HOW MUCH CAN WE KNOW EACH OTHER?

Browning, MT

In the Nineties beginnings of "bulletin board" internet sharing communities, I was subscribed to "RezNet," which was for Native Americans only.   I’m not an Indian.   A former student, now retired from a successful career as a management person in a think tank, was supposed to monitor it but didn't have time, so he used me as a scout.  He said, "When they ask whether you are Indian, just tell them you’re from Browning.”  (Browning is the headquarters of the Blackfeet Tribe.)  It worked and that was the birth of “prairiemary.”  I was on RezNet for several years.  In the end I confessed I was white and resigned.  Some asked me to stay because they already knew me.  Others said they had recognized me early but since they knew me, they didn’t blow my cover.  Recently I asked if I could rejoin and they said,  “Nonononono!”  and laughed a long time.  They weren’t angry.  Neither was I.

At one point there had been a ferocious argument between me and some other women because I claimed I knew what it was like to be Native American because I’d lived in Browning a long time.  It took them days to convince me that my experience of place was not like theirs, that I didn’t have the internal “feelings” of a related and included person, and that they EXPERIENCED things that I didn’t even guess.  It’s not about knowing the names of stuff.  Nor was it just about surviving a holocaust.

On the other hand, I defended my position by saying that I’d participated in Bundle Opening ceremonies that they didn’t know about, since even in the Sixties they were kept very secret, esp. from children, since when it was forbidden -- even criminal -- activity even children would be punished by white authorities.  They imagined that I was just there like a tourist, ritual-cruising, or an anthro looking for article material, but I was there sincerely as a “keeper” doing everything I was supposed to except that I didn’t know the songs.  Mary Ground, an ancient, sat next to me and prodded me with a sharp finger if I went wrong.  But I knew the land and the animals.

Part of my array of sense memories has ever since been those ceremonies with their packed circle of old people, the smell, the rhythm of the hand drums, the taste of the ceremonial sarvisberry soup, and the sound of Blackfeet words and songs.  As a keeper I took the wrapped animals in my hands and prayed with each while holding them to each shoulder.  I do not attend the contemporary ceremonies that use the same materials.  The participants now are middle-class, wearing new versions of the clothes of their great-grandparents.  Many are attached to the tribal college.

Bob Scriver's portrayal of the opening of a Beaver Bundle

When I was teaching at Heart Butte, one of the more remote communities, the girls complained that I didn’t understand them.  That night I wrote a first-person essay inhabiting the world of the girls.  Next day I took it to class and gave them each a copy, asking them whether it were accurate.  Reluctantly they said, "Well . . . it was close."  Then their assignment was to write their own version.  They did well, though I couldn’t grade someone’s experience and didn’t want to distract us by correcting grammar, etc.  At some point I sent the essays to the state education officials.  Accidentally, my essay got in there, too, which is why I have no copy now.

The state officials picked out my essay and assumed one of the kids had written it, so they praised it highly and suggested we should try to get this child a scholarship for college.  I confessed.  They then rejected the entire pack of essays.  They had not only rewarded the most “white” piece but also punished the others for not conforming to grammar rules.  (All is not lost.  The present state superintendent of education in Montana is tribal, though quite assimilated.  Her father was a student of mine and has served as the superintendent in Heart Butte.)  

No one inquires what it is like to be me, though lots of people assume they know -- not just Indians.  “Indians” are a vivid, romantic, often fantastic category that unified a wide array of people.  Old white English teachers are -- to use a Blackfeet locution, “nothing people.”  (They call themselves the “real people.”)   Anyway, as one tribal woman in the community pointed out, white teachers only drifted through -- there was no use in getting to know them.

Jackie Parsons is a force in the Montana humanities, 

a tribal judge, and a casting director for movies.

I am very much gripped by the media culture’s template of the reliable, earnest, loving woman who finds a brilliant and promising but flawed man and through her love and support redeems him, allowing him to flower into true genius.  This was the motor in my marriage, easily recognized by people who knew us both and accepted as explanation and justification.  I knew that man “inside and out.”  (My published biography of him is called “Bronze Inside and Out.”)  Better than he knew himself, since so much of himself was unconscious, in the limbic “dark” brain.  

He said to me once,  “You know what you CAN do, but you don’t know what you CAN’T do!”  How does one know until they try and fail?  In his inner world all failures were simply blanked out, shameful.  His fourth wife was well-known as a drunk, but he protested,  “I asked her if she was an alcoholic and she said she wasn’t.”  So, to him, she was not.  He was a great believer in will power, not insight nor unconscious motives.  The world when he was maturing was the same.

But I grew up in “know thyself” times and took Method acting training as well, which is all about searching one’s self and others.  The classes I took from Alvina Krause at Northwestern in the late Fifties were intense, rather like the more passionate religious devotions that insist on discernment and vocation.  But acting was taught as a “tool of the trade,” not a narcissistic indulgence, for the purpose was always what the CHARACTER was about, not the actor.  Art can be religious.

