white, but his mother was three-quarters American Indian, with Osage and Potawatomi ancestry as well as Kaw.

Charles Curtis spent part of his childhood with his grandparents on Indian territory. According to USA Today, Curtis learned the Kanza language before he learned to speak English.

But when the tribe was relocated from Kansas to Oklahoma, young Curtis was sent into the white world... to be cared for by his father’s people in Topeka.

Curtis would have a successful 34-year career in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, rising to the rank of Senate Majority Leader. He was more of a back-room dealmaker than a man of ideas.

Here’s part of a New York Times profile published on November 6, 1927, when Sen. Curtis declared himself a Republican candidate for the presidency at age 67:

“His grandmother, Julie Pappan, an Indian, was the inspiration of Curtis’s boyhood. Her wise advice turned him from the tepees of his forefathers and persuaded him to cast his lot with the white men of Topeka, to toil and toil hard, to study and win an education and ‘go far’ along the road that leads to honors.” (Curtis’s mother died when he was 5 years old.)

The Times story continued: “It was nearly sixty years ago – in 1868 – when what may be described as the turning point in Senator Curtis’s life came. He was 10 years old. Already at home in the saddle, he could follow a trail like an Indian brave, was tireless afoot or astride – about the smartest boy in the whole Kaw tribe.

“When the Kaws were encamped west of Topeka, the peace-loving Kaws were attacked by their ancient enemies, the Cheyennes....

“Senator Curtis remembers that day as if it were yesterday. The war cries of the Cheyennes, the rain of arrows that poured into the Kaw camp, the struggle to hold the Cheyennes in check. It was a losing battle, and in desperation the chiefs of the Kaws decided to call on the whites of Topeka for help.

“Somebody had to take the message through the Cheyenne lines, and there would then be a ride of sixty miles to the frontier town that is now the capital of Kansas.

“Charles Curtis, the 10-year-old, was the courier to whom was entrusted the delivery of the message on which the lives of the Kaws depended. ...

“The message was delivered; the Kaws were saved.”

Evidently, Curtis’s racial status wasn’t a political liability. But neither was it ignored. Upon his death in 1936, the New York Times wrote: “Mr. Curtis showed his Indian blood distinctly. He was swarthy, had black hair and high cheekbones and many other characteristics of the Indian.”

In his 1928 bid for the presidential nomination, Charles Curtis didn’t do well. But on the eve of the Republican National Convention, the Kansas senator positioned himself as a “compromise candidate” between the frontrunner, Commerce Secretary Hoover, and a movement to draft incumbent President Calvin Coolidge for a third term.

Herbert Hoover won the nomination easily, but the convention selected Curtis as his running mate... to increase Hoover’s appeal to farm-state voters.

During Hoover’s White House years, the president and his vice president weren’t close. According to a U.S. Senate biography of Curtis, “his advice was neither sought nor followed” by Hoover.

But Curtis embraced the status of his title, talking up his rise “from Kaw tepee to Capitol.” He displayed his racial pride by hanging paintings of famous Indian chiefs on the walls of his vice presidential office. He would even pose for photographs wearing an Indian headdress.

And in 1932, when Curtis’s name was placed in nomination for a second term as Hoover’s vice president, a fellow Kansan told the Republican convention this: “[O]n that long road from an Indian reservation to the Vice Presidency of the United States, Charles Curtis never had anything handed to him. What he got he earned.”

Ballad of the Fake-Ass Indian

White folks who claim to be American Indians – for prestige and profit – are a familiar element in American life.

(“The Simpsons” lampooned this phenomenon in an episode called “Little Big Girl,” where Lisa passed herself off as a member of the “Hitachee tribe.”)

Most notoriously, there was the actor Iron Eyes Cody, who shed a famous tear in a 1970s TV ad. Cody claimed to be part Cherokee and part Creek... but a journalist in 1996 exposed him as Espera di Corti, son of Italian immigrants.

And there was Forrest Carter, author of a popular memoir called “The Education of Little Tree.” Mr. Carter claimed to have been raised by his Cherokee grandparents.

