Nipo T. Strongheart (May 15, 1891 – December 31, 1966) was an American performer in Wild West shows, technical advisor to Hollywood film producers, and lecturer on the Chautauqua circuit. Throughout his life, which spanned several careers, he was an advocate for Native American issues. He spoke on religious issues several times, and late in life he became a member of the Baháʼí Faith.
Strongheart's mother, Chi-Nach-Lut Schu-Wah-Elks, was reportedly of Native American descent; his father was European American. According to some sources, Strongheart lived with his white father for most of his childhood away from the reservation and Indian culture. Another source says he was adopted after his mother's death by a Yakama woman and brought up and educated in her family on the reservation. Although there was no written proof of his tribal membership, the tribe granted him "honorary" membership and he proudly carried around his card displaying his status. Yakima Nation Media Services, "Nipo Strongheart Chronology", published by the Yakima Nation Cultural Center, 1980s. Strongheart performed with his father in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. His public performances began in 1917, when he was in his twenties and worked for the YMCA War Work Council. He toured military camps across New England, where he gave presentations on Native American culture and praised military service. His recruiting talks encouraged hundreds of men to volunteer for war service. After World War I and his job ended, Strongheart moved briefly to the Yakama Indian Reservation.
He soon left and had a successful career in the Lyceum and Chautauqua circuits of fairs. He gave presentations on Native American culture and often spoke against the problems of life of reservations as enforced by government policy. He played an important role in the development of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans who did not already have it; the bill was signed by President Calvin Coolidge. Strongheart believed the bill would help end reservations and empower Indian culture.
In his early youth, Strongheart had some experience with the fledgling film industry. As the audiences for the lecture circuit declined, he became involved in filmmaking. He was involved in a number of projects in silent film (especially Braveheart) and the developing talkies (Pony Soldier).
He also helped develop or found a number of organizations to support or represent Native Americans, including the Los Angeles Indian Center for urban Indians and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Through Strongheart's involvement in film production, he countered stereotypes about Native Americans; he helped translate movie scripts into the languages of the Native American peoples portrayed. He also dealt with wardrobe and props.
When Strongheart died, his will included provisions for seed money and materials to enable the Yakama Nation to build a library and museum; they developed the Yakama Cultural Center. In 2014 the Yakama established a permanent exhibition about Strongheart. Scholarly interest in him arose in 1997 when researchers were studying military service by Native Americans and in 2006 when other scholars analyzed issues related to portrayal of and participation by Native Americans in the Hollywood film industry.
Biography Named George Mitchell Jr. by his European-American father, also George Mitchell, and later known as Strongheart, the boy was believed to have been born to a Native American mother named Chi-Nach-Lut Schu-Wah-Elks.The tribe has recognized various spellings of his mother's name at various times – see She was also known as Lenora (née Williams) Mitchell. Strongheart's mother reportedly died when he was a young boy.
According to an article in the Encyclopedia of the American Indian in the Twentieth Century, after his mother's death, Strongheart was adopted or raised by one of his mother's relatives for several years, living with them and attending the reservation boarding school at Fort Simcoe. This was in keeping with Yakama tradition.
These biographies—and others—agree that Strongheart and his father were employed as bareback trick riders for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Pawnee Bill traveling shows. Full families, including women and children, were employed by these shows and traveled on tour. They often set up and lived in encampments on the road similar to the traditional Indian camps. In a sense this helped them preserve their culture at a time when it was being suppressed elsewhere. One biography states that he acquired the name Nipo (short for Nee-Ha-Pouw) during a show after he fainted and regained consciousness. It was as if he had risen from the dead, and the name is interpreted as "he lives!" or the imperative "live!" He added "Nipo" to his Yakama name, Chtu-Tum-Nah, which he translated as "Strongheart". Another biography states that the name "Nipo" was given to Strongheart in his infancy by his adoptive mother.
At some point his official status as a member of the Yakama Nation ended. At a performance in 1927, he said that when his military service ended, he had been given the choice of returning to the reservation or losing his tribal rights. He did return but soon left the reservation again.
In the 1930s, when the government was encouraging tribes to reorganize their governments under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Strongheart attempted to document his Yakama lineage.
Strongheart was an honorary member of the Yakama tribe during the administration of the 1946 Yakima Enrollment Act after having helped the Tomaskin family. Leonard Tomaskin would have been 22 years old in 1946. Some 22 years later, he was elected Chairman of the General Council of the Yakama Nation, their tribal government, serving from 1968 to 1983.
