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KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Delivered by Judge N. B. Johnson, President, Cherokee, before the National Convention of American Indians held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, December 4 - 6, 1947. 

Fellow delegates, distinguished guests and friends. We have assembled here in the Fourth Annual Convention of the NCAI, having completed the most successful year of our existence. When I have reviewed the record, giving you the highlights only because others who will follow, will paint in the details of the year's successes, I know that you will agree with me. 

It may be more appropriate to speak of this as the year that prepared the way for what is next to come. For we are in fact about to start our greatest undertakings. Of these too we will have more to say. 

The registrations show that 150 delegates or observers are here, representing 50 TRIBES. In all, perhaps more than 150 Indians see and hear and speak through your eyes, ears, and lips. To our white friends, that may mean little or much, depending on how well they understand our Indian history. 

Let me try to tell our white friends across the Nation a little of what this gathering means. The Indian people never moved in massed numbers. Free peoples in history never cared for thundering armies, and the Indians were a free people per excellence. Think of some of the famous Indian leaders and their followings. Of King Phillip and the scattered remnants of the New England tribes, coming uncomfortably close to destroying the colonists in Massachusetts. Of Pontiac with never more than 450 fighters laying siege to the British fort at Detroit, and for six months fighting off every effort to raise the siege. Black Hawk, fighting engagement after engagement, with never more than forty or fifty men. Captain Jack, the Modoc, with fifty warriors in the Lava Bods of Oregon holding off regular Army troops numbering 1000 or more. And Joseph, the great Nez Perce, fighting a running fight that covered almost 2000 in all, with fewer than 300 warriors and an equal number of women and children to protect. 

The earliest and possibly the greatest of the armies put together by our Indian ancestors was that which the Pueblo people here in this Rio Grande Valley called together in 1680 to expel the tyrannical Spaniards. I have never seen an estimate of the total number of Indians who participated in the uprising led by Pope of San Juan Pueblo. History tells us that every one of the Pueblos joined, perhaps the first time in history when they all came together in a common cause. That may be only what the white men tell us and maybe the Indians have a different tradition of how they acted in times past. We know, at any rate, that the effort was successful. The pueblos rose as one man, even coming together ahead of the agreed on plan when word leaked out prematurely, and they drove the Spaniards completely out of their country. This was 

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