In reality, his name was Asa Earl Carter, and he was whiter than white; he was a former Ku Klux Klansman.

Then, in 1999, a new literary voice emerged in the pages of Esquire magazine – Nasdijj, the tragic half-breed son of a Navajo mother, raised on the reservation. Except he wasn’t.

After publishing three books about his life as an Indian, Nasdijj was outed by L.A. Weekly as Tim Barrus, plain ol’ white guy.

And how about this radical-left loudmouth?: “... I am myself of Muscogee and Creek descent on my father’s side, Cherokee on my mother’s.... The truth is, although I’m best known by my colonial name, Ward Churchill, the name I prefer is Kenis, an Ojibwe name bestowed by my wife’s uncle.”

Uhhh... not quite. A 2005 Rocky Mountain News investigation determined that Ward Churchill – a professor of “ethnic studies” – has no Amerindian ancestry whatsoever.

Now we come to a 1960s folksinger named Peter La Farge (pictured right). AllMusic.com describes La Farge as “the first politically aware Native American to attract serious attention” in folk music.

Except he wasn’t Native American.

La Farge purportedly was “an American Indian of the Nargaset tribe”... “raised by members of the Tewa tribe on the Hopi reservation” in New Mexico. Supposedly he got the name “La Farge” when he was adopted by Oliver La Farge, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.

You know where this is going, right?

Music researcher Yuval Taylor (pictured left) last year reported that Peter La Farge is actually Oliver La Farge’s natural-born son, not an American Indian.

Peter wasn’t raised on the rez either. He was raised on his white stepdad’s Colorado ranch.

Let’s take a quick look at the life of lying-ass Pete La Farge. He was a rodeo rider, amateur boxer, Korean War serviceman and stage actor before he decided to focus on music. He became part of the Greenwich Village folk scene, hanging out with Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.

Signed to Folkways Records, La Farge recorded five albums on Native American themes between 1962 and 1965.

Click here to hear “I’m an Indian, I’m an Alien,” from the album “Peter La Farge on the Warpath.”

Johnny Cash covered one of La Farge’s tunes – “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” – and it was a major hit. Click here to hear it. (It’s about the American Indian Marine who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima.)

La Farge died in 1965 under mysterious circumstances. Some say it was a stroke, some say a drug overdose, some say suicide. Either way, Peter La Farge is fondly remembered by folk-music aficionados... who still believe he was a real Indian, not a fake Indian.

“Peter was a genuine intellectual,” wrote Johnny Cash in his autobiography, “but he was also very earthy, very proud of his Hopi heritage, and very aware of the wrongs done to his people and other Native Americans. ... [H]is was a voice crying in the wilderness. I felt lucky to be hearing it.”

As Yuval Taylor writes: “Pretending that he was an Indian was absolutely essential to La Farge’s ability to get across his message.”

Meet an American Indian: Radmilla Cody

She might look like your cousin Denise, but singer Radmilla Cody is actually a proud Navajo. Matter fact, she was chosen “Miss Navajo Nation” in 1997.

Therein lies a tale.

The daughter of a Navajo mother and an African-American father, Radmilla was raised in Navajo country, herding sheep and spinning wool and learning the Diné language from her grandmother.

Cody’s sheep-butchering skills and other traditional talents came in useful when she competed against six other women for the title of Miss Navajo Nation.

“I really wanted to run for Miss Navajo to make a statement,” she has said. “And that statement is that biracial people such as I really want to be taken seriously.”

When Radmilla was growing up, other Indian kids taunted her with “Zhinni Zhinni Cocoa Puff.” (Zhinni means black.)

After she won Miss Navajo, someone wrote a letter to the Albuquerque Journal and said: “Miss Cody’s appearance and physical characteristics are clearly black, and are thus representative of another race of people. ... Miss Cody should focus on her African American heritage and stay out of Navajo affairs.”

Now, Radmilla Cody is a noted recording artist... primarily singing Navajo lyrics. Click here to hear her “Corn Grinding Song.”