Strongheart wrote an article in 1954 that dates his involvement in what he called "historical ethnological studies" to around 1905, perhaps between seasons of the Buffalo Bill show. He claimed to have attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have participated in a Lubin film company production of the silent film The White Chief.For more on the movie see Because he spoke enough English and a smattering of other Indian languages to act as a translator, he played a crucial role as a liaison between the non-Indian production staff and the Indian children they had picked for the movie.
In 1910, Strongheart was reported to be in Oklahoma, which had recently been admitted to the Union. He was serving in the 5th Cavalry Regiment during the period of the United States' Border War (1910–1919) with Mexico, when it was engulfed in its own civil war. In 1910–12, he again worked in the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Pawnee Bill traveling shows as a bareback trick rider.
Later newspaper coverage reports that Strongheart was serving in the military in the West in 1914; it may have been with the 16th Infantry Regiment, which was stationed there. Strongheart was reportedly wounded and his service ended.
Strongheart said that in 1915 he advised David Belasco on the story used in the production of the silent film Heart of Wetona (1919), played the part of Nipo the Medicine Man, and appeared on stage between acts to tell the audience a portion of the true story. A May 1916 Logansport, Indiana newspaper article reported an Indian actor named Strongheart in connection with a silent movie variously named Indiana, Historic Indiana, or The Birth of Indiana, which was released in mid-1916.
In 1916, Strongheart joined the Society of American Indians, a progressive group composed mostly of Native Americans. It was organized to improve health, education, civil rights, and local government, and address the problems they faced.
YMCA War Work Council On May 18, 1917, a person referred to as "George Strongheart" tried to volunteer for service in Roosevelt's World War I volunteers as "an expert rider, a sharpshooter and wanted to go in any capacity". Reportedly he was refused the chance to serve further because he was wounded. The attempt to form what were known as the Roosevelt Roster failed. The Sixteenth Infantry was committed to fight in World War I in France, leaving in June 1917.
For World War I, Strongheart was employed by the YMCA War Work Council, which was established in May 1917 supporting the Red Cross, Liberty Loan and Thrift Stamp projects in support of the war effort. He toured the eastern United States giving talks to support the war effort and encourage enlistment, apparently with some success. He discussed the injustice of foreigners being granted citizenship through naturalization only after a few years of residence while Indians on the reservations, whose ancestors had been on the continent for thousands of years, were not given "the same liberty and power". (This was prior to passage of the citizenship act.)
During this work, he was presented as "Chief Strongheart", with a false lineage.See and He went on to tour over 200 soldiers' camps. Several of the events were reported in newspapers. A part of his 1919 presentation about Indians, who he said "invented" camouflage, was picked up in several newspapers. Newspapers also reported that he returned to Yakama in February 1919. He was back in the New York area in early 1920. Around 1920, he married Inez Wiley, daughter of a Calusa nation chief, in accordance with tribal custom and law, as arranged by her father. As early as 1919 Strongheart knew of Melville Clyde Kelly and his efforts in Congress on behalf of Indians, even though Kelly had no Indian constituents or political relationships with Indians. In December 1920 Strongheart met with the Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioner, Cato Sells, but did not find a partner in advocacy for change.
Lyceum and Chautauqua Strongheart had read The Discards by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, which dealt with troubles among Indians in the Pacific Northwest, around January 17, 1921. He wrote to McWhorter and told him of his commitment to help the Indians and teach non-Indian audiences about their culture and their contributions to their country. Strongheart and McWhorter carried on a correspondence until the latter died in 1944.
Beginning in 1921, Strongheart embarked on an extended series of lectures-cum-performances as part of the Lyceum and Chautauqua fairs held across the United States. The Lyceum movement " ... reflected the increasing value Americans placed on public education ... [and] became a site for public discussion, debate, and controversy." Chautauqua events were called "the most American thing in America" and according to Andrew C. Rieser, were tailored to "appeal to the patriotic, churchgoing, white, native-born, mostly Protestant, northern and Midwestern middle classes". His tour included Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. One of Strongheart's programs, entitled "From Peace Pipe to War Trail and Back Again", highlighted the "nobility, patience, inherent goodness, romance, traditions, faith and suffering of his people". Other programs he developed were "Tales of the First Americans", "The Past and Present of a Vanishing Race" – in which he dwelt on the effects of many decades under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, – and "My People the Yakima". Each lasted between one and two hours.