120
saint) in 2016.
6. Holtom (1941:46) notes, “Like the ancient Greeks and Germans, as well as
people elsewhere, the early Japanese ‘deifi ed’ their swords and gave them
kami names,” as they were believed to possess spiritual powers.
7. Hartley and Buttweiler (1976:unpaginated) note: “Commodore Matthew
Perry’s journals refer to a number of swords that were presented to the
President at that time. In addition, a fi ne sword was presented to Perry
himself (now in the Smithsonian Institution) and others to members of his
crew and staff. One of these, a blade signed Hizen no Kuni Kawachi no
Kami Fujiwara Masahiro, in tachi mounts, was presented to Major Jacob
Zeilen and is now on display in the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico,
Virginia. Others were given to other individuals. Similarly, blades of
quality were presented to other heads of state, as, for example, a tachi by
Magoroku Kanemoto, which was presented to Queen Victoria by Shogun
Iemochi in 1860, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.” See also
Houchins 1995.
8. Takarabe (2000) notes that the Mission’s three diplomats, Ambassador
Shinmi Masaoki, Vice-Ambassador Muragaki Norimasa, and Censor
Counselor Oguri Tadamasa, were the fi rst offi cial visitors to the U.S.,
FEATURE
January 24, 1826, of a new treaty of peace and land cession with the
powerful Creek Confederacy, he had sent Little Prince, chief of the Creek
delegation, a special message to accompany the presents commissioned by
President John Quincy Adams. The letter referred explicitly to the sword as
a “badge of honor”: “Brother, the Secretary of War sends to you by the
President’s directions a cloak bound with silver lace, and a sword and twelve
silver medals, and twelve fl ags. … The cloak is to keep you warm and dry
and make you live long; and the sword is a badge of honor, and the medals
are sent to you to be put, by your own hand around the necks of your
faithful and true chiefs ...” (Thomas L. McKenney, cited in Prucha 1971:56).
3. McKenney noted that Tokacou and his fellow warriors were strict
disciplinarians of great authority. “This is especially observable on the arrival
of a white man, or a party of whites, at their village. If these persons take
the strangers under their protection, no one presumes to molest them: if
the sword or the war-club of one of them is seen at the door of the white
man’s lodge, the sign is well understood, and no Indian ventures to intrude”
(McKenney and Hall 1836–1844, in Horan 1972:154). This may be why,
like his younger tribesman, this Yankton chief also “was painted holding his
sword of authority” (ibid.). Like Maukaushka’s (fi g. 7), Tokacou’s face too is
partially painted with vermillion, indicating his warrior status.
4. The story had a tragic ending. Upon his return among his people, The Light
became the target of ridicule and envy. He was accused of lying about what
he had seen during his travels to Washington and was killed by a fellow
tribesman (Ewers 1956).
5. Under President Grant’s Peace Policy, religious denominations were assigned
to different reservations for education and missionization, and Pine Ridge
was assigned to the Episcopal Church. However, Red Cloud opposed them
and succeeded in installing Black Robes (Jesuit Catholic priests) at Pine Ridge,
opening there, with the help of Franciscan nuns, the Holy Rosary Mission—
later renamed the Red Cloud Indian School (see Enochs 1966). Among
other famous Oglala converts is the medicine man Black Elk (1863–1950),
internationally known authority on Native American religion (Niedardt 1932),
who became a Catholic catechist and for whom the diocese of Rapid City,
South Dakota, began seeking beatifi cation (a step toward canonization as a
and were accompanied by seventeen offi cials, fi fty-one servants, and six
cooks, most of whom were samurai. The delegation members were also the
fi rst Japanese visitors ever to the Smithsonian Castle (at the time the only
building of the recently established Institution), where Commodore Perry
had already deposited a variety of objects collected during his mission in
Japan.
9. Brady later gained fame, especially for his photography during the Civil War
(Wilson 2014).
10. Mori described his gift in a letter to Secretary Belknap, quoted here at
length: “I have the honor to ask your acceptance of the accompanying
Japanese sword, to be deposited in the Military Museum attached to your
Department. It has hitherto been worn by one of the provincial offi cials
of Japan, who is now travelling in this country. He brought it with him,
because of his former devotion to the ancient custom of wearing that
weapon in duplicate; but having, since his arrival here, been convinced of
the uselessness of that custom, he thought proper to present the weapon
to me. And if you will pardon me, I may add that the signifi cance of this
act on the part of my friend (Mr. Kondo) is enhanced by the fact that the
original proposition for abolishing the wearing of two swords was submitted
in the Japanese Parliament by myself, and that Mr. Kondo was one of those
who, at that time, deprecated my proposition. It may be well enough for
me to add that the blade of this sword was manufactured more than three
hundred years ago, and that the metal is considered far more valuable than
that employed in modern times” (quoted in Lanman 1872:42).
11. Interestingly, by this time the Japanese had their own relatively wellestablished
art form of life-size, hyper-realistic manikin production known
as iki ningyo, or “living dolls” (Pontsioen 2018: 186–188), and it is
possible that members of the Iwakura Mission may have known about or
contributed to the creation of the Smithsonian warrior manikin. Although
the Iwakura provenance for the manikin’s armor is not defi nitive, there is
indeed reason to think that the manikin itself might have been produced
at approximately the time of the Iwakura Mission. In the Smithsonian
Institution daybook fi scal records for August 13, 1872, there is an entry
for $50 paid to the sculptor Sidney Moulthrop for modeling the head of
a Japanese. That model, in all likelihood, became the head of the manikin
photographed the following year (Joanna Scherer 2010, unpublished note
NOTES
1. In New England, Algonquian-speaking Narragansett referred to the fi rst
Englishmen proper either as Cháuquaquock, “Knifesword-men,” or
Wáutaconûaog, “Coat-men,” terms later expanded to the Dutch, French,
and Scots. These two appellatives were initially used interchangeably, but
eventually the latter term fell into disuse, while reference to the sword
survived along the Atlantic coast and in the interior. Donald Ricky (1998:97)
wrote with reference to the Munsee and Unami, “long years of struggle led
the Delaware to name the American successors to the Europeans Kwunnah
she-kun, or ‘long knives.’” Reference to the sword as a distinctive
weapon and symbol of Euro-American identity quickly spread westward to
the Iroquois, the Ojibwa, and other Algonquian tribes of the Midwest and
the Great Lakes. According to Woodward, among these Northeastern tribes
“Long Knives” originally applied solely to the Virginians. But, as noted, the
word and the edged weapon accompanied the rapidly advancing frontier and
with the affi rmation of a new, truly American identity, soon “all Americans
were included in the epithet, so that ultimately practically all the known tribes
of the West and Midwest knew American soldiers and civilians alike as Long
Knives” (Woodward 1928:65).
2. Thomas L. McKenney, head of the Indian Offi ce of the War Department,
recalled that on the occasion of the solemn signing in Washington, on