Cody hit a rough patch in 2001 when federal authorities indicted her as part of a major drug case. Turns out Cody’s boyfriend, Darrell Dwight Bellamy (a Negro), was the boss of a narcotics ring.

Cody publicly attributed her downfall to an “abusive relationship” with Bellamy.

In a plea bargain, she received a 21-month prison sentence.

This news rocked the Native American community. Rumors spread that the Navajo Nation Council might strip Cody of her status as a Miss Navajo Nation.

That didn’t happen. Radmilla Cody is still featured on the Miss Navajo Council website, along with the 51 other Miss Navajos. And she is now an activist against domestic violence.

Below is a brief clip of Cody in performance.

(NOTE: I know American Indian Heritage Month is over... but I thought November had 31 days in it. I really did.)

An Indian Christmas carol

Gather ’round, friends, and hear the story of Canada’s oldest Christmas carol.

The lyrics were written in Wyandot, the language of the Huron Indians... a language now dead except among the scholars who study it.

And yet this 365-year-old hymn is still widely sung in Canada – in French and English.

The song is known by several names: “The Huron Carol,” “Noël Huron,” “’Twas In the Moon of Wintertime,” “Indian Christmas Carol.”

Its original Wyandot title is “Jesous Ahatonhia” (“Jesus, He Is Born”).

You might wonder: “Why would 17th-century Huron Indians sing a song about Jesus? Were they Christians? And what’s this about ‘the lyrics were written’? Did the Hurons have a written language?”

The answer to this riddle rests in the story of Jean de Brébeuf.

He was a French Jesuit priest who traveled to “New France” (Canada) in 1625 to convert the natives to Christianity. In 1626, Brébeuf went to live amongst the Huron tribes of the Great Lakes region.

He learned to speak their language.

Called back to France in 1629, Brébeuf returned to Huron country five years later with a few associates, determined to continue his missionary work.

Things did not go smoothly. It wasn’t until 1637 that Father Brébeuf made his first convert. But by 1647, thousands of Indians had accepted baptism into the Catholic faith.

Meanwhile, Brébeuf wrote extensively about the culture of the Hurons. It was he who gave the name “lacrosse” to the traditional Amerindian field sport. Brébeuf also developed the Wyandot language into a written form.

And so this gutsy French priest wrote “Jesous Ahatonhia” around 1642 – using his own literation – and taught the song to the Indians.

If you’d like to hear it, click here. Canadian folksinger Alan Mills recorded “The Huron Christmas Carol” in 1960, singing the first verse in Wyandot, repeating it in French, then singing the whole song in English.

POSTSCRIPT: The story ended very badly for Father Brébeuf... and the Huron Indians. Iroquois attackers from the south laid waste to Huron villages in 1649, ultimately displacing the entire Huron nation. Brébeuf and another priest were captured, tortured and killed.

The invading Iroquois possessed an ironic advantage. They’d acquired muskets from the Dutch, who offered them in exchange for furs. France also provided guns to the Hurons for their defense... but the Jesuit priests insisted that only Christian Indians get guns.

With half of the Hurons Christianized and the other half still “heathen,” the Huron tribes were outgunned by the Iroquois four to one.

The Catholic Church canonized Brébeuf (and other “North American Martyrs”) in 1930. St. Jean de Brébeuf, Apostle to the Hurons, is now the patron saint of Canada.

Meet an American Indian: Jenna Plumley

Sports in the modern age have been an avenue to hero status for America’s racial minorities. The non-white athlete who can outperform white folks at their own games... that evokes a special kind of pride.

Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson are damn-near mythic. Roberto Clemente, among Puerto Ricans, is a saint. Chicano musicians wrote songs about Fernando Valenzuela.

It applies to Jews as well; check out the Hank Greenberg documentary.

And when American Indian activist Dennis Banks organized a long-distance “protest run,” he named it after Olympic champion Jim Thorpe.

So you can understand the feelings aroused last year when Jenna Plumley – a 5-foot-4 freshman point guard – became a rising star on the University of Oklahoma women’s basketball team, one of the nation’s top squads.

