WHEN JULIA WADES IN THE WATER WAS THE FIRST INDIAN POLICEWOMAN

Brett Chapman is an "Indian" attorney in Tulsa who specializes in Defense at this point in his career.  He's also on Twitter and posts about indigenous people.  I'm reacting to his recent post about Julia Wades in the Water, a Blackfeet woman famous for being the first NA female police officer in US, working with her husband who was also a policeman.  She's quite well-known and often wore ceremonial clothes to be alongside her husband, greeting big shots from back east.

Julia's period, the first decades of the 19th century, was recorded by photographers and artists because they still remembered the ways of their grandparents in the days of the treaties and first reservations, but were capable of operating in the "modern" world of the time.  At major events they presented the Old World, but then went on with daily business after the celebrities were gone.  The photos of the private daily lives of the rez people were not popular and unseen until recently when people like Paul Seesequasis began to collect them.  Even Adolph Hungry Wolf, whose amazing collection of photos in his four Good Medicine set of books, stuck mostly to posed images.  The general idea was that the old Blackfeet culture was disappearing and should be recorded, but that once the tribal people were assimilated, they were no longer interesting.

When I came in 1961, Julia and her cohort were pretty much gone.  "Old" Jim Whitecalf was still around.   "Young" Jim Whitecalf was my age, early twenties.  Both are dead now.  I'm prompted by Chapman's tweet to look at Google.

This is a quite grand and near lifesize portrait by Winold Reiss.

"Julia Wades in the Water of the Blackfeet was the first Native  American woman police officer in the U.S. and served her people on the reservation in Montana for three decades from her first shift in 1905 until the 1930s. She was very strong and respected by all."

"They accomplished so much in their life,  she and my grandpa Wades.  we have pictures, my other cousin has pictures of them where they meet with Harry Truman," said Salois Solway, her granddaughter."   (Intriguingly, the name  Solway implies relatives who were Metis.)

"She said Wades In The Water inspired her to study law and she served as a  tribal judge, because it was simply in her blood. Wades in the Water and her husband also took pictures with tourists and camped in Glacier National  Park."

"Julia Wades in the Water was a member of  the Blackfeet Nation and became the first American Indian policewoman shortly after the turn of the 20th century. She served at the Blackfeet Agency in Montana for 25 years until her retirement in the 1930s." 

"Julia Wades in Water served her community managing the detention facility and assisting with female suspects. She sustained many warm friendships among the Blackfeet and the non-Native people of northern Montana.  This pioneering law enforcement woman was deeply invested in maintaining the values and safety of their community, and Blackfeet of that era remember all her contributions "

http://www.lib.montana.edu/digital/objects/coll2204/2204-B01-F11.pdf

This link is from the diary of John C. Carter, who was a lawyer and a Brigadier General in the Confederate army.  He made a trip through the West in 1932.  The document is a PDF that won't let me edit out sentences, but it's more than just interesting to read as a whole anyway.  The white government officials and the elite of the tribe acted in unity to welcome and impress visitors.  Bob Scriver was 18 in this year and probably played his cornet in the Blackfeet Brass Band.  When he became its director, a white beaded buckskin suit was made for him and most people may not have realized he was white.  

It was a very "bourgeoisie" time, just tipping into the Depression, and people valued brass bands, travel to exotic places, conformity to politeness and social ceremonies, and a kind of patronage of "foreign" peoples that today is seen as condescending and even racist.  Forrest Stone was the agency head at this time.  He must have had a big house because his other guests included Major General Hugh L. Scott, who was making a major effort to record signtalk.  (There is a vid, very serious at first and dissolving into funny stories later) and he took imprints of the participant's feet which were cast in bronze and are still in front of the Museum of the Plains Indian.  The sculptor Voisin may have helped with this.  Other guests were the tall red-headed F.C. Campbell, who was arguably the most successful of previous Indian agents, and his daughter.

A lunch of sandwiches and iced tea is held, and then the guests go to the rodeo which still exists, much improved, at the fairgrounds.  Carter speaks of the adjacent campgrounds, so it must be Indian Days.  The plan is to leave the rodeo early in order to go to Heart Butte for a Medicine Lodge sponsored by Tom Horn.  The host drives a "Ford V8" just like the one Carter has at home.  Oliver Sanderville has been asked to speak in sign language and he goes on and on.  "Old" Jim Whitecalf dares Scott to ride a bucking bronc and says he will also ride one.

When the folks return from Heart Butte, they go to the lodge of Wades in the Water on the Indian Days campground.  Carter says that Julia speaks "some" English.  She is warm and helpful.  Charlie Russell has recently died and a female white sculptor, "Mrs. Lincoln", is there to take photos to use for making a memorial.   Her behavior was rude. She did not accept guidance about her behavior and offended all the Blackfeet but they pretended they didn't notice. The whites present tried to control her but couldn't.  

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/13626704/greatfallstribune02apr1931/ 

The leading tribal people mentioned were still powerful in the Sixties.  This preservation of on-the-spot observations is something like the fine portraits of Winold Reese, about the same time except not quite so formal.  It hints at a dimension of reservation life that isn't known to most of the art and novel aficionados, mostly white, who buy what they think of as authentic.  The depictions are dramatic and usually feature peak moments that are quite different from the police work of Julia Wades-in-the Water which was mostly managing prisoners, esp. women, at the station.  Jail was real, Julia was real police, and people still spoke real Blackfeet.  No one with good connections was in jail for long, but propriety covered up a lot of suffering that visiting whites never saw.  

Much of what we think of as "authentic anthropology" as collected by whites comes from the memories of these twentieth century folks about their grandparents.  Both Charlie Russsell and James Willard Schultz never saw what they used in their work, but gathered it from these people.  Today a "library account" will be what the early 20th century Blackfeet reported.