Chronology of American Indian History

achieves popular and critical success with the
publication of Cogewea: The Half-Blood, one of
the first novels published by an American In-
dian woman. Written over a 10-year period while
Quintasket was working as a migrant laborer,
the book tells a melodramatic story of Cogewea,
a young mixed-blood woman trying to find her
place in Indian and white society. Before her
death in 1936, the author will publish one more
book, Coyote Stories (1933), a collection of tradi-
tional Indian tales, many featuring the trickster
character Coyote.

Patterson v. Seneca Nation upholds the
right of tribes to set their own rules of
membership.
Among the Seneca, ancestry is traced matrilineally,
or through the mother’s line. According to this tra-
dition, the Seneca Nation does not extend tribal
membership to children with Seneca fathers and
white mothers. A Seneca man challenges the Seneca
Nation’s membership criteria in Patterson v. Seneca
Nation. The Supreme Court finds for the tribe, cit-
ing that because of its tribal sovereignty the “Seneca
Nation retains for itself the power of determining
who are Senecas.”

March 3

The Indian Oil Leasing Act is passed.
With the Indian Oil Leasing Act, Congress gives
the secretary of the interior the ability to nego-
tiate oil leases on behalf of Indian tribes. The
legislation is supported by Indian groups, who
want to ensure that tribes, and not the U.S. gov-
ernment, will receive oil royalties on their lands.
Their right to this income was threatened after
Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall tried to
designate as public domain land all reserva-
tions formed by executive order (see entry for
1922). Although supported by Indian advocates,
the act will work against the interests of many
Indian tribes, as U.S. officials readily grant long-
term leases that net these groups relatively little
royalty income.

1928

The Kiowa Six develop a new Indian

painting style.

At the urging of Susie Peters, the field matron at the

Kiowa Agency, six young Kiowa enroll in art classes

at the University of Oklahoma. The students are en-

couraged by art department head Oscar Jacobson to

use European materials and techniques to paint im-

ages that reflect Native American values and beliefs.

The result is a painting style that emphasizes bril-

liantly colored, monumental figures—most often

warriors and dancers in ceremonial performances.

Soon after their arrival at the university, Jacob-

son will promote his students’ work in an exhibition

in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and a limited-edition

French watercolor folio Kiowa Indian Art (1929).

As their work becomes known nationally and in-

ternationally, the painters—Spencer Asah, James

Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois

Smoky, and Monroe Tsatoke—are dubbed the

Kiowa Six. (See also entry for 1931.)

White-fox fur trade brings brief prosperity

to the Inuit.

Beginning in the mid-1920s, Hudson’s Bay Com-

pany and other trading firms establish posts in

northern Canada to trade with Inuit for white fox

pelts. The price of white fox rises rapidly, reach-

ing its peak in about 1928. Abandoning their old

ways to adopt new hunting technology introduced

to them by non-Native traders, Inuit hunters

initially profit greatly from the white fox trade.

But in the mid-1930s, the price of furs will drop

sharply. The sudden loss of income will devastate

the Inuit, bringing many families to the brink of

starvation.

February

The Meriam Commission issues its report

on the status of American Indian life.

As a response to reformers’ growing criticisms

of federal Indian policies, the secretary of the in-

terior commissions a team of social scientists,