“this girls a great role model & inspiration 4 native youth,” wrote one Jenna Plumley fan on an American Indian message board.

Watch the video clip below for a TV news report about Jenna’s status in the Indian community.

Jenna Plumley is a pure- blooded Native with Pueblo, Comanche, Otoe and Pawnee roots.

She was raised in Red Rock, Okla., and became one of that state’s best girl players ever. She led her high-school team to two state championships.

Becoming a Lady Sooner at OU made Jenna a rare Indian competing in Division I athletics. “It feels really good” being a role model, she says in the clip below, “especially since when I was a child I never really had a female role model to look up to.”

Alas, Jenna Plumley’s story took a dark turn this summer. She was arrested and charged with shoplifting from a Wal-Mart. Her coach suspended her for the 2008-2009 season.

Jenna left Oklahoma and now attends Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. She’ll be eligible to continue with basketball next fall.

“Attempting to turn Indian high school and college students into social heroes is a dangerous business,” wrote Cedric Sunray in the Native American Times. “When they don’t pan out it only serves to cause further disappointment and marginalization for Indian youth.”

The lesson here is: Sports hero or not, we’re all just human beings.

Meet an American Indian: Dennis Banks

As blacks folks had Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, Native Americans had Dennis Banks and his fellow militant radicals who, in 1968, formed the American Indian Movement (AIM).

The Black Panther Party had its Ten-Point Program. AIM put forth a 20-Point Position Paper, which included a request for more than 100 million acres of land from the United States.

AIM staged armed confrontations with the government. Most notable was the 1973 takeover of the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The U.S. government prosecuted Dennis Banks and Russell Means for leading this seige. A federal judge dismissed the charges after a nine-month trial.

But the state of South Dakota convicted Banks on riot-related charges for another incident – a protest gone wrong in a town called Custer.

Rather than go to prison, Banks spent nine years as a fugitive. He eventually turned himself in and served 18 months.

The American Indian Movement is still active... but split into two rival factions. Banks, an Ojibwa born on Minnesota’s Leech Lake reservation, is part of the “Grand Governing Council” faction based in Minneapolis (where AIM was founded).

Russell Means – now the most famous Indian activist in America – is a leader of the other AIM, known as the International Confederation of Autonomous Chapters of the American Indian Movement.

I’m streaming a 2-minute audio clip of Dennis Banks from 1982, when he was chancellor of D-Q University, a two-year tribal college in Central California (which is now out of business).

Click here to hear it on my Vox blog. You can stream or download the complete 5-minute radio piece by following this link to the Internet Archive.

Banks put his story on paper in a 2004 book titled “Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement.” (Russell Means’s autobiography, “Where White Men Fear to Tread,” was published in 1995.)

Banks also has a website under his Indian name – Nowa Cumig.

Playlist: Goofing on the Indians

The mainstream American culture has often dealt with the hard history of Native Americans – as it has with black people – by making jokes.

These jokes were/are sometimes purely mocking, and sometimes from a posture of sympathy.

Below are a few examples. Click the track titles to listen.

1. “Marlon Brando Interview” – Chevy Chase, John Belushi

You might remember John Belushi’s Brando impression from “Saturday Night Live.” He actually did a little Brando for his “SNL” screen test.

Before all that, Belushi performed with Chevy Chase on “The National Lampoon Radio Hour.” This short skit makes fun of Brando’s well-known affinity for Native American causes.

2. “Indian In-Laws” – Cledus T. Judd

Country-music comedian Cledus T. Judd is thought by some to be funny. Judge for yourself. This song is a parody of Tim McGraw’s 1994 hit “Indian Outlaw.”

3. “Thanksgiving, or Pass the Indian Please!” – Firesign Theatre

I never got into the Firesign Theatre. So your pot is safe around me.

4. “I’m an Indian” – Fanny Brice

This one dates back to 1921. It’s a vaudeville classic from Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice.

The words of Chief Red Jacket

This is the day when Americans give thanks... thanks that the original inhabitants of this land didn’t act in their own racial and cultural self-interest and slice the throats of every European who disembarked from the Mayflower.

As part of my American Indian Heritage Month celebration, here’s a post about Sagoyewatha – also known as Red Jacket.

Red Jacket, a chief of the Seneca Indians, is remembered today as a gifted orator and important Native American diplomat during the early years of the United States.

Representing the Iroquois Confederacy, he kicked it with U.S. presidents such as Washington, Monroe and Andrew Jackson.

He acquired the name “Red Jacket” after his service to England during the American Revolution. He’d been a swift-footed messenger for British military officers, and they rewarded him with a richly embroidered scarlet jacket. (Red Jacket would later support the Americans against the British during the War of 1812.)

Red Jacket was primarily noted by white writers of the 19th century for his racial politics.

In modern language, he was a separatist. In the words of one writer in 1879, the Seneca chief “hated civilization... detested education and Christianity, and made no pretence at conforming to the polite customs of white society.”

Journalist William L. Stone, in his 1840 book “The Life and Times of Red-Jacket,” wrote that Sagoyewatha, by 1805, had “become utterly averse to any farther intercourse or association with the whites – having arrived at the conclusion that the only means of preserving his race... would be the erection of a wall of separation, strong and high, between them. ...

“He was opposed to any farther sales of [Indian] lands. He was opposed to blending the races by intermarriage – not unfrequently murmuring that, whereas before the approach of the white men the eyes of their children were all black, now they were becoming blue. ...

“He was opposed to the acquisition by his people of the English language. Above all, he was opposed to the introduction among them of Christianity.”

Red Jacket’s most famous speech was delivered in Buffalo Grove, New York, in 1805. It was in response to a young white missionary named Rev. Cram, sent by the Boston Missionary Society to propose the establishment of a mission among the Seneca.

“Brothers: I have not come to get your lands or your money,” Cram said, “but to enlighten your minds, and to instruct you how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind and will, and to preach to you the gospel of his son Jesus Christ.

“There is but one religion, and but one way to serve God,” the missionary continued, “and if you do not embrace the right way, you cannot be happy hereafter. You have never worshipped the Great Spirit in a manner acceptable to him; but have all your lives been in great errors and darkness.”

Et cetera.

The council of chiefs discussed the matter among themselves, then Red Jacket delivered his reply. He spoke in the Seneca language, his words translated by a U.S. government interpreter.

Would you like to hear what Red Jacket said? The English version was recorded in 1976 by Arthur S. Junaluska, a Cherokee playwright and actor, for an album called “Great American Indian Speeches, Vol. 1.”

Click here to hear it on my Vox blog.

You can download the MP3 by following this link to AmericanRhetoric.com.

In 2006, the Syracuse University Press published “The Collected Speeches of Sagoyewatha, or Red Jacket” – the first comprehensive collection of the chief’s words.

Happy Thanksgiving!

UPDATE: Meet an American Indian

Chuquai Billy – England’s favorite Native American standup comic – has commented on my recent blog post about him. Check it out.

Playlist: Rock ’n’ roll Indians!

Native American music – traditional Native American music – isn’t known for swinging or grooving. Which is why the “powwow beat” didn’t evolve into rhythm & blues.

But a few Indians (or semi-Indians) have made their impact on rock ’n’ roll. And I’m not talking about Hendrix, who was one-eighth Cherokee.

Click the song titles below to hear what I mean.

1. “Come and Get Your Love” – Redbone

You know I had to start with this one. Redbone in the 1970s was packaged and sold as a Native American R&B band. But brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas (born Vasquez) could’ve more easily presented themselves as Latino.

To this day, Mexican Americans embrace Redbone as more Chicano than Native American... even though the Vegas brothers talked up their Yaqui and Shoshone ancestry.

The story goes that Jimi Hendrix – who strongly identified with his own Indian heritage – encouraged the young Vegas brothers to form an all-Indian rock band. “Jimi made me aware of my roots,” Pat Vegas once said.

Prior to forming Redbone, Pat and Lolly had cut a few surf-rock singles and toured with the Beach Boys. They also did studio gigs with the likes of Sonny & Cher and Dobie Gray.

