The first stamp to picture Native Americans was issued in 1893, almost 69 years after then Secretary of War John Calhoun created the Bureau of Indian Affairs on March 11, 1824. Initially part of the War Department, BIA has been part of the Interior Department since 1849. So there’s a kind of notable irony in the fact that today, March 11, 2021, the US Senate voted to end debate on President Biden’s nominee for Interior Secretary: US Representative Deb Haaland, a New Mexico Democrat who would be the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history. The Senate is expected to confirm her nomination early next week.
The long-overdue milestone reflects the nation’s history of poor relations with Native Americans. In their own way, the earliest stamps to portray Native Americans – which collectively are today’s #stampoftheday – also illustrate the ways we as a country have ignored the reality of Native American lives and culture.
The first stamp to portray a Native American was a 10-cent stamp that was one of 16 stamps issued in conjunction with an Chicago’s 1893 World Columbian Exposition, an international fair celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World. The series, which was used to advertise the event, was the first time postage stamps were used to promote a commercial event. As the stamp says, it shows “Columbus Presenting Natives” he brought back from the New World to present to Spain’s rulers: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (who was the first woman to appear on a US stamp).
The Columbus series of stamps represented a major change in stamps, which the US had been using since 1847. Before the Columbus series, all previous 229 stamps had pictured “dead white men”—presidents, a few senators and cabinet secretaries, and some famous generals and naval commanders. (Many key figures – such as Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln appeared on many of different stamps; others, such as Winfred Scott appeared just once.)
In the mid 1890s, the Post Office issued more stamps featuring “dead white men.” But 1898, it again worked with promoters of a business exposition, this time issuing a series of 9 stamps issued in conjunction with the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, whose purpose was to further the progress and development of natural resources west of the Mississippi River. Those stamps featured a series of scenes from the American heartland, including a 4-cent stamp showing as, the stamp noted, an “Indian Hunting Buffalo.” Just as Columbus, not the “natives” was the focus of the 1893 stamp, the buffalo, not the Indian, was the dominant image in the 1898 stamp.
It took 25 years for a Native American to be the focus of a stamp. In 1923, a 14-cent stamp portrayed Hollow Horn Bear, a Brule Sioux Indian chief who in the late 1800s and early 1900s had worked hard to protect the rights of Native Americans. The stamp was part of a series of 25 stamps, issued between 1922 and 1925, that mainly featured “dead white men,” but also included a stamps picturing Martha Washington, the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate, Niagara Falls, a buffalo, the amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capital, and the statue of freedom that stands on top of the capital. However, unlike every other person portrayed in the series, Hollos Horn Bear is not identified on the stamp. Rather, the text on the stamp says only: “American Indian.”
The poor treatment of Native Americans on stamps reflects the nation’s poor treatment of Native Americans and the BIA’s less than stellar history. While that’s beyond the scope of this post, I note that in a speech given in 2000 as part of a ceremony commemorating BIA’s 175th anniversary, Kevin Gover, a Pawnee Indian who headed BIA in the Clinton Administration, apologized for the agency’s “legacy of racism and inhumanity” that included massacres, forced relocations of tribes and attempts to wipe out Indian languages and cultures.
Gover, who is now director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, observed that the event was not an occasion for celebration, but a time for reflection and contrition. According to a BIA press release issued at the time, he also “pointed out that the agency’s lengthy cultural assault on American Indians and Alaska Natives for most of its history, particularly on the children sent to BIA boarding schools and their parents, has yielded a trauma of shame, fear, and anger that has passed from generation to generation fueling the alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence that continues to plague Indian country.”
“We desperately wish that we could change this history, but of course we cannot” said Gover, who like many of the 300 people at the event, was often choking back tears. “On behalf of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I extend this formal apology to Indian people for the historical conduct of this agency.”
“These wrongs must be acknowledged if the healing is to begin,” noted Grover, who added, “the Bureau of Indian Affairs was born in 1824 in a time of war on Indian people. May it live in the year 2000 and beyond as an instrument of their prosperity.” Hopefully, when Rep. Haaland becomes Secretary Haaland, that process will move forward.
Stay safe, be well, help the healing begin, fight for justice, and work for peace.