Once I had a conversation with a man who traveled for a living. He said that if he were in a town he didn’t know and got lonesome for some good company, he’d seek out either AA or UU. Interesting folks with tales to tell in both contexts. (Forget AAA or NRA.) I suspect he traveled among cities rather than small towns like those in Montana. What UU types who enjoy church do for a backup is attend the Methodist services.
For instance, Don Marble, who in his UU phase saved the original Unitarian Church in Helena from being converted to a trendy restaurant by enforcing the original contract giving the building to the city, is now a dependable Methodist and so is his friend, Arlo Skaari. They are compassionate towards all people, inclusive, alert and informed, and not afraid of social action. Skaari has been a guardian of the Sweetgrass Hills for many years. I can see the hills from here. They are volcanic and contain enough gold to make entrepreneurs want to grind them up and run them through a cyanide heap leach pad, even though the hills create a watershed for a place always short of water.
In 1988-89 I served the Blackfeet Parish as the Methodist minister, though I suspect I appeared on their books as a lay preacher. The point was that because I was an ordained UU minister, I could live in the parsonage to keep it from being taxed and since we made a straight-across deal -- housing for preaching -- it solved both our money problems. It was a very good year. Partly it was made possible because from 1961 when I came to teach, that was “my church.” No one else from the Scriver family attended there, though they had been members of the Presbyterian church that was folded into it in the thirties. Bob Scriver paid for one of the stained glass windows in the present church in memory of his parents. His brother’s funeral’s was there.
When I arrived in Helena to be the circuit riding UU minister, we were greatly helped by the Methodist church there and met in their chapel, though it made the “recovering Christians” nervous. They just had to get over it. That was an excellent three years. Geri Fenn in Bozeman was a pledging member of both UU and Methodist groups, but we met in the Congregational Church, which is also a pretty good alternative to UU in most small towns.
Since I was once a circuit-rider myself, I was interested to see what the new Methodist minister assigned to Valier might be like. Valier is now part of a “three-point charge” so their minister travels among Sunburst, Shelby and Valier. I only knew she was female and I had to drive over to read the message board outside the church to find out what time to meet. 4PM. She must start the day with Sunburst and Shelby, then come here. It’s a couple hours’ drive maybe, and she seems to be living in Shelby or Sunburst. She told us about her daughter, who is training her horse and got her jaw knocked out of alignment when her horse’s flung-back head hit her chin. She has two other daughters.
I didn’t know any of this when I sat in the back pew. When I first came here in 1999, I used to attend because I was friends with the minister. Since that time I’ve not been in sympathy. The congregation was scattered, mostly older, sitting spread out towards the back. I watched them come in.
Here came a woman I saw only from the back at first: maybe forty, wearing a sleeveless top and a soft skirt that swayed with her strong walk, nut-brown hair in a glossy bob with bangs, big silver gleaming earrings and a jubilant voice. Yup, that was the one. She’s only been here a few days. No one knew where the light switches were for the sanctuary. No one knew exactly how to make the PA system work so we heard a lot of screeches from failed experiments. Finally she decided her voice was loud enough, and she was right.
She came down from the lecturn and spoke with no notes except to check the numbers for the hymns. The topic was from the Lectionary. An interdenominational committee in some mysterious place makes up a list of suggestions: one piece of scripture from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, and one from the Gospel. The year I preached to Methodists I had a great time making a game of getting all three bits of scripture into one sermon, but most people sensibly choose one.
Dolly Collins (yes, that’s her name) chose the Gospel, Mark 6:14-29, and checked the usual translation with the Greek. It was about Herod cutting off John the Baptist’s head. She explicated this vividly in terms of power and the misuse of power to suppress rival powers. She spoke without manuscript or even notes. I would have dragged in the Middle East, but she didn’t. The benediction was the familiar Irish one that begins “May the road rise to meet you. . .” I didn’t stay for coffee because there would be cookies to resist. The Valierians could tell her about me. Maybe she already knew who I was. We probably won’t relate much in the ordinary world, partly because she won’t be in Valier very much.