“Come and Get Your Love” was a huge hit for Redbone in 1974. (And it’s one of my favorite singles of the ’70s.) Just this year, Redbone was inducted into the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame.

2. “Washita Love Child” – Jesse Ed Davis

Guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, a full-blooded Indian (Kiowa and Cherokee), worked with some of the top stars of the ’60s and ’70s – John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, John Lee Hooker, Conway Twitty, Taj Mahal...

Davis signed a couple of major-label solo deals in the early ’70s, and he put out three albums. This song, supposedly autobiographical, is from his debut LP, “Jesse Davis.” Eric Clapton plays on it.

Jesse Ed Davis died in 1988 after years of drug and alcohol problems.

3. “Apache” – Link Wray

Half a century ago, a humble pioneer of the electric guitar named Link Wray put out a grungy instrumental 45 that is still influencing rockers today: “Rumble.”

(Quentin Tarantino used it in “Pulp Fiction.” Click here to listen.)

Wray’s sound was admired by Neil Young, Pete Townshend, Jerry Garcia and Bruce Springsteen, to name but a few. Link Wray is on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Later in his career, Wray called attention to his Indian heritage, eventually recording tunes with titles like “Indian Child,” “Geronimo,” “Comanche” and “Shawnee.”

“I’m half Shawnee Indian, born to a Shawnee mother [in North Carolina],” Wray told a reporter in 2002. “Elvis... grew up white-man poor. I was growing up Shawnee poor.”

This track – Wray’s cover version of “Apache” – was released in 1990.

Link Wray died in 2005 at the age of 76. The following year, he was inducted into the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame.

4. “Unbound” – Robbie Robertson

For his membership in the legendary rock group The Band, Robbie Robertson is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He wrote classic album-rock songs such as “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “The Weight.”

As the Canadian son of a Jewish father and a Mohawk mother, Robertson has focused in recent years on a musical exploration of Native American identity. (He had spent childhood summers on the Six Nations Reservation in Ontario.)

“Unbound” is from Robertson’s 1998 album “Contact from the Underworld of Redboy.”

5. “An American National Anthem” – Geronimo Black

Texas-born drummer Jimmy Carl Black (Cheyenne) was a founding member of the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa’s trailblazing band. Black famously ad-libbed this line during a recording session: “Hi, boys and girls. I’m Jimmy Carl Black, and I’m the Indian of the group.”

After Zappa disbanded the original Mothers, Black formed a short-lived band called Geronimo Black.

Geronimo Black’s 1972 LP included a scathing (and jamming) protest song called “An American National Anthem.”

I’m streaming a demo version of that tune, released years later on an album called “Welcome Back Geronimo Black.”

Jimmy Carl Black bounced around the fringes of the music business ever since his days with Zappa... until his death from cancer earlier this month in Germany. He was 70 years old.

6. “Don’t Let Me Go” – Indigenous

So who’s keeping alive that flame of American Indian rock ’n’ roll? Guitarist/singer/songwriter Mato Nanji, that’s who.

Nanji grew up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota, listening to his dad’s blues records.

Now he leads the popular blues- rock band Indigenous.

Mato Nanji’s guitar chops have brought him a lot of attention. He was greatly influenced by Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Recalling his early performances, Nanji told an interviewer in 2005: “[E]verybody thought that we’d be a traditional flute band... but we’d come out... and they’d be totally surprised. They never expected a band like us to come out and do what we do.”

“Don’t Let Me Go” is from the band’s 2005 CD, “Long Way Home.”

Meet an American Indian: Stevie Salas

Back in January, I blogged about a badass guitarist named Stevie Salas (with a FREE MP3 to boot). Salas, as I mentioned then, is a Mescalero Apache... and proud of it.

In the video interview embedded below, Salas talks about his racial identity.

He also tells the story of how a Mr. George Clinton launched his rock ’n’ roll career in 1985.

And quite an impressive career Salas has had, touring with the likes of Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger and Terence Trent D’Arby... recording with Bootsy Collins, Ronnie Wood and Ronald Shannon Jackson...

Lately, Salas has served as musical director for “American Idol” stars on tour – first Chris Daughtry, then Jordan Sparks, now David Cook.

As a solo recording artist, Stevie Salas is big in Japan.

Click here to hear his remake of a P-Funk All Stars jam called “Pumpin’ It Up.” This is from Salas’s 2007 compilation album “The Sun and the Earth.”

Meet an American Indian: Chuquai Billy

As American Indian Heritage Month rolls on, I’d like to introduce you to a few Indians you’ve probably never heard of... starting with Chuquai Billy (Choctaw and Lakota).

Chuquai Billy is a standup comedian. He was born in Gallup, New Mexico. He now lives and performs in London.

Yep... an American Indian who moved to England to tell jokes. How nutty is that?

Chuquai, in a 2007 interview, said: “A lot of what I do in my act is try to educate them away from the popular stereotypes most of Europe still believe about Native American people.”

But is he funny?

Based on the video below, I would vote thumbs down.

In 8 minutes of material, I count one decent joke (the one about immigration). Chuquai Billy seems to be at the “open-mike-night” level of proficiency. (Compare his stage presence and audience command to Warren Hutcherson’s.)

If he is to succeed at comedy, Chuquai will have to move beyond merely pimping himself as an exotic.

The Mohawk ironworkers

Only after the Twin Towers had been destroyed did I learn about the special role that Mohawk Indians played in constructing them.

For more than a century, Mohawk ironworkers have had a reputation for embracing the dangerous job of building bridges and skyscrapers.

They worked on the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

Five hundred Mohawk Indians walked the high steel during construction of the World Trade Center.

This being American Indian Heritage Month, why not take a minute and listen to one of these workers reminisce? Click here to hear Peter Stacey from the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in Quebec, Canada.

To hear others, follow this link to the Sonic Memorial Project; where it says “Search by theme,” select “Mohawk Ironworkers” in the drop menu.

Navajo heavy metal?

Yeah. It exists.

The white man messed up them Indians all kinds of ways, didn’t he?

The name of this band is Ethnic De Generation. It’s based in Kayenta, Arizona... part of the Navajo Nation.

I happen to believe that no piece of America is more invisible than the Navajo rez. Some 200,000 people live there, and the rest of us have no idea what they’re about.

Well... that’s why God created teh internets.

The Carlisle Indians

If you think the story of black people in America has too many forgotten chapters, let’s talk about the Indians. (November, after all, is American Indian Heritage Month.)

Did you know that the game of American football, as it is now played, owes a debt to Indians? Sportswriter Sally Jenkins explained this in her 2007 book “The Real All Americans.”

I was already vaguely aware of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which was created by the U.S. government to “civilize” the conquered Indians. But I didn’t know that the “Carlisle Indians” were a collegiate football powerhouse in the early 20th century, competing against teams such as Harvard and Yale.

The Carlisle Indians couldn’t match the white teams for physical size. So instead of the common style of play – grinding trench warfare – Carlisle focused on speed, forward passing and offensive trickery.

This strategy was developed by Carlisle’s most successful coach, a white man known as “Pop” Warner.

Sally Jenkins focuses on a 1912 game between Carlisle and the U.S. Army team at West Point. Army’s star offensive player was halfback Dwight D. Eisenhower... a future president of the United States.

Carlisle’s star was one of the greatest athletes of all time, Jim Thorpe, who played running back, defensive back, kicker and punter.

The Carlisle Indians won.

The racial dimension of this game against Army is fascinating. Click here to hear a minute-long excerpt from the audiobook version of “The Real All Americans.”

November is American Indian Heritage Month

Actually, the official name for it is “National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month.”

I will be celebrating it here throughout November. And not just because I got some Pamunkey in me. (Matter fact, I think the current chief, William Miles, is a distant relative.)

Let’s start with a pop-culture relic from a less enlightened time. It should be familiar to anyone of my generation – a “Go Go Gophers” cartoon.