Rumble and the history of Native Americans

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World.

The Film released in 2017

Directed by Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana

The other evening I was looking for a film to see and stumbled upon the documentary, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World. Viewing this film was, for me, a stunning experience.

While I’m not a musician, I’ve been fascinated by the history of music. When we look at the superstars that include Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, we can trace their roots to the Mississippi Delta that today is one of the most indigent areas of the United States. When we listen to the polyrhythms of Bo Diddley or Dizzy Gillespie we are also listening to the African polyrhythms that have emanated from Cuba. 

In the film Rumble I discovered that Native American music is at the very core of much of the music we listen to today. Clearly the music of Africa developed in this country was the primary influence of much of the music we listen to. However, the film Rumble gives us a glimmer of just how influential Native American music has been.

The educational system in the United States has, for the most part, ignored the history of Native Americans. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I might have seen a hundred films that had a stereotypical image of Native Americans.

Typically these films showed a wagon train where seemingly amiable settlers shot at seemingly ruthless Native Americans. One after another of those Native Americans were murdered as if they were merely target practice.

In reality, there were about 250,000 settlers who travelled on wagon trains to the West. Out of that number, the estimates are that 300 settlers and 400 Native Americans died as a result of hostilities.

  

In my opinion, the history of this country cannot be understood without a knowledge of at least the outlines of this history. So, before I look at the film Rumble I’m going to give a brief history of Native Americans that will underscore why their music is so compelling.

American Indian Contributions to the World

Before we look at the history of Native Americans, I think it is useful to look at the many contributions they have made to the world. Most of these contributions are unknown to most people. An excellent source for this information is: American Indian Contributions to the World – 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield.

Agriculture: We can begin by thinking about the food we eat today. Beef, chickens, pork, and even farm-raised fish usually have a diet based on corn. Literally millions of acres in the United States are used for the production of corn. Natural corn is about one or two inches long. The corn we eat today is the result of breeding by Native Americans over a period of many years. Corn, squash, and beans were the three foods at the center of several Native American cultures.

Potatoes are also a staple of the diet in this country. The Incas as well as other Native Americans of the Andes Mountains raised literally hundreds of varieties of potatoes. One cause of the horrendous Irish potato famine was because the British colonizers in Ireland failed to use the Inca methods of farming potatoes.

We normally think of spaghetti and tomato sauce to be an Italian creation. The facts are that the noodles used in spaghetti came from Marco Polo who found the recipe in his travels to China. Europeans first learned of tomatoes with their explorations in the Western Hemisphere.

While Europeans knew of cotton, they oftentimes wore woolen garments because the cotton they used was difficult to manufacture. The cotton used by Native Americans contributed to the widespread use of this material, as well as the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Medicine: While the European colonists were colonists were more advanced in their methods of warfare, Native Americans were more advanced with respect to agriculture and medical care. The Spanish went to Aztec doctors because they employed much more sophisticated methods.

Native Americans studied hundreds of plants and their effects on a wide variety of diseases. Today there are about 200 medicines that utilize plants that Native Americans studied to treat illnesses.

Women: The role of women in Native American societies was completely different from what we see today. Men, in these societies were usually the hunters. Women did most of the other work. This included farming, gathering of water and construction materials, medical care, as well as construction.

Because women’s work in these societies was so important, they commanded a considerable amount of respect. Lewis Henry Morgan lived with the Iroquois in New York and observed that the women organized themselves into a group called the clan mothers. The sachems were the leaders of the Iroquois and if the clan mothers disapproved of a sachem, they had the power to remove this person from their position.

Communal organization: Native American societies clearly were not utopias. There was inter-tribal warfare and the people didn’t have a very long life expectancy. However, everything in these societies was shared. Within a given tribe there usually was no class of people who had everything as well as another class who struggled to merely survive.

Many of these tribes routinely travelled long distances in order to have the food they needed. This communal nature of the Indian world was the primary source of the conflict that erupted with European settlers.

For these settlers private property was the norm. The idea of sharing wealth with everyone was inconceivable to those who held power.

We can see this conflict in what we learned in school as the purchase of Manhattan Island. Manhattan is a Native American word. I was taught in school that Europeans outsmarted the Natives when they purchased Manhattan for a few trinkets.

For the Native American, the idea of owning land was inconceivable. The land was there to be lived on. Indians routinely offered goods for the right to travel through the lands of another tribe. These were acts of friendship and not acts of conquest.

A history of genocide

During the revolution of the thirteen colonies most Black people as well as Native Americans fought with the British. The idea was that while the revolution would advance the interests of the colonists, this same revolution would strengthen slavery as well as the wars against the first inhabitants to live on this land.

By 1830 the United States government adopted the Indian Removal Act. This law required all Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River to move to the Indian Territory that is now the state of Oklahoma. Thousands of Cherokee died in the forced march from their homeland in Georgia to Oklahoma known as the Trail of Tears. As we know, the U.S. government also broke this agreement and eventually confiscated Indian land in Oklahoma.

President Abraham Lincoln who is known as the Great Emancipator signed the order for the largest mass execution in the history of the United States. This was his order to execute 38 Dakota people in Minnesota.

Philip Henry Sheridan was one of Lincoln’s top generals. Sheridan reflected the thinking of the Lincoln and Grant Presidential administrations when he argued that: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

By the year 1890, U.S. troops murdered hundreds of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. The so-called crime of these Lakota people was to engage in dancing the Ghost Dance where Indians imagined that this dance would free them from foreign domination.