While I was in Browning for Indian Days, I stopped in at the parsonage, which is a ranch house just out of town, to meet the new minister there. Young married man with no children and a shaved head. Strong and handsome, educated as an engineer which his engineer father insisted upon. He had to fight to be a minister and he’s been here three or four times before with youth service groups, so he knows what the place is like. It hasn’t changed much: there was a problem with the septic system in 1989 and there is today. His three point charge is St. Mary, Browning and Heart Butte and he probably also starts at the north end where the St. Mary congregation this time of year includes tourists and ends in Heart Butte. Out there no one remembered to shut down the water last fall so all the pipes have burst. A youth group is in residence and can’t live without hot showers. Good thing this guy is an engineer! When I stopped by the Browning church, I was met by a “missionary,” a chirpy little woman who wanted to embrace me and who was managing another visiting Methodist group. She’s been smoothing the transition between ministers.
It occurs to me that originally the Methodist presence here was supposed to be a mission to the Indians, but now it appears that it has become a mission to Iowa youngsters who need a spiritual infusion through doing good works in an exotic place. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s a lot of work to schedule, manage, and guide them. Religion, like everything else, is a “river” -- an ever-changing process that either adapts or dies. Methodism appears to be up to the challenge.
Showing posts with label Methodist Blackfeet Parish History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Methodist Blackfeet Parish History. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
METHODIST BLACKFEET PARISH HISTORY
*
Weasel Feather, Buffalo Hide, Running Antelope (Rev. Edgar B. Smith), Old Chief, Eagle Calf
In some ways the World War II years were the best the reservation ever had. The young men were proud warriors and there was no doubt that the “old bulls” were chiefs. Likewise, churches were full and the Blackfeet War Mothers paid little attention to what race those mothers were. Divisions are were minimized and categories went unquestioned for a while.
1956-58 George P. Cox (intern) Babb, Heart Butte
George was born on April 16, 1923 and passed away on Sunday, September 24, 1995. George was last known to be living in Alder, Montana. This is the only info I could find and I’m not entirely sure it’s the same person.
1958-59 Charlotte Bridges
I know nothing about these people and have heard few say much.
1959-67 James E. Bell Babb, Heart Butte
Jim and Mary Bell were the pastors in residence when I came to Browning, Montana. A tall rangy Texas man along the lines of Randolph Scott or Gary Cooper, Jim Bell was a missionary who believed in pluralism. Though he was a strong Christian and a dedicated Methodist, he had great respect for indigenous ways and sought to bring them into the life of the congregation, though the Browning congregation saw itself pretty much as a white church and were more willing to welcome any Indians assimilated, that is, pretty much like them. The perennial problem was solved again by creating a ring of more “Indian” churches around the reservation in the small communities and leaving the major congregation in Browning to be more conventional.
The hammer blow suffered by the Bell ministry was the Flood of 1964. It swept away the little Apistotoke church, known as Swims Under, out near Heart Butte, and lost homes out there meant that much of the population moved to Browning. Coincidentally, the Methodist church in Babb burned down at the same time. The parsonage was not much damaged, but topsoil on the flood plain was stripped off the underlying gravel. There was suddenly huge need and trauma as people tried to cope with loss and change. That year had been meant to celebrate the Centennial of the Territory of Montana and no one could even understand whether to cancel events. Bell and other townsfolk had grown whiskers of various sorts and Bob Scriver was inspired to portray some of them in a diorama sculpture of a poker game, but Jim Bell is seen as a tall, thin cowboy rather than as a parson.
I was not part of the Bell’s personal circle. They lived in a new ranch-style house on the flood plain of Willow Creek just west of the Indian Days campground. The house was meant to accommodate Indian children who needed emergency care or fostering, but I’m not sure exactly how many or which children those included. Once we responded with the rest of Browning to a fire in the barn that had been set by children playing with matches. The major grief of the couple was losing in infancy their twin sons and the chimes in the church were donated in the name of those children. The Bells were beloved but controversial. The final quarrel was over a pair of urban Black young people the Bells took in for the summer.
