OLD JIM WHITECALF ON A SUMMER AFTERNOON

"Old" Jim Whitecalf as a young man, by Winold Reiss

"Young Jim Whitecalf about the same time

The Piegan/Pikunni lobe of the Siksika/Blackfeet nation is in the L formed by the Rockies where it intercepts the 49th parallel.  This is the location of Glacier National Park, which was taken out of the American Blackfeet reservation, and Waterton Peace Park, which is continuous but on the Canadian side.  I am so specific because what we call “tribes” are complex and unique, not at all the monoculture in most people’s minds.  But they are “emplaced.”

I came here in 1961 by accident because my parents were taking me home from university in Chicago, including Glacier National Park in their route.  I needed a teaching job so I was inquiring along the way.  I was hired by School District #9, Browning Public Schools, which is governed by the State of Montana.  Browning, the town, is now dissolved as a function of the State of Montana.  I don’t know what that does to the schools, some of which are religious (notably Catholic), independent, or tribal.  That’s not what I want to write about.

I only want to tell you about a summer afternoon in the early Sixties when Bob Scriver, with whom I rode shotgun for a decade, was looking for someone for some reason.  The Blackfeet reservation is about the same size as the Serengeti in Africa and in the Sixties was much less populated.  History was recent — There were still living survivors of what was then called “The Baker Massacre” after the commanding officer who led a dawn raid on a sleeping and ailing camp.   January 23, 1870.  Now it’s called “The Marias Massacre” after the river where the people were camped.  

The tragic irony was that the group that had been blamed for the assassination of Malcolm Clarke (though the guilty were Clarke’s Blackfeet wife’s relatives from the defiant Mountain Chief band but acting as renegades) had moved on.  The destroyed band was led by a peace chief, HeavyRunner, who ran out into the gunfire with his baby daughter and his peace agreement.  They say the bullet that killed him went through both the paper and the daughter.

The Marias River was named in 1805 by Meriwether Lewis for his cousin, Maria Wood.  The Blackfeet called it “Bear River,” Kyaiye-sisahtaie.  Other tribes called it “Grizzly River.”  This information is from Jack Holterman who wrote two books listing Place Names around here.  He taught in a one-room school house on the rez.  Bob knew him and I met him, but he’s not in this particular story.

These are the many-named dramatic and emotional stories that everyone likes on both sides.  Who can blame them for responding?  But there’s much more in ongoing stories and most of it is untold, unremarked, too universal to provide animosity for political fuel.  But they are precious to me.

On the summer afternoon I’m remembering, the grass was tall and most of the wildflowers had run their course, though the rez is an ecotone, which means it goes from up high on the mountain shoulders on down the foothills and out onto the flats where plowed wheat replaces virgin grass.  Up high the wildflowers bloom a little later.  Duck Lake Road wasn’t paved in those days, but it was connected through Starr School, east/west to Highway 89, which followed the Old North Trail running from Alaska to Mexico along the east side of the cordillera.  We had gone up 89 to the cut-across and turned east, roughly along Cut Bank Creek.  A few miles from the turnoff was the home of Old Jim Whitecalf, a descendent of Two Guns Whitecalf rumored to be on the Buffalo Nickel.

Two Guns Whitecalf

Ray Djuff, a Calgary journalist and historian, is working on a book that traces the web of the Whitecalf family, as much has been possible.  Two books have been written about Old Jim specifically, one bogus by a madman whom I will not name, and one earnest and respectful by Adolf Hungry Wolf.  https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Buffalo-Family-Odyssey-Indians/dp/0688016804/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1514054826&sr=1-14&keywords=books+by+Adolf+Hungry+Wolf

The book by the madman was praised, considered authentic, and awarded prizes.  That man is dead, but I don’t name him in order to protect his child.  He was white, his readers and admirers were white, and he mostly lived in cities.  He’s part of the romantic fantasy built on top of genocide.

Adolf Hungry Wolf committed to authentic Blackfoot life, living in a Canadian cabin without water or electricity.  (He runs his computer off a photovoltaic cell.)  He has produced an incredible amount of careful, accurate writing.  His wife was tribal and his children are enrolled.  He has been consistently accused of being a hoax, of stealing heritage, and so on.  Learning to speak the language and participate in ceremonies has made him part of the existing community, but the white world and the assimilated people attack him as a hoax.  Dealing with the indigenous people of this continent means leaving accuracy, the Rule of Law, any assumptions, science, and common sense.  It is a shadowland of enormous color and vitality that will eventually include everyone on this land, because that’s what indigenous means.

Old Jim Whitecalf near his home at about the time I knew him.

So we stopped at the modest home of Old Jim Whitecalf, sitting in the pickup until we could be identified and someone would come out.  Young Jim came and he was upset, but not with us.  Old Jim, years older than a century, was failing.  By now he was never really in good health, but this was a bad patch.  Young Jim, who was about my age, had called the Indian Health Service and begged a doctor to come out, but the doctor said he would not, could not leave the hospital, so the ancient and ailing man had to be brought in to Browning.  But the Whitecalf pickup wouldn’t start.  In those days there was no ambulance.  Now Young Jim wanted us to take his dad to Browning. 

Bob didn’t like this idea, partly because he didn’t want to abandon his own project, partly because he didn’t want to be involved with someone who was likely to blame us if anything went wrong, partly just on principle in a compartmented society.  The old man was too frail to ride in the back of our pickup, as people often did in those days, so we would have to cram together in the cab.  But plainly Old Jim could not be left out there with only his son.

Bob drove, of course, then I sat next with one foot on each side of the floor stick shift, then Old Jim, then Young Jim making sure the passenger door didn’t fly open.  He had his other arm around his dad.  For the duration of the drive to town, I was as close to this historic old man as any human being could get.  His smell, his layers of clothes, his warmth and movement were shared by me.  He said nothing.  His breathing was uneven.  His head nodded but his eyes were open.

This is what indigenous people are to me: reality of being, time-stretching existence, patterns of strong summer sun falling through the windshield and moving across our legs and chests, wind from the open windows, smells from the land, and the bumpy trajectory of travel on an unpaved road.  The occasional trill of a meadowlark, the quick scurry of a suicidal ground squirrel crossing the road, the hawk on the top of a fencepost waiting for that foolish animal to become remains.  Life and death interwoven.  All the rest of the categories and claims and overlaid assumptions faded away.