My preaching years

Thus, when I did actually go to seminary and enter the UU ministry, I was surprisingly unsuitable.  It was about masking, cheerleading, entitlement, and being comfortable.  People, both colleagues and parishioners, were constantly trying to figure me out while hiding who they were.  People who were dying or in emotional anguish or considering suicide, didn’t tell me because they didn’t want me to not like them anymore.  They were ashamed of "having cancer."   (They didn’t see my taste -- sometimes preference -- for the dark and crazy.)  If they would accept any help at all, it would be from a shrink or doctor, because to them “church” was Sunday morning dress-ups.  Maybe a little social action.  Being accepted and praised.

So now I’ve disclosed a lot about myself, but you still know “nothing.”  And I have no way of knowing my readers.  I could pay money for analysis of my blog readers, and since they are global, I would probably be surprised and interested.  But it would only tell me algorithms
Anyway, I’m too busy writing.  Maybe you want to come along, maybe not.

Blackfeet Country

MARY GROUND WAS YOUNG ONCE

WM. THORKEL CLARK generously responded to the post about "Grasswoman Stories" by sharing some photos from his personal collection.  Thanks very much, Thorkel!!

August 8, 2014

Hi,  I enjoyed the Blog about Mary Ground and spent the morning looking for a photo I have of her taken by my father the same day as the one of her husband John taken with me.  We always knew of him as Chief Eagle Calf and I've collected a few of his cards.  I do recall he charged my Dad a quarter to permit this photo to be taken.  It was in the Park at East Glacier, July of 1939 or '40 not sure now and there is no one left to ask.  I do have a couple of other older photos of Mary but I downloaded them from a collection of photos held by the Browning High School library.  I think they have  now restricted the access to those photos by Internet.

I enjoy your Blogs.  
Regards, Thorkel Clark

Thorkel and John Ground

August 8, 2014

The photo I forwarded is of John Ground (and me, as a little kid probably age 7). I hope I didn't confuse my intent.

 I can't seem to find the photo my Dad took of Mary Ground, John's wife, that same day way back when.

You have my permission to post my eMail, etc. I've attached a copy of one of the souvenir cards John Ground sold to tourists at Glacier Park back in the 1920s and '30s.  I think that the markings are in his hand.

Regards, Thorkel Clark

Close inspection reveals pictographs of a "big man with muscles;" 

an eagle with its hooked nose and tail feathers, a wing on each side; and a calf.

THE STORY MARY GROUND TOLD about FRANK DOUBLE RUNNER:

In 1977-78 the Blackfeet Heritage Program undertook to create a set of small booklets that preserved some of the old stories.  One booklet is focused on Mary Ground, born in 1883 and married at sixteen.  She had fourteen children, one husband, and a LOT of ideas and opinions.  Her children have been dynamic in the community and had a big part in producing this series.  Chuck No Runner, her grandson, illustrated this booklet.  It is probably time to re-publish the series, using up-to-date online technology, but a small stapled booklet is always appealing to the lovers of the local.

Mary was controversial because she had blue eyes, implying white genes.  In fact, she is said to have gotten her name, “Grass Woman,” because her putated father rejected her and insisted that she be exposed out in the prairie grass.  She survived a night and was then rescued.  Like many of the old-timers, she was active in both the Catholic church and the surviving Bundle Keeper circles.

This material was transcribed from a sound recording.  I won’t even try to capture the local ways of talking that flavor the tale and give it authenticity, but it is a wildly exciting story.  In 1886 she was living at the Holy Family Mission on Two Medicine as a student and often acted as an interpreter.  “Old Brocky” came grieving to ask the Mother Superior to ask Father Damiani and Father Prando to get their carpenter to make him a coffin for his son, who had been killed by Frank Double Runner.

Frank was one of three brothers.  Ed and Paul went to school at the mission but Frank, who was inclined to be wild was “running around with” Brocky’s daughter.  Paul Brocky was breaking a big pinto horse and rode him up the cliff along Two Med, when suddenly Frank Double Runner stood up from the brush and shot him.  Paul’s horse bucked but he hung on. Then the pinto ran down to the river where Paul died and fell off.

Holy Family Mission School on Two Medicine

Frank, on his own horse, came to the little cabin where Rose Big Beaver’s mother, Paul Brocky’s wife, lived and told her he had killed her husband and would shoot her if she didn’t come with him.  Rosie (whom I knew as a grandmother) was five years old and crawled back under the bed to hide.  The mother got her best finery out of a trunk, put everything on, and went with Frank who hid her in the brush near his parents’ home.

He got his brother, Eddie, to come with him on the pretext of wrangling horses and got food from his mother.  They went back to the top of the buffalo jump cliffs, hid the horse, and watched what was going on in the valley for three days.  Frank threatened to go down and kill all the children, but Eddie talked him out of it.

Willow Creek Student Body

Photo from the Tom Magee collection via http://blackfootdigitallibrary.com

Finally they went on up to Willow Creek School, just past Browning along highway 89 and Willow Creek.  The superintendent was Mr. Matson, who had been warned by the police about the rampaging Frank.  Eddie, who was hungry by now, went down to the school to get food, but once he was there, he warned Matson who sent a messenger to the Agency. 

The cops were afraid of Frank, so Matson said he would go up and talk to him.  Eddie tried to warn him out of it, but he was determined.  That is, he started to go but Frank, who was an excellent marksman, blew his hat off.  Everyone froze in place for a long time.

Then they saw Frank and the woman go down to Willow Creek where there was always a lot of tall brush.  After a long time there was a shot.  It was Rosie Big Beaver’s mother being killed.  Then in a while there was another shot.  When they finally got the courage to go look, both of the lovers were dead.  “They made one great big rough box for both of them.”  Mary reported that Dick Kipp was the one thought to have finally gone to see what had happened.  

Flint Smoker's Daughter -- a Curtis photo

Dick Kipp is a controversial figure.  He was said to be a survivor of the Baker Massacre who was adopted by Joe Kipp, so that he was actually a child of Heavy Runner.  Every name from those early days is loaded with political and family implications both good and bad.  

Double Runner (as distinguished from Double Rider) is recorded in the 1907 census list, but there are only two facts included: his father was Oh-mak-cro-mak-chist-opee and he is full Piegan, 59 years old. (I have no translation of his name.) None of his children are listed.

By contrast there is information about “Packing Tail Feathers Coming Up Hill” who was the father of Brocky.  Jim Whitecalf claimed that it was Tail Feathers who ran out to try to stop the Baker Massacre -- not Heavy Runner as is claimed other places.  Brocky was the nephew of Double Rider and the step-father of Chewing Black Bone, a familiar figure from the James Willard Schultz books.  Rosie Big Beaver’s grandson, “Hoppy,” was in the first 8^th grade class I taught in 1961.  

Might be Brocky -- maybe not.

Holy Family Mission and Willow Creek School both have histories clearly offensive to Frank Double Runner.  Holy Family was Catholic and Willow Creek was Protestant, so religion seems not to be the offense.  Perhaps he was mistreated or humiliated as a child in one of the schools, or maybe both places.  Clearly the echo in our time is strong since we endure so many school shootings.  Willow Creek was a disgrace, according to the government inspectors, but Holy Family was harsh in the opinion of some.  

One of the dynamics of Mary Ground’s reputation is that she LIKED the school, allied herself with the nuns, and generally defended them and their rules.  This is not so surprising when one considers her ostracism due to suspicions that she was partly white.  But resentment against the schools was and is pervasive, in spite of the advantages (food as much as instruction), and probably others would have considered becoming snipers if they’d had a good enough gun and been good enough marksmen.

Piegan chiefs visiting Washington DC.  

Back row l to r: Whitecalf, George Steele (agent and morphine addict), then "Tailfeathers Coming over the Hill".

It’s interesting that Double Runner took his brother and his lover with him on the run.  Is this Bonny and Clyde, plus one, or Butch and Sundance plus one?  A movie of this story, possibly book-ended by an old lady telling the tale, would be a naturally vivid film which is often the case with short intense stories as contrasted with long wandering tales.  It’s easy to imagine the young mother taking out her finery from the trunk and putting it on, knowing what was coming.  Did she hurry so she could join her lover?  Or did she slip on the bright garments solemnly and ceremoniously, knowing they would be bloodied?

If I were writing the script, I would bring in the “gaze,” the constant hidden eyes in high places watching to interpret the encampments along the water.  I would reference Hugh Dempsey’s account of outsider tribes petitioning to hunt buffalo on Piegan land in order to feed their children.  Dempsey tells about them watching covertly for a while from a ridge, then when the moment seemed right, making themselves visible by moving out into plain sight.  At that point they would either be invited into the camp for a parlay, or if tempers were high, simply shot on the spot.

Perhaps Frank knew that the power for the future would lie in education and both craved and despised that.  Maybe he realized that in terms of history he was dead already, unwilling or unable to move past that barrier.  In traditional terms, his lover had no choice but to go with him and probably accepted that.  Did she wear her finery because she knew she would be buried in it?  And what about Eddie -- was he brave or a coward to desert Frank?

On the lawn at the Big Hotel in East Glacier.  I don't know who it is.

Mary Ground’s story is a thread that leads us through a past that presages our present.  She would not be surprised.  It’s possible to find photos of some of these people and many interlocking stories have been recorded.