1963 - Harry E. Pearson Blackfeet United Methodist Parish (lay)
“Papa” Pearson was a retired volunteer social worker rather than a pastor. He addressed the mounds and mounds of used clothing and spent much of his time wrestling around boxes of donated stuff. Twice we lived on the two sides of duplexes, first the Halseth apartments now under the Blackfeet Trading Post and second Wessie Scriver’s duplex across the street from her. In both locations his stacks of boxes would occasionally topple, sometimes sounding like a body falling, and we’d worry over what had happened to him. In a few minutes his habitual humming/singing would start back up and we’d know he was all right.
1965- 68 Conrad Himmel
Conrad and Gayle Himmel were hard workers who had agreed to split the double-yolked egg with the Bells by taking up the mission side of things, but the Bells left. The last I heard they were in Africa. The major contribution of the Himmels was acquring the decommissioned Air Force building that became Day Care. This was just before Heart Start, but made much the same contribution by allowing parents to work and providing both protection and education to the kids.
1963-64 Richard D. Fiero Heart Butte
This was probably also one of the mission arrangements that came and went in Heart Butte, which was the most remote and -- in some opinions -- the most backward of the territory. It was where the old people settled and depended upon the leadership of Dick Sanderville, “Chief Bull.”
BROWNING UNITED METHODIST PARISH
When organizations are struggling to find a new identity, they often start with a new name.
1974-1981 Walter F. Mason
This pleasant and competent man settled things down. I don’t know much about him, because I left in 1973.
1981-83 F. Richard and H. Marine
Another couple that is remembered with affection.
1983-1985 James R. Bentley (PM)
Some said that Jim Bentley was brought in to straighten out the books. I believe it was during this time that Brent Warrington was commissioned to create a stunning set of stained glass windows, though it may have been earlier. Brent had taught at the Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop and also did the stained glass windows at Holy Family Mission on Two Medicine River.
1986-87 Ron Barr
Barr was the person who installed the quonset hut church at the Heart Butte location across the graveyard from the Catholic Church. It never quite jelled as a congregation and was nothing like the replacement for Swims Under that Bell had promised. It became the inevitable repository for old clothes and a location for sporadic mission visits. Barr had a tendency to overreach and that evidently overwhelmed his family, which shattered. He left suddenly.
1987 - 88 Mary Scriver
I had just left a Unitarian Universalist ministry in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Jacobson had been called to be the next Methodist minister, but he was retained for another year in his previous calling as a Navy chaplain in Florida. I agreed to serve the congregation by preaching and living in the parsonage in lieu of wages, which meant it would be exempt from taxes. Otherwise the choices were renting and paying taxes, or leaving it to stand empty in a place where it was likely to be vandalized. We didn’t do any mission work but I dearly loved the year.
1989 Richard (Jake) Jacobson
Jake was only in residence a matter of months before he realized he’d made a huge mistake and left.
1989 -90 Peggy Salois
Everyone speaks very highly of Peggy, who was a lay interim, I think.
1990- 1994 Donna Lee Martin
Donna had a strong service ethic, which was supported with dedication by her husband, who upgraded the parsonage. People found Donna “very emotional,” which was a plus to some. She did a lot of work with groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and was a senstive one-on-one counselor.
1994 - 1998 Rowland Freeman
Rowland had a strong pentecostal bent and introduced much of that to the congregation. As usual, strong personalities make controversy. Under his guidance, more stained glass was installed in the bell tower windows. The funeral of Mike Swims Under, the wise old man of the original Apistotoke church that was swept away, was guided by Freeman and included many Blackfeet old-timers even from Canada.
After Rowland I have no list to guide me and events are recent enough to be not quite history anyhow. The same problems persist today, though Browning is dominantly Indian now and the congregation is almost entirely of mixed blood.
