Fighting Tuscarora: The Autobiography of Chief Clinton Rickard (The Iroquois and Their Neighbors)
(The autobiography of Chief Rickard, who fought for the re...)
The autobiography of Chief Rickard, who fought for the recognition of his Tuscarora nation throughout his life. He led his people in the Indian resistance to federal policies, and founded the Indian Defense League of America.
Clinton Rickard was an Tuscarora tribal leader known for founding the Indian Defense League, and for promoting Native American sovereignty.
Background
Clinton Rickard was born on May 19, 1882 on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in Lewiston, New York, about twenty miles north of Buffalo. He was the third of four sons of George Rickard and Lucy Garlow, both Tuscarora Indians. The Tuscaroras are a member nation of the Six Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois. Rickard spent his life on the Tuscarora Reservation. During his childhood his family made a meager living raising chickens and hogs, fishing and hunting, and maintaining a small family farm. George Rickard went on periodic drinking binges, during which he physically abused his wife and sons.
Education
Clinton and his brothers attended reservation schools on an irregular basis, when they could be spared from work at home. By the time he was sixteen, Rickard had acquired the equivalent of a third-grade education. He greatly revered his maternal grandmother, who taught him tribal history and instructed him in the ancient ways of the Iroquois.
Career
In order to escape his oppressive home life, Rickard enlisted in the army in April 1901, although he was not recognized as an American citizen for more than twenty years, when passage of the Citizenship Act of 1924 enfranchised American Indians.
He was sent to the Philippines as a private with the Eleventh Cavalry during the Philippine Insurrection of the Spanish-American War, and he saw action in Luzon.
Discharged in 1904, Rickard returned to New York State and obtained employment at a limestone quarry just north of the Tuscarora Reservation. He was promoted to foreman after one year and was able to purchase land on the reservation and to build his own house. Thereafter he made his living as a farmer.
Rickard later credited his membership in the Freemasons, which he had joined in 1913 and in which he was active until his death, with seeing him through the crisis.
In 1920, Rickard was made a chief (one of fifteen) of the Tuscarora tribe and given the ceremonial name Rowadagahrade, or Loud Voice. Passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 galvanized him to become involved in Indian affairs outside the Tuscarora reserve. This act severely restricted the passage of Canadian Indians over the border to the United States, which particularly affected the Iroquois tribes of western New York and southern Canada, as the Iroquois had long disregarded the geographical boundaries created by whites in favor of the ancient integrity of their Indian nation.
On December 1, 1926, Rickard formed the Six Nations Defense League in order to obtain border-crossing rights for Indians. He testified before Congress that the immigration law was in violation of federal treaties still in force, specifically the Jay Treaty of 1794, which guaranteed to Indians unhindered movement across the border. His campaign was ultimately successful, and the immigration law was modified to exclude Indians on April 2, 1928. The border-crossing dispute had acquainted Rickard with the intricacies of federal law, and thereafter, he became a self-taught expert on how that law pertained to North American Indians.
In 1928, Rickard renamed the Six Nations Defense League the Indian Defense League of America, a watchdog group dedicated to the upholding of Indian treaty law and to the bettering of conditions of North American Indians.
Rickard headed this organization, run out of his home, for more than forty years, speaking out against legal and social systems he perceived as hostile and oppressive to Indians. The organization came to prominence in March 1930, when Rickard became involved in the trial of two Seneca women accused of killing Clothilde Marchand, the wife of Henri Marchand, an artist from Buffalo, New York. Rickard, disturbed by media attention centering on the alleged use of Iroquois witchcraft in the murder, brought pressure on the federal government to intercede on the women's behalf. Rickard argued that as wards of the state, Indians accused of committing crimes are entitled to representation by the United States attorney.
Coverage of the trial, which lasted for more than a year and resulted in the women's acquittal, appeared on an almost daily basis in the New York Times. Rickard turned the media attention he received as a result of his involvement in the Marchand case toward exposing what he saw as the flagrant inequality of reservation education.
He lobbied the New York state legislature to increase the annual appropriation for Indian schools and to allow Indians to attend public high schools at the state's expense.
Before 1930, Native Americans in New York State were provided with only an eighth-grade education at impoverished reservation schools.
Rickard was named president of the Chiefs' Council, the Tuscarora Nation's governing body, in 1930. Throughout the 1930's and 1940's he represented the Tuscaroras in working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D. C. , to improve conditions on the reservation.
In March 1948, Rickard testified before the Senate Interior Subcommittee on Indian Affairs against proposed legislation to extend to the states the right to assert civil and criminal jurisdiction over Indian reservations. Implicit in this legislation, which was enacted in 1949, is the recognition that state governments supersede tribal ones. Rickard continually protested the unilateral undercutting of Native Americans' unique treaty relationship with the federal government, most notably by petitioning the United Nations between 1948 and 1952, culminating in a request that the UN admit the Six Nations Confederacy to membership.
In April 1958, Rickard and his son William organized a campaign of passive resistance against the New York State Power Authority, which was attempting to seize more than half of the Tuscarora Reservation as a reservoir for the Niagara Power Project.
The Tuscaroras refused state compensation of up to $3 million, arguing that they could not sell land that was held in trust. The case was decided in the state's favor by the United States Supreme Court on March 7, 1960, although a memorable dissent was issued by Justice Hugo Black, who lamented what he considered to be a breach of Indian treaty law, stating that "great nations, like great men, should keep their word. "
During the last years of his life he made a number of tape recordings in Tuscaroran to preserve the tribe's history, culture, and language for future generations. Rickard continued his work in Indian rights until his death, even though bouts of ill health restricted his activities in later years.
He died in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Buffalo, New York, and is buried on the Tuscarora Reservation. The Indian Defense League remains active on behalf of North American Indians.
Achievements
He worked for free passage of Native Americans across the US - Canada border, and to prevent the flooding of the Tuscarora Reservation.
(The autobiography of Chief Rickard, who fought for the re...)
Views
Throughout his life Rickard spoke on the importance of preserving the ancient traditions of his ancestors. He opposed the Citizenship Act of 1924 as being a violation of Six Nations sovereignty and an attempt by the federal government to assimilate the Indian into white society.
Quotations:
"How could these Europeans come over here and tell us we were citizens in our own country?" he wrote in his autobiography. "How can a citizen have a treaty with his own government?"
Personality
A proud man with a commanding presence, while making public appearances Chief Rickard always dressed in full Indian regalia.
Connections
He married Ivy Onstott, a white woman who had been raised on the reservation, on December 18, 1904. She died in February 1913, and one of the couple's two children died one month later.
In 1916, Rickard married Elizabeth Patterson, a Tuscarora; she died in 1929 after giving birth to their fourth child.
In 1931, Rickard married Beulah Mt. Pleasant, a Tuscarora Indian born and raised on the Tuscarora reserve. They had seven children.