We should consider that the very First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States argues that freedom of religion as well as freedom of speech is the law. We might also consider that the murder of hundreds of these Lakota people was only the first step in denying the Native American influence to the musical heritage of this country.

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World

We might consider that the tribal societies in the Western Hemisphere as well as Africa had no television. Every evening they entertained themselves with music. For them, the only reason to perform music was to also dance. In many of these societies there was no word for music or dance. These communities understood that literally everyone participated in the music and dance that might go on every day.

I believe that the music and dance styles of Black people as well as Native Americans were not merely repetitions of those styles before European contact. Slavery as well as the genocide against Native Americans also influenced the music we hear today.

One of the commentators in the film Rumble argued that most of the Africans who were kidnapped and transported to the Western Hemisphere were men. Many of these men would father children with Native American women. This was one source the mixture of the African and Native American cultures.

The film Rumble begins by introducing the life of Link Wray. Link Wray was Shawnee and was born in the state of North Carolina. Tecumseh was also Shawnee and became one of the most influential Native American leaders.

Three of the songs Link Wray wrote were named for the Native American nations of Shawnee, Apache, and Comanche. His breakout hit was Rumble.

Rumble was the hit that transformed the rockabilly sound of the past into the rock & roll sounds we listen to today. One artist argued that any rock guitarist who doesn’t think that he or she was influenced by Link Wray is lying.

Rumble had such a profound effect that it was banned in Massachusetts (The state has an Indian name) and New York. The authorities felt that the song Rumble would contribute to gang violence. Rumble was an instrumental piece that had no words.

Another featured artist on this film was Charley Patton. Patton might have been of the Choctaw nation and was one of the original blues artists. Chester Arthur Burnett known as Howlin’ Wolf acknowledged that he learned to play the guitar from Charley Patton on a cotton plantation. Howlin’ Wolf would in turn influence the Rolling Stones as well as many of the rock musicians of that era.

One of the most moving scenes in the film Rumble was with Pura Fé who is Tuscarora-Taino. Pura Fé listened to a record of Charley Patton recorded many years ago. Pura Fé is a Native American singer who was familiar with the melodies and rhythms of Patton’s music. She learned this music from a lifetime of singing this music with other Native Americans. While she might have never listened to Patton’s music before, she was comfortable singing these melodies.

Mildred Bailey was another artist featured in the film Rumble. Bailey was Coeur d’Alene, was born in Washington state, and raised near the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Idaho. Bailey sang with Paul Whiteman and Bennie Goodman and became known as Ms. Swing.

Tony Bennett, at the age of 88 talked about how Mildred Bailey influenced him. He said that as a young teenager and aspiring singer, Mildred Bailey was the only song stylist he listened to. Frank Sinatra also argued that Bailey was one of his major influences.

Bing Cosby performed with Bailey’s younger brother Al Rinker in a trio called The Rhythm Boys.

Aaron Neville, along with the Neville Brothers has become one of the most influential groups of their era. Aaron Neville was one of the artist featured in Rumble and said he was a descendent of Choctaw and Haitian ancestry.

With the Haitian Revolution in the early years of the 19^th century, many slave owners from that island brought their slaves to Cuba. Then with Napoleon’s invasion of Spain, the French people who lived in Eastern Cuba were expelled and moved to New Orleans. This history explains the Cuban, Haitian, French, and Native American influences of New Orleans. Aaron Neville calls this mixture a Gumbo that characterizes what New Orleans is today.

Every year New Orleans is known for it’s Marti Gras. In the predominantly Black sections of the city, there is a celebration of all of the influences that make New Orleans unique. A considerable amount or work goes into making costumes made of brightly colored feathers. These costumes represent the Native American influence of the city.

The Grandmother of Jimi Hendrix was Cherokee. It was this grandmother that introduced Hendrix to music, and he was proud of his Native American heritage.

At the famous concert at Woodstock in New York, Jimi Hendrix performed his version of the Star Spangled Banner known as the National Anthem of the United States. In Hendrix’s version of the anthem, I believe he transformed the triumphant theme of this song, into a theme that represented over 100 years of genocide against Native Americans.

Robbie Robertson was raised on the Six Nation Reservation in Ontario, Canada. Growing up on the reservation he was surrounded by music and had dreams of becoming a rock and roll star. He stared his career playing with a band in Toronto, Canada, and eventually became the lead guitarist for Bob Dylan.

Robertson is most noted for his work with the group called The Band. He collaborated with Martin Scorsese on several of his films. Robertson is also a strong supporter of Leonard Peltier, of the Oglala nation, who has spent several decades in prison on framed up charges of murder.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in Canada and is of the Cree nation. She was raised in Massachusetts. Sainte- Marie gravitated to the anti-war and civil rights movements and became one of the most popular folk singers of that generation. She was blacklisted in this country and prevented from earning a living.

Years after her blacklisting, she learned that it was President Lyndon B. Johnson who wrote to radio stations encouraging them to not broadcast her music. President Richard Nixon also worked to blacklist Buffy Sainte-Marie.

So, we can see that the effort to suppress Native American music has a long history in this country. We can also see from this film that this same music has provided the roots to much of the music we listen to every day.

Some of the artists featured in the film Rumble that I didn’t mention are: Jessie Ed Davis, the group Redbone, and Randy Castillo.

Yes, there are many influences that have contributed to the culture we experience in the United States. This blog attempts to show that without a knowledge of the history of the first inhabitants of this land, we will never be able to truly understand what our real heritage is today.