Chronology of American Indian History

1926

The American Indian begins publication.
Indian progressives begin publishing The Ameri-
can Indian, a journal that focuses initially on the
Indians of Oklahoma but soon expanded its scope
to tribes across the United States. For the next five
years, it will offer articles about socially prominent
Indian families, accounts of games played by Indian
school football teams, and biographies of successful
Indians of the past and present.

Paleo-Indian studies begins with the
excavation of the Folsom site.
Jesse Figgins, the director of the Colorado Museum
of Natural History, organizes an archaeological dig
near the small town of Folsom, New Mexico. A year
before, a collection of old bones and stone points
came into his possession. They had been discovered
17 years earlier by a black cowboy named George
McJunkin on a Folsom ranch. Figgins identified the
bones as those of an extinct species of bison that
lived in the area at the end of the Ice Ages.
The excavation team uncovers more bones and
several fluted projectile points (see entry for CA. 8500
TO 8000 B.C.), which provide evidence of humans in
the area during the Stone Age. The find inaugurates
the formal study of Paleo-Indians in North America.

The Fred Harvey Company offers tours of
southwestern Indian lands.
The Fred Harvey Company, which operates luxury
hotels throughout the West, makes the Southwest
a major vacation destination, offering guided tours
through the reservations of the Navajo (Dineh),
Hopi, and Zuni. White vacationers, largely from
the East and Midwest, travel west by railroad. Har-
vey Company cars meet them at the station, drive
them through Indian Country by day, and return
them to the comfort of a Harvey hotel at night.
Tourists quickly come to admire many of the
objects the southwestern Indians make by hand,
such as pots, kachina dolls, rattles, and other items
used in religious ceremonies. Finding the visitors
eager customers, southwestern Indians develop ver-
sions of these goods specifically for sale to whites.

The Indian Defense League of America

is founded.

Organized by Tuscarora Clinton Rickard and Mo-

hawk David Hill, the Indian Defense League of

America brings together American and Canadian Iro-

quois in the battle to force the United States to honor

Jay’s Treaty, which gave the Iroquois the right to travel

freely across the American-Canadian border (see entry

for NOVEMBER 19, 1794). After a delegation from

the organization convinces the U.S. government to

respect the Iroquois’ treaty rights in 1928, the league

will organize the Border Crossing Celebration, an

event held annually at Niagara Falls, New York.

The National Council of American Indians

is established.

With the financial support of the General Federa-

tion of Women’s Clubs, writer and activist Gertrude

Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa) founds the National Council

of American Indians. Bonnin, who had been active

in the Society of American Indians in its early years

(see entry for OCTOBER 12, 1911), declares that the

council’s goals are to “create increased interest in

“A number of glaring cases

all show that in the activities

of the informal organization

of grafters, sex or age make

no different; the young child,

the adult, the incompetent

(mentally or physically) are all

robbed in the same thorough,

nonchalant manner. The ‘sys-

tem’ has but one object—GET

THE MONEY AND GET IT QUICK!”

—Gertrude Bonnin in Oklahoma’s

Poor Rich Indians (1924), on

non-Indian con men’s theft of

Indian land

P