Weasel Feather, Buffalo Hide, Running Antelope (Rev. Edgar B. Smith), Old Chief, Eagle Calf
In some ways the World War II years were the best the reservation ever had. The young men were proud warriors and there was no doubt that the “old bulls” were chiefs. Likewise, churches were full and the Blackfeet War Mothers paid little attention to what race those mothers were. Divisions are were minimized and categories went unquestioned for a while.
1956-58 George P. Cox (intern) Babb, Heart Butte
George was born on April 16, 1923 and passed away on Sunday, September 24, 1995. George was last known to be living in Alder, Montana. This is the only info I could find and I’m not entirely sure it’s the same person.
1958-59 Charlotte Bridges
I know nothing about these people and have heard few say much.
1959-67 James E. Bell Babb, Heart Butte
Jim and Mary Bell were the pastors in residence when I came to Browning, Montana. A tall rangy Texas man along the lines of Randolph Scott or Gary Cooper, Jim Bell was a missionary who believed in pluralism. Though he was a strong Christian and a dedicated Methodist, he had great respect for indigenous ways and sought to bring them into the life of the congregation, though the Browning congregation saw itself pretty much as a white church and were more willing to welcome any Indians assimilated, that is, pretty much like them. The perennial problem was solved again by creating a ring of more “Indian” churches around the reservation in the small communities and leaving the major congregation in Browning to be more conventional.
The hammer blow suffered by the Bell ministry was the Flood of 1964. It swept away the little Apistotoke church, known as Swims Under, out near Heart Butte, and lost homes out there meant that much of the population moved to Browning. Coincidentally, the Methodist church in Babb burned down at the same time. The parsonage was not much damaged, but topsoil on the flood plain was stripped off the underlying gravel. There was suddenly huge need and trauma as people tried to cope with loss and change. That year had been meant to celebrate the Centennial of the Territory of Montana and no one could even understand whether to cancel events. Bell and other townsfolk had grown whiskers of various sorts and Bob Scriver was inspired to portray some of them in a diorama sculpture of a poker game, but Jim Bell is seen as a tall, thin cowboy rather than as a parson.
I was not part of the Bell’s personal circle. They lived in a new ranch-style house on the flood plain of Willow Creek just west of the Indian Days campground. The house was meant to accommodate Indian children who needed emergency care or fostering, but I’m not sure exactly how many or which children those included. Once we responded with the rest of Browning to a fire in the barn that had been set by children playing with matches. The major grief of the couple was losing in infancy their twin sons and the chimes in the church were donated in the name of those children. The Bells were beloved but controversial. The final quarrel was over a pair of urban Black young people the Bells took in for the summer.
1963 - Harry E. Pearson Blackfeet United Methodist Parish (lay)
“Papa” Pearson was a retired volunteer social worker rather than a pastor. He addressed the mounds and mounds of used clothing and spent much of his time wrestling around boxes of donated stuff. Twice we lived on the two sides of duplexes, first the Halseth apartments now under the Blackfeet Trading Post and second Wessie Scriver’s duplex across the street from her. In both locations his stacks of boxes would occasionally topple, sometimes sounding like a body falling, and we’d worry over what had happened to him. In a few minutes his habitual humming/singing would start back up and we’d know he was all right.
1965- 68 Conrad Himmel
Conrad and Gayle Himmel were hard workers who had agreed to split the double-yolked egg with the Bells by taking up the mission side of things, but the Bells left. The last I heard they were in Africa. The major contribution of the Himmels was acquring the decommissioned Air Force building that became Day Care. This was just before Heart Start, but made much the same contribution by allowing parents to work and providing both protection and education to the kids.
1963-64 Richard D. Fiero Heart Butte
This was probably also one of the mission arrangements that came and went in Heart Butte, which was the most remote and -- in some opinions -- the most backward of the territory. It was where the old people settled and depended upon the leadership of Dick Sanderville, “Chief Bull.”
