1950 Mother's Day Tribute to Elizabeth Bender Roe Cloud

Marie Mason Potts often wrote Smoke Signal stories based upon news she found in the national press about Native Americans of note.  This column is based on an announcement that Mrs. Henry Roe Cloud had been named "Oregon Mother" for 1950. It seems likely that the story was particularly important to Potts as both women had connections to the Carlisle (and may well have been there at the same time). 

April 1950 Smoke Signal

Fifteenth Anniversary Dance

While working on a chapter about Marie Potts's participation in the American Indian Chicago Conference, I ran across this front page story about the FIC celebrating its 15th anniversary with a dance at the VFW Memorial Hall in Bryte on March 18, 1961 from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Reading the directions made me wonder what the Mecca Club was like. Is it still there? 

Apologies for the poor quality of this 2nd generation copy 

Kitty Potts Flores (August 9, 1924 - April 1, 1951)

Marie Potts lost her youngest daughter, Kitty Marie "Pumpkin" Potts Flores, on April 1, 1951. Bertha Stewart (Tolowa), Secretary of the FIC,  had worked closely with Kitty for many years and wrote a touching tribute to her as founding editor of the Smoke Signal. Marie Potts, who was elected to the position of Smoke Signal editor in March 1949, added biographical information about her daughter just beneath Bertha Stewart's typescript signature.

Kitty--beloved daughter, wife, and aunt--was laid to rest in East Lawn Cemetery. Her untimely death was clearly a tremendous loss not only to her family, but to the larger world of California Indian activism. 

First Families Exhibit Opens March 7

Valentine's Day

While the Smoke Signal was primarily a vehicle for delivering news about California Indian land claims cases, it also offered holiday greetings and news of upcoming dances and other opportunities for socializing, as seen in these examples drawn from the early 1950s.

Stay tuned (or email me) for information about the West Sacramento Historical Society exhibit "First Families," opening in early March.

Happy New Year

The December 1949 issue of the Smoke Signal offered a New Year's greeting to the membership. Notice the addressee in the upper right-hand corner of this issue.  Edna and Saturino Calac hailed from Rincon Reservation, in San Diego County. Their choice to back the FIC land claim petition (versus that of the Mission Indians) reflects the political potential of social affiliations forged in boarding school contexts, including Stewart and Carlisle. For instance, Marie Potts and Peter Calac (who gained national fame as a member of the school's football team) overlapped at the Carlisle from 1912-1915.

Thanksgiving Soliloquy

In the November 1949 edition of the Smoke Signal, Marie Potts re-published this memento from her years at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. "Thanksgiving Soliloquy" appeared on the last page of  Volume VIII, No.13. Potts (then Marie Mason) attended the Carlisle from September 1912 through May 1915. 

Smoke Signal, Vol. VIII, No. 13., November 1949

"Boys in the Service of U.S."

In Vol. X, No.1 (Dec. '50/Jan. '51) issue of the Smoke Signal, editor Marie Potts (Mountain Maidu) called for readers to submit addresses of American Indians in the military service. Through three wars--WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam--the FIC sent the Smoke Signal free to countless California and other American Indian service men and women.

Smoke Signal, Vol. X, No. 1

Smoke Signal, Vol. XI, No. 9

Smoke Signal, Vol. XI, No. 9

Smoke Signal, Vol. XI, No. 5

Smoke Signal Debut, January 1948

 The Smoke Signal, Jan. 1948 (top portion of p. 1)

The Federated Indians of California (FIC) was almost two years old when the first Smoke Signal made its appearance.* Within months, a formal masthead with additional artwork was designed and introduced as a way to mark the transition from news letter to newspaper.  An image of that masthead will be posted next week, but it is worth noting that the organization's tag line, "In Unity There is Strength," can be seen penciled in on this archival copy, perhaps by the inaugural editor, Kitty Potts Flores. This motto would feature prominently on the newspaper masthead. The clips below are also taken from the January 1948 issue.

A note from editor Kitty Potts Flores

In mid-1949, Marie Potts succeeded her daughter as Smoke Signal editor. For three decades, she continued to edit and publish the paper out of the family home in the popular neighborhood of Oak Park, in Sacramento, California. The final issue of the paper was printed in January 1978, just months before Potts'  passing. At that time, The Smoke Signal was the longest-running, American-Indian owned and operated paper in the country.

*Prior to the introduction of the Smoke Signal, the FIC communicated with its membership by newsletter.

Indian Day Dance and Fundraiser

Marie Potts and Russell Means

The passing of Russell Means today, at the age of 72, inspires a post that leaps decades beyond 1948 and the FIC's Freedom Train appearance. The year is 1971, the location is Spokane, Washington, and the occasion is the meeting of the American Indian Press Association (AIPA), organized the year before by Charles Trimble. Russell Means, then editor of the Cleveland Crier, and 76-year-old Marie Potts, longtime editor of FIC's Smoke Signal newspaper, were founding members of the AIPA. 

American Indian Press Association, 1971, Spokane, WA.
Potts is seated at center,  Means is second from R,
Trimble is on the far L.

Potts and Means represented different generations and traditions of the American Indian press. The pioneering efforts of Marie Potts inspired the organization to create "The Marie Potts Achievement Award" (inaugurated the following year in Denver, Colorado) as a way to recognize up-and-coming American Indian newspapers and journalists.  The younger members of the organization inspired Potts to assume a more authoritative American Indian and Mountain Maidu voice in her Smoke Signal editorials. Two years after the Spokane meeting, Means was making national and international news for his role in the American Indian Movement. When a reporter from the Sacramento Bee asked Marie Potts what she thought about AIM and the siege at Wounded Knee, her response revealed just how far she had come from her years as a dutiful and dedicated student at California's Greenville Indian School  (1900-1912) and Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Class of 1915): 

We were subjugated, beaten down, then our people began to study law…we work now through Congress and the courts whenever we can—but, of course, we have to have militants to bring about these things…to get the attention of Congress and the courts.

  -Sacramento Bee 4/22/73