Notable Native American Indians “T...-Z...-”
for the social studies classroom and home schoolers.

Maria Tallchief
Tecumseh
Tenskwatawa

Jim Thorpe
Uncas
Nancy Ward

Ballerina Maria Tallchief Performing in Swan Lake, Photographic Print

Maria Tallchief
b. 1-24-1925, Fairfax, OK
d. 4-11-2013; Chicago, IL

Newsweek magazine once called Maria Tallchief “the finest American-born classic ballerina the twentieth century has produced.” She was the first American ballerina to gain international fame. Her lightning speed and the precision of her dancing captured the world's attention.

Maria was born on Oklahoma's Osage Indian Reservation in 1925 to an Osage father and an Irish-Scottish mother. When she was three, her mother recognized her musical talents and arranged piano and dance lessons for her. As a child, Maria practiced both piano and dance for hours every day. She eventually chose to concentrate on ballet, and by age 15, she was dancing solo roles at the legendary Hollywood Bowl. That was only the beginning. In 1927, she joined the New York City Ballet and was a principal dancer there for many years. She is especially remembered for her role in Igor Stravinsky's “Firebird” in 1949, which established her international reputation. as a Native American, she not only sparked respect for Americans in the ballet world, she also broke through racial barriers in a field dominated by white Europeans.

In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower presented Ms. Tallchief with the “Woman of the Year Award.” The Osage Tribal Council named her “Wa-Xthe-Thorba” or “Woman of Two Standards” for her achievements in both the Osage world and the world of other cultures. she retired from performing in 1966, but remains active in the arts, serving today as director of ballet for the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

• Dance posters
• Maria Tallchief DVD

Tecumseh Giclee Print

Tecumseh
b. March 1768; on the Scioto River, near Chillicothe, Ohio
d. 10-5-1813; Ontario, Canada

Tecumseh, a war leader of the Shawnee, rallied various Indian tribes in a mutual defense of their lands, which eventually led to his death in the War of 1812. Cities in the states of Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, are named after Tecumseh, as well as a city the province of Ontario. The Canadians rank Tecumseh 37th in the Greatest Canadian list.

Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman said he was given the middle name Tecumseh because “my father . . . had caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees.”

FYI ~ The word chilicothe is from the Shawnee name Chalahgawtha, meaning “principal town”, as it was a major settlement of the tribe.

Tenskwatawa, Giclee Print Charles Bird King

Tenskwatawa was a Shawnee religious leader known as “The Prophet”, the brother of Techumseh. He advocated return to the ancestral lifestyle of the tribes and a large following and confederacy grew around his prophetic teachings.

The 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, the site of Tenskwatawa's “Prophetstown”, marked a defeat for Techumseh's confederation and a political treasure for future president William Henry Harrison.

Jim Thorpe, American Olympic Athlete, 1930s, Photographic Print

Jim Thorpe
b. 5-28-1888; Oklahoma
d. 3-28-1953; California

Jim Thorpe won Olympic gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon, played football in college and professionally, and played professional baseball and basketball. His Olympic medals, which were taken away because he had accepted payment for playing minor league baseball before the 1912 Olympics, were restored in 1983. He died in poverty.

FYI - Thorpe's Sac and Fox traditional name was Wa-Tho-Huk, meaning “path lighted by great flash of lightning” or, “Bright Path”. His Catholic mother raised him in that faith; after she died his father sent him to Haskell Institute in Lawrence, KS and Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

Uncas

Uncas
b. c. 1588; near Thames River in present day Connecticut
d. c. 1683

Uncas as a sachem, or first chief, of the Mohegans, allied his tribe with the English colonists against other Native American groups.

FYI - James Fenimore Cooper used the name Uncas for the son of Chingachgook in his novel The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757, confusing the names Mohegan and Mohicans.

Beloved Mother: The Story of Nancy Ward

Nancy Ward, Nanyehi
b. 1738; Chota in present day Monroe Co., Tennessee
d. 1822-4

Nanyehi, a Ghigau or Beloved Woman of the Cherokee Nation, is known as Nancy Ward in English. As a Ghigau she sat in councils and made tribal decisions such as sparing the life of a woman white settler who taught Ward to weave on a loom and care for dairy cattle.

White Cloud, Chief of the Iowas, Giclee Print George Catlin

White Cloud, Chief of the Iowas

This portrait of White Cloud, head chief of the Iowa nation, probably was painted in London while the chief was touring with Catlin's Indian Gallery, 1844/45. [National Gallery of Art]

• State of Iowa posters

Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and The Sun Dance Opera

Zitkala-Sa, pen name of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin
b. 2-22-1876; Yankton Indian Reservation, SD
d. 1-26-1938; Washington, DC

Writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin is best know by her pen name Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird).