Honor Chief Two Guns White Calf in Washington

OPINION:

Two Guns White Calf: Red Paint, Resistance and the Survival of the Sacred Dances

As the D.C. Council prepares to vote on the future of the RFK Stadium site, it should dedicate funding for a permanent tribute to Blackfeet leader John Two Guns White Calf. His likeness once represented Washington’s NFL team, yet few know that his father died in the capital fighting for Native rights or that his son, John Two Guns, later carried on this mission in Washington as well. Honoring them at the very place where the franchise hopes to build its future would mark a long-overdue act of historical justice.

It takes all of us

Only a handful of North American tribes rooted their creation in a sun god. The Blackfeet were among them, their ceremonial life centered on Natosi, the sun god. Warriors and worshippers painted their faces and bodies in red vermilion as sacred acts of devotion. This color, later misread as a slur, once signified obligation and spiritual power.

The Beothuk and Natchez, two tribes that painted their bodies red to honor their sun gods, were ultimately erased as distinct nations. The Blackfeet narrowly escaped the same fate. Painting one’s body in vermilion became a crime on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

In 1856, the Blackfeet signed the Lame Bull Treaty, trading millions of acres for “perpetual peace” and supplies, including 500 pounds of vermilion paint annually. Yet by 1888, the very paint that symbolized warriorhood and sun worship was outlawed under the Code of Indian Offenses: “The sun-dance, the scalp-dance, the war-dance … shall be considered Indian offenses … punished by withholding rations or imprisonment.”

End racism

By the 1890s, Plains nations petitioned for the restoration of ceremonies. The Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Blackfeet and Crow all pressed for recognition.

It was into this climate that Chief Two Guns White Calf the elder, the last war chief of the Blackfeet, traveled to Washington. He wore traditional dress despite pressure to adopt “modern” clothing and died in the city in 1903, only 5 miles from the future RFK Stadium. He died as penalties for paint and ceremonies deepened.

By 1907, the U.S. Army was issuing “Indian Wars” medals, the only U.S. campaign medal depicting a specific enemy: a war-bonneted Native warrior. With its blood-red ribbon, it cast the destruction of Redskin resistance as complete.

Yet leaders resisted. Wades In The Water, among the last Blackfeet to take a scalp, continued sharing warrior traditions despite bans. Historian John C. Ewers called them “rough-and-ready redskins,” fierce and spiritually connected warriors.

Inspire change

John Two Guns White Calf embodied that same defiance. In 1913, his likeness appeared on the Buffalo Nickel, making him the first Native leader, and arguably the first marginalized figure, to be put on U.S. coinage. He returned to Washington in the 1920s and 1930s, pressing, at great cost, for treaty rights and religious freedom.

Dressed in regalia and often painted, he led one of the nation’s most heroic counter-assimilation campaigns. Even the NFL Commanders’ 2005 Media Guide acknowledged that “Redskin” originated from sacred vermilion paint used by spiritually connected warriors.

When he died in 1934, worshippers openly prayed to Natosi at his funeral, defying federal bans still in place. The Brooklyn Times Union reported: “The wails of squaws and the plaintive intonation of prayers to Natos, the Sun God, were heard among the Blackfeet.”

Weeks later, Indian Affairs Commissioner John Collier issued Circular 2970: “The cultural liberty of Indians is to be encouraged. No interference with Indian religious life or ceremonial expression will hereafter be tolerated.” The bans collapsed and ceremonies were revived just three years before the NFL’s Redskins settled in Washington.

Choose love

As D.C. leaders decide the RFK Stadium site’s fate, they should fund a tribute to Chief Two Guns White Calf and his son. Their defiance preserved one of North America’s rarest spiritual traditions and helped end decades of bans. Honoring them now would correct the record and ensure that the legacy of the Blackfeet “Redskins” endures where they once stood and fought.

Stop hate

For sun-worshipping tribes, elevating Blackfeet “Redskin” history into NFL representation was not stereotyping but survival, broadcasting warrior traditions to millions. Today, ceremonies thrive. In 2025 alone, they have been held from the Shoshone-Bannock at Fort Hall to the Oglala in the Black Hills. Each affirms sacrifice, kinship and continuity.

As Mr. Ewers wrote: “By the middle of the nineteenth century the sun dance was the great tribal religious festival of the Blackfeet. … It was modified and adjusted to their own ceremonial pattern.” That distinction still holds. What was once forced underground now rises each summer under Montana’s skies — proof that the spirit of Two Guns White Calf remains alive.

• Chief Walt “Red Hawk” Brown is chief of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe in Cattashowrock Town in Courtland, Virginia.