Born in 1880 Laura Cornelia Kellogg was an activist and advocate for Native American rights. She devoted her life to speaking about the social and political issues faced by indigenous communities. Kellogg played an important role in the Society of American Indians, the first national organization advocating for Native American rights. Her efforts focused on promoting cultural preservation and fair representation for Native Americans. Her commitment to social justice also led her to work on issues such as suffrage and women's rights.
Kellogg was also a poet, playwrite, politcal essayist, and short story writer. “A Tribute to the Future of My Race” is her only known surviving poem.
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Laura Cornelius Kellogg: Reclaiming an Indigenous Visionary
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The following article contains outdated language that some may find offensive
First American Mothers had “Votes for Women”
Laura Kellogg, Daughter of Long Line of Indian Chiefs, Laughs at the Old Idea of the Down-trodden Squaw
1“The earth is our mother. From her breasts have we drawn life. The earth is a woman. Deprive woman of rights given to men? Oh, no; we have never done that.”
It was in these words that one of the wise old men of her clan answered Laura Cornelius Kellogg a year of so ago, when she asked him what he thought of the present day agitation for woman suffrage, and it is these words that Mrs. Kellogg, the prominent Indian woman who is now in Washington working at her own expense in behalf of her people, quotes when you ask her what is her attitude, as an Indian woman, on this much-mooted question.
“We Indian woman have always had equal suffrage,” she says proudly, and those magnetic, dark eyes of hers seemed filled with new light and enthusiasm as she says it. “The matron in the Indian tribe had equal rights in the council with the men. Next to the chieftain, no one in the tribe had so much power as the matron, for it was through her that descent was traced. Among white folk, of course, kinship is counted through the man. You take your name from the male head of your family, while among the Indians the name and bond of kinship is taken through the female head of the family. All members of one clan are descended from the same ancestress, and this mother of the clan is respected with the greatest reverence by her descendants.
“The Indian girl is trained to the same sports as her brothers. As a child I practiced archery with my brothers, and I could shoot as straight an arrow as they. I rode with the best of them, and I thought nothing of taking a trip of 500 miles across hills and mountains. That is how I travel now, too. Others go in the agent’s automobile while visiting the Indian reservations. But I am a real Indian woman, so I go horseback.
“the Idea that the Indian woman was nothing but a beast of burden, a slave of her husband, is, like a good many other ideas in circulation about the Indians, a mere fiction. The word squaw was not known till the white traders came among us. It is not a pure Indian word but a corruption of some provincial expression. The idea that many white people have of the Indian woman being a slave to her husband, who waits on him hand and foot, and acts as his hunting dog to fetch the game that he has shot down is no more true to the facts than it would be to assume that all you American women were kitchen drudges, just because a few of you do have to spend your lives in a hopeless maze of housework.
“More than once the Indians have fought out long feuds because of the white settlers dared to call our women ‘squaws.’ We women have always had equal civil powers with the men. And it is a cause of astonishment to us that you white women are only now, in this twentieth century, claiming what has been the Indian woman’s privilege as far back as history traces.”
Laura Cornelius Kellogg, or Mrs. O. J. Kellogg, passed her girlhood on the Oneida reservation, in Wisconsin. As a members of the head chieftains’ family she early shared in the feeling of responsibility for her people that her ancestors had always assumed. It was her girlhood dream to do something to help her people whom she saw more and more misrepresented and misunderstood.
“it was from the old men of the tribe that I got my earliest inspiration. I talked to them and I studied what they told me. They taught me the old traditions and the old wisdom of the days before the white man had come. As a child I never went to the government schools and I am glad I didn’t for in learning from the old Indians I had an opportunity to absorb all that true spirit of the Indian that our young people educated away from their tribe came never know. I am confident that I learned as much from these untutored Indian men as I ever learned from all the universities which I attended in this country or in Europe.”
As part of her preparation of her work for her people Miss Cornelius graduated from Radcliffe College and spent several years in European universities studying anthropology, sociology, and law., and whatever she felt could aid her in her undertaking. There were no half-way measures in the way that she intended to bring about her dream.
Mrs. Kellogg is now in Washington with her husband and together they are working out their dream. With his help, Mrs. Kellogg has now had more influence in legislation toward Indian reform than any other person who every went into Indian work. It is her aim to help the Indian to help himself. She does not want to make a “pinch-back white man” out of him, but to work out some system whereby he can work out his own salvation. And Mrs. Kellogg is not much more than a girl now. There are many, many years before her to carry out her great dream for her people.
To see Laura Cornelius Kellogg is to have confidence that she will succeed in this day dream of hers. There is fortitude and courage written line very line of her face and of her tall athletic form. From having traveled much and from many universities and many achievements Mrs. Kellogg gives you the impression of one who is thoroughly conversant with the ways of the white man’s civilization. She is rather more at home in the white man’s world than the white man himself. Then, as you are talking to her, when your conversation touches on some question near to this Indian woman’s heart, a light comes into her dark eyes, a look of intensity comes to the surface in her face, and you are aware that you are talking to a woman who is not of your race—but of a race of women which drew its inspiration direct from the heart of the wood, from the clear skies and the open air—a race of women that roamed the country free before our ancestors had set foot on the land that we now call home.
A Tribute to the Future of My Race
Not a song of golden “Greek,”
Wafted from Aegean shores,
Not from an Olympian height
Come my simple syllables:
But from the northern of Wisconsin,
From the land of the Oneidas,
From the chieftain clan Cornelius,
From the friendly Iroquois
Comes the greeting of the wampum
And a tribute, humble, simple,
From the pines’ soft, lingering murmurs,
From the “pleasant water courses,”
From the morn-kissed, mighty highlands,
From the breezes and the flowers
Nodding secrets to each other,
From the din of metropolitans,
From the wisdom of their sages,
I have caught this sage’s epic.
Ye who love the haunts of nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches
And the rushing of great rivers
Thro’ their palisades of pine trees,
Ye whose hearts are kind and simple,
Who have faith in God and nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings,
For the good they comprehend not.
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in that darkness
Touch God’s right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened.
Ye, who sometimes in your rambles
Thro’ the green lanes of the country
Pause by some neglected graveyard
For awhile to muse and ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Writ with little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, yet each letter,
Full of hope, and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the here and the hereafter—
Stay ye, hear this rude-put story
Of the future of a nation.
Many moons have waxed and waned
Since their chieftain clans were numbered,
Since from seas of rising sun
To the far coast of her setting,
From the white bear’s colder regions
To the high-noon of their borders
Roamed an infant, warrior people,
A whole continent their own!
Ah, who were they? All barbarians? Were they men?
Without legend or tradition,
Without heroes, gods, religion,
Without thought of the hereafter?
Did they enter nature’s gardens—
In her temples of the forest
With their warriors’ hearts unmelted?
Did they tread her wreathed pathways
Without learning tenderness?
Did they see the roses’ dew-drop
And not wonder whence it came from?
And traced savage eyes the hemlock
Without learning majesty?
Is it nature’s law to teach not?
Ah, too often do we think not
That the human race for ages
Suffer countless throes, upheavals,
Ere they blossom beauteous.
But to day my epic telleth
Not the lore of idle camp-fire,
Not the past so buried deeply
’Neath the mound of gracious kindness,
But of beauteous enlightenment.
Who has made it? Who will make it?
That the golden sun of freedom
May shine brighter and still further
Till our glorious America
Be the world’s salvation—haven.
Ah, I’ve seen her high-born heroes
Who’ve attained life’s highest summits,
Stretch their hands to weary climbers
Without thought of race or color,
That a man may yet be saved!
And among the foot-sore climbers
I’ve beheld a stoic brother
Climbing silently and slowly,
All unnoticed, all alone?
Till perchance, he puts his step where
In a moment he has lost it.
Then the world’s quick recognition!
“He has fallen! He has fallen!”
Hark! a voice from yonder summit—
He is up, and tries again.
And—I can’t tell how I know it—
But two guardian angels’ trumpets
Blow against the gate of heaven,
And their descending volumes turn
To earth’s bright gladness and her flowers.
Then another rises onward
With chieftain fire in his eyes.
I see him mount unmindful
Of the rocks and sounds of way
Till at length I see him reach it,
And he, too, stand among
The heroes of that band!
So for him who mounts through
All the hardships of the mountainside.
I pray, to him give patience,
For, what the future holds
In the imperial sway of Time
No man can tell. No sentence
Without first indubious conviction
And, ere conviction, just chances, give.
And, oh, ye sons of Tonner hall
And all ye daughters, true,
Ye have it in your power to say
Of what, and when a race shall be;
Ye spring from noble warrior blood,
As brave as Saxon, Roman, Greek,
And the age that waits upon you all
Has begot a race of kingly men.
May your careers be as complete
As the arches of your mater halls,
And when the noon of mankind comes
May it find you all more nearly
With the noblest offspring
Of our dear, great land,
Such as Smiley, Pratt and Garrett,
Such as—oh, a thousand more
Along your young paths daily known!
Ah, they’ve taught us, we’ll remember
Beauteous enlightenment,
Then to each with one accord
We will extend the wampum strand
Made of friendships, purest pearl,
Made of gratitude, deep-rooted,
Made to last eternal summers.
Yea, the hearts’ right hand we give them,
Blue-eyed Royalty American,
Theirs, our native land forever,
Ours their presence and their teachings.
Ours the noblest and the best.
"First American Mothers had ‘Votes for Women’” (Feb 16, 1915). The Washington Herald