By 1890, the keeper of the United States Census declared that the country’s frontier no longer existed. Even the more remote areas of the West contained pockets of Western European settlement. This unending stream of people and goods moving westward took a terrible toll on Native American economies and societies in those regions. The transcontinental railroads and the settlements that sprang up alongside them disrupted traditional migration routes. The railroads also played a role in destroying the bison herds so central to the Plains peoples’ diet and culture. Mining operations, cattle grazing, and large-scale farming took away land and diminished resources. Thousands of Indigenous people succumbed to disease, hunger, and violence as a result of these government-sanctioned policies. Those who survived struggled to retain their autonomy and cultural identity, often living marginal lives on barren and tiny reservations, all that remained to them of their once vast homelands.
Meanwhile, Native Americans in the Northeast continued “hiding in plain sight” by practicing the strategies of integration and anonymity they had developed over the previous century. While most Whites accepted their disappearance as established “fact,” Indigenous peoples worked in a variety of occupations, including farming, logging, and working the high steel in the construction of skyscrapers and bridges. The man and child in this picture are Jesse Bowman and his daughter Marion Flora Bowman. He was an Abenaki logger and farmer who also ran a small general store. Bowman came from a family of basketmakers who sold baskets to tourists in the resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York.
Jesse Bowman lived in an era of deep prejudice against Native Americans and other people of color. A eugenics movement in Vermont and other states targeted Indigenous women in its mission to sterilize people it deemed intellectually inferior or racially undesirable. In a time when it was dangerous to talk about one’s Indigenous ethnicity, Jesse Bowman is remembered for having been amazingly outspoken about his heritage. Marion subsequently would conceal her identity to protect her family. Jesse’s grandchildren, Marge and Joseph Bruchac, are well-known writers and storytellers. They have done a great deal to bring regional Indigenous history to light and to life.
