Gunpandama

Wun-pan-to-mee (the white weasel), a girl; and Tunk-aht-oh-ye (the thunderer), a boy; who are brother and sister. As described by the artist, George Catlin, the two are Kioways (sic)who were purchased from the Osages, to be taken to their tribe by the dragoons (with whom Catlin was traveling in the 1830s-1840s.).

          In the Smithsonian museum there are several buffalo hides inscribed with pictures, pictures of warriors, pictures of soldiers. These hides represent a sixty year history of a band of Kiowa Indians living in western Indian Territory during the early 1800's. One of these hides contains the image of a severed head with a knife sticking into it. On the section of hide representing the following year is the figure of a small girl. That girl's name was Gunpandama.  

(George Catlin recorded the young lady's name as Wun-pan-to-mee but the U.S Bureau of Ethnology spells it Gunpandama.)

          During the migration of the Five Civilized Tribes to Indian Territory in the 1830's there were several failed attempts by the United States' Army to negotiate peace with the dozens of Indian tribes already occupying the area.

          In an attempt to prevent trouble for the migrating Choctaws, two expeditions were sent out in 1832 by the commanding officer of Ft Gibson, Col Matthew Arbuckle, to make contact with the hostile plains Indians. The first group under Captain Jesse Bean was accompanied by the author, Washington Irving, who chronicled the expedition in A tour of the Prairies. The soldiers encountered only friendly tribes, and had to turn back less than halfway into their journey because of winter.

          Later that same year, Col Arbuckle sent another contingent of troops up the Red, Washita and Canadian Rivers, to drive the Comanches and Wichitas west, and to invite their chiefs to come to Ft Gibson where they might be impressed by the power of the United States. The Indians were evidently not impressed. The only contact made by the troops was when a band of Indians rode up and kidnapped one of the rangers, George Abbay. The troops were unable to catch the Indians although they pursued them for 12 days. The soldiers finally ran out of food and had to turn back. The expedition lasted for 54 days. For the last 30 days the men subsisted solely on buffalo meat. 

          In addition to the problem of the western plains tribes, who were not only raiding the Choctaws in the southern part of Indian Territory and plundering with impunity caravans headed west to Santa Fe, there was also a threat to the immigrant tribes in the north, the Osages. The Osage tribe, as I mentioned in my post of 1/1/2011, had been lured into the Arkansas River valley by fur traders during the previous century. Recently the fur trade was waning, and not only that, the Osage were being pushed off their land because U. S. commissioners, due either to ignorance or thoughtlessness, had promised it to the immigrant tribes, the Creeks and Cherokees. The Osage people were starving so they took to raiding Creek and Cherokee farms to feed themselves. The federal government reacted by withholding their annuity, which only increased the problem. 

          In addition to these blunders, the areas promised to the Creek and Cherokee tribes overlapped, so another team of commissioners was sent to revise the treaties and to resolve this three way conflict. This was how Washington Irving came to be invited to go with Captain Bean's expedition. He had come to Indian Territory with one of the commissioners to learn more about the Indians. 

          When the three tribes met, the Osage leaders received no concessions from the commissioners. After hearing the news, a party of warriors, frustrated and furious, rode west over the prairie to take out their fury on their old enemies the Kiowas. After travelling over a hundred miles they came across the trail of a Kiowa hunting party. They followed the trail back to the Kiowa village, and then in a fit of unreasoned rage, massacred all the women, children, and old men that they could catch, and cut off their heads. Kiowa warriors pursued the Osage, but lost them during a heavy rain storm. The Osage returned to their homes with 400 horses, one hundred scalps, and two captives: a twelve year old girl named Gunpandama, and her ten year old brother, Tunkahtohye.

          It's hard to understand this reaction by the Osage, but they were facing a crisis that threatedned their very existence, and they could see no solution. They could no longer live by hunting and trading, and their warriors felt that farming was beneath them, so while they were friendly with the white traders and missionaries who had come to live among them, they still carried on their warlike ways. The Kiowas were also a warlike tribe, and they might have done the same thing to the Osages if they had an opportunity. Also the Kiowa had recently massacred a white trading party, and perhaps the Osage felt that the white soldiers would be grateful to them for avenging their fellow countrymen. The Osage chief Clermont boasted that he never made war on the white man, but never made peace with his Indian enemies. He was following his code.

          Soon the young girl, Gunpandama, faced another tragedy. When the Osage war party returned, and the community around Ft. Gibson became aware of their rampage, one of the traders, Hugh Love, bought Gunpandama and her brother from the Osage with the idea of returning them to the Kiowa in exchange for a trading agreement. Before the two children could be returned however, Gunpandama's brother was killed in a freak accident.  

          The frontier artist, George Catlin, painted the two children before the tragedy. The painting, now displayed at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, shows the little boy and his sister with her arm affectionately around him. Catlin wrote in his journal: "The fine little boy was killed at the fur trader's house on the banks of the Verdigris near Ft. Gibson, the day after I painted his picture. ….He was a beautiful boy of nine or ten years of age, and was killed by a ram, which struck him in the abdomen, and knocking him against a fence, killed him instantly."