BROWNING UNITED METHODIST PARISH
When organizations are struggling to find a new identity, they often start with a new name.
1974-1981 Walter F. Mason
This pleasant and competent man settled things down. I don’t know much about him, because I left in 1973.
1981-83 F. Richard and H. Marine
Another couple that is remembered with affection.
1983-1985 James R. Bentley (PM)
Some said that Jim Bentley was brought in to straighten out the books. I believe it was during this time that Brent Warrington was commissioned to create a stunning set of stained glass windows, though it may have been earlier. Brent had taught at the Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop and also did the stained glass windows at Holy Family Mission on Two Medicine River.
1986-87 Ron Barr
Barr was the person who installed the quonset hut church at the Heart Butte location across the graveyard from the Catholic Church. It never quite jelled as a congregation and was nothing like the replacement for Swims Under that Bell had promised. It became the inevitable repository for old clothes and a location for sporadic mission visits. Barr had a tendency to overreach and that evidently overwhelmed his family, which shattered. He left suddenly.
1987 - 88 Mary Scriver
I had just left a Unitarian Universalist ministry in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Jacobson had been called to be the next Methodist minister, but he was retained for another year in his previous calling as a Navy chaplain in Florida. I agreed to serve the congregation by preaching and living in the parsonage in lieu of wages, which meant it would be exempt from taxes. Otherwise the choices were renting and paying taxes, or leaving it to stand empty in a place where it was likely to be vandalized. We didn’t do any mission work but I dearly loved the year.
1989 Richard (Jake) Jacobson
Jake was only in residence a matter of months before he realized he’d made a huge mistake and left.
1989 -90 Peggy Salois
Everyone speaks very highly of Peggy, who was a lay interim, I think.
1990- 1994 Donna Lee Martin
Donna had a strong service ethic, which was supported with dedication by her husband, who upgraded the parsonage. People found Donna “very emotional,” which was a plus to some. She did a lot of work with groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and was a senstive one-on-one counselor.
1994 - 1998 Rowland Freeman
Rowland had a strong pentecostal bent and introduced much of that to the congregation. As usual, strong personalities make controversy. Under his guidance, more stained glass was installed in the bell tower windows. The funeral of Mike Swims Under, the wise old man of the original Apistotoke church that was swept away, was guided by Freeman and included many Blackfeet old-timers even from Canada.
After Rowland I have no list to guide me and events are recent enough to be not quite history anyhow. The same problems persist today, though Browning is dominantly Indian now and the congregation is almost entirely of mixed blood.
Friday, May 15, 2009
SHAPE-SHIFTERS: AMERICAN INDIANS
A landscape restoration specialist once remarked that everyone wants the landscape to be restored to what they first encountered. Since landscape is constantly transforming, as a group they can’t agree on what is “right.” One guy’s shocking dandelion invasion is another guy’s field of gold. Something like that happens with populations like Native Americans, who are a succession of generations influenced by time and circumstances. When I first came to Browning, Montana, in 1961, there were several distinct “types” of “Indians.” (One of the things that changes over the years is nomenclature.)
At this point in history, Bob Scriver had created his sculpture to “freeze frame” three generations by portraying three people still living. One was Chewing Black Bone, the Aku Pitzu of James Willard Schultz’s tales and a very ancient man. He had been in a real war party, he had seen the buffalo disappear, he had dressed in buckskin and a Sioux headdress to meet dignitaries, and now he lived in a lodge by his granddaughter’s reservation allotment ranch house. He had survived one of the largest displacements of a people in history, a refugee in time but not in place. His culture had been removed but his location remained.
Mae Williamson was half-assimilated. A Blackfeet speaker, she had been married to a lawyer and was the first woman on the Blackfeet Tribal Council. The boy’s name has been lost. If he is alive today, he is over sixty, a grandfather or great-grandfather. He may be one of those who completed the assimilation to white ways, losing his Blackfeet ways but becoming competent in modern society. I’m sure he still self-identifies as Blackfeet.
In addition to these three groups, I was aware of what we now call “street people,” which is to say hard-core alcoholics, and because of being around off and on for fifty years, I’m aware that though many died, some of these people sobered up and became productive family members again. And I was aware of those who were part of the mostly white manager/shopkeeper/clerical/rancher classes who would send their children to college to become today’s Blackfeet middle class.
In the public mind the “shape” of the American Indian comes from the Prairie Clearances, the huge land-grab that rested on the reservation system, powered by a corps of Civil War veterans suited for frontier war. Horseback, mixing guns with arrows, this picture of Indians is reinforced by indelible art and books mostly created by white men, like “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” which listed the many violences without much nuance. Every time I go to the CM Russell Benefit Auction I run into white men, usually middle-aged but lately older, who can recite amazing amounts of detail and who are emotionally invested in a certain point of view. Clearly they encountered all this at a time of their life when they became deeply invested in a certain way of seeing it.
A boy who came here with his missionary father during WWII tells me proudly his father was a member of the tribe because Chief Bull (Dick Sanderville) gave him an adoption certificate. The fact is that such a ceremony means about the same as a Hallmark greeting card. It is honorable, affectionate, and indicates a wish to stay connected, but it has no legal significance and would not be recognized by any other tribal member or the federal government. Chief Bull was one of two brothers descended from a Mexican family, mixed with Indian, who acted as cavalry interpreters, political leaders, and civil or ceremonial icons in “full buckskins.” But for a small boy, and possibly for a romantic father doing his best for a damaged people, it meant everything to have this relationship. They want to recognize it, valorize it, and keep it in mind. They ought to.
The small Blackfeet boy of those times would have a different “take.” His sons or grandsons may have been exposed to the ideas of the post-modern/post-colonial/redemptionist point of view that declares only genetically descended have the right to describe Indian knowledge. (Well, at least government-confirmed pedigree-descended, since no one had genetic tests and everyone had to go by the commodity rolls first listed by some 19th century clerk with a little table and a dip-pen, trying to get an accurate account of who-was-who out of people who didn’t speak English and only knew that getting one’s name on the list meant food.)
The idea that Indians who write about Indians should be privileged when it comes to publication and authority was a powerful one that fit into the Sixties Counter-Culture resistance to Old White Rich Men Dominating Everything. Women, Blacks, Indians, what is (rather disconcertingly to me) called Queers or GLBTDS (I never get that right), all benefited from a turning of the tables that’s still incomplete. But it created a couple of new “shapes” of Indians. One was the “white Indian” who pretended to be Indian -- maybe casually and maybe so seriously as to take up a 19th century Native American lifestyle -- and the “ultra Indian,” the person who really was enrolled and used that fact not only to write as an Indian, but also to drive white Indians out of the “commodity line” that publishing briefly provided. The very fight to preserve the right created so much uncertainty and so many lawsuits that publishing fled from the trouble.
By now those few decades have been submerged by globalization. We speak of authochthonous or indigenous people of the world and read books by oppressed minorities in Africa, China, the Middle East -- some of them held captive since before the Americas were even known to Europeans, inhumanly ghastly and ongoing today. American Indians of today are mostly baffled by all this. They are used to being privileged by their identity and suffering and don’t always have a strong sense of the planet, though continental alliances, the Pan-Indian movement, is strong and Incas and Aztecs now sometimes attend pow-wows.
Today the Chewing Black Bone patriarch is gone. Even the Mae Williamson/Chief Bull transitional figure is just about gone. The boy probably remains living, but he himself may have changed over the years. I see my former students slipping in and out of guises, according to what will help them survive, because this is what has kept the generations alive. Still, the common denominator is the place, the land, whether or not it is called a “reservation.” It has its own agenda.
I am -- right here before your very eyes -- a white woman writing about Indians. I defend the idea that all people have the right to write about what they know: this place and its people is something I know. Not just that: love. But not paralyzed into some stereotype. Rather, the real and constantly shape-shifting of a real people.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
METHODIST BLACKFEET PARISH HISTORY Part 3
1945 - 47 Stephen C. Smith
In the post WWII years, the discovery of oil under the reservation made everyone giddy with the expectation that they would all become wealthy just as the Oklahoma Indians had. Even the whites expected to profit from the boom and in their imaginations, they decided they didn’t need to be a mission anymore. Therefore Stephen C. Smith declared they were autonomous and even turned back a $300 Board of Missions check!
Smith said: “My feeling right along since I am here is that this work has been misrepresented to your board. The local Protestants are mostly whites. . . The Indians are at least 80% Catholic and we have little chance in making any more progress with them than we have in the past. The continued acceptance of gifts for Indian work does not meet with my personal approval.”
Smith saw three possibilities: 1) the Methodists could simply get out, surrendering the church property to some other denomination (Harrod doesn’t say whether anyone considered some pan-Protestant community entity), or 2) simply admit they were a white church and drop the mission component, or 3) a second minister specifically trained for mission work could be hired to work independently.
He said, rather fiercely, “My own feeling is that mission money should be spent in areas where progress can be made. This is one area where money can better spent elsewhere.” He was in favor of shock therapy: “I feel very strongly that the local group could shoulder all expenses, or nearly all, if they were made to. A sudden jolt makes the boing hard at first, but it will make for a finer work in the future.”
The result of Stephen Smith’s fierceness was paralysis. J.H. Harris told Oscar Doane in a letter dated April 17, 1959, that over $60,000 had been spent to supplement the pastor’s salary and to maintain the church. Somehow no oil money flowed. Miss Bernice Jackson, a Mohawk, undertook a program of Christian leadership which showed that the white officials had not understood that educated Indians from back East were not necessarily welcome among Blackfeet supersensitive to being patronized.
One Smith was replaced with another, Edgar B. Smith.
1947 - 1954 Edgar Bernard Smith and family
(This postcard was found by a person in New England who returned it to the Browning parish.)
Edgar Smith felt more of a missionary impulse. In 1952 there was an effort to start quilting project and three sewing machines were bought. The church continued to receive bales of old clothes. At the conference level the denomination didn’t want to give up the missionary aura. They went back to the idea of morning services for dressed-up whites and evening services for blanket Indians, now rather scarce.
1954 summer Paul Hollenbeck
This person is not discussed by Harrod and is not listed in the index. Probably he was a student or lay person who “held the fort” over the summer transition period.
1954-56 George Ritchey
Ritchey was evidently a standard “white bread” Methodist minister. The Presbyterian church had closed, giving their property to the Methodists. Now the former Presbyterian meeting house was sold for $4,660, to be a private dwelling. The money was immediately put into building the Sunday School and social hall, plus a bit of interior remodeling. These were the baby boom years and there was considerable demand for family events.
Minutes report: “Since the arrival of the Ritcheys, there has been a 300% increase in regular church attendance at Browjning and a one-third increase in Sunday School attendance. financial gains reflect the same general increase and enthusiasm. Membership Training Classes are now being conducted. The Indian Committee of the Conference has purchased $812.50 worth of new furniture, and the Browning Woman’s Society of Christian Service has added $325 in new furniture and upkeep."
Along in here somewhere, Bob Scriver left teaching in the Browning school system music program and was replaced by Don Schmidt. Schmidt turned out to be a limited teacher but a gifted organist and is was probably about this time that the electronic organ was acquired, a huge jump in formality and elegance. For the following decades Don and Kathryn Schmidt were pillars of the Methodist church in many ways while making their living through photography and a small shop on the highway through Browning.
The Church Ranch, which was the acreage on Willow Creek where the Methodist church building and parsonage originally stood, had to be used for the benefit of the Blackfeet Indians or they would lose their title to it. Allen Wilcox had a proposed a Folk School. Edgar Smith thought about truck farming, sheep raising, and dairying. The land was flood plain, best suited to being a source of gravel, but no one wanted a gravel pit. Finally it was leased for pasture and the money devoted to the church budget, by now a largely white church. But the Board of Missions, a different denominational internal organization, was legally entitled to the money. Blackfeet enrolled persons were beginning to mutter about their own entitlements.
Harrod, writing in the Sixties and Seventies that were preoccupied with justice in terms of poverty and race discrimination, was of the opinion that the denomination didn’t put enough effort into trying to save the church from being dominated by white members. He tended to be sympathetic to the ministers who -- after all -- had to get through their days without losing the members of whatever kind.
Harrod says little about the remaining ministers except for Jim Bell, whom he found sympathetic. I arrived in 1961 and served as an interim in 1988-89. I’ll try to assemble some memories in the next post.
1956-58 George P. Cox
1957 - summer Dave Olson (intern) Babb, Heart Butte
1958-59 Charlotte Bridges
1959-67 James E. Bell Babb, HButte
1963 - Harry E. Pearson Blackfeet United Methodist Parish (lay)
1965- 68 Conrad Himmel
1963-64 Richard D. Fiero Heart Butte
BROWNING UNITED METHODIST PARISH
1974-1981 Walter F. Mason
1981-93 F. Richard and H. Marine
1983-1985 James R. Bentley (PM)
1986-87 Ron Barr
1987 - 88 Mary Scriver
1989 Richard (Jake) Jacobson
1989 -90 Peggy Salois
1990- 1994 Donna Lee Martin
1994 - 1998 Rowland Freeman
In the post WWII years, the discovery of oil under the reservation made everyone giddy with the expectation that they would all become wealthy just as the Oklahoma Indians had. Even the whites expected to profit from the boom and in their imaginations, they decided they didn’t need to be a mission anymore. Therefore Stephen C. Smith declared they were autonomous and even turned back a $300 Board of Missions check!
Smith said: “My feeling right along since I am here is that this work has been misrepresented to your board. The local Protestants are mostly whites. . . The Indians are at least 80% Catholic and we have little chance in making any more progress with them than we have in the past. The continued acceptance of gifts for Indian work does not meet with my personal approval.”
Smith saw three possibilities: 1) the Methodists could simply get out, surrendering the church property to some other denomination (Harrod doesn’t say whether anyone considered some pan-Protestant community entity), or 2) simply admit they were a white church and drop the mission component, or 3) a second minister specifically trained for mission work could be hired to work independently.
He said, rather fiercely, “My own feeling is that mission money should be spent in areas where progress can be made. This is one area where money can better spent elsewhere.” He was in favor of shock therapy: “I feel very strongly that the local group could shoulder all expenses, or nearly all, if they were made to. A sudden jolt makes the boing hard at first, but it will make for a finer work in the future.”
The result of Stephen Smith’s fierceness was paralysis. J.H. Harris told Oscar Doane in a letter dated April 17, 1959, that over $60,000 had been spent to supplement the pastor’s salary and to maintain the church. Somehow no oil money flowed. Miss Bernice Jackson, a Mohawk, undertook a program of Christian leadership which showed that the white officials had not understood that educated Indians from back East were not necessarily welcome among Blackfeet supersensitive to being patronized.
One Smith was replaced with another, Edgar B. Smith.
1947 - 1954 Edgar Bernard Smith and family
(This postcard was found by a person in New England who returned it to the Browning parish.)
Edgar Smith felt more of a missionary impulse. In 1952 there was an effort to start quilting project and three sewing machines were bought. The church continued to receive bales of old clothes. At the conference level the denomination didn’t want to give up the missionary aura. They went back to the idea of morning services for dressed-up whites and evening services for blanket Indians, now rather scarce.
1954 summer Paul Hollenbeck
This person is not discussed by Harrod and is not listed in the index. Probably he was a student or lay person who “held the fort” over the summer transition period.
1954-56 George Ritchey
Ritchey was evidently a standard “white bread” Methodist minister. The Presbyterian church had closed, giving their property to the Methodists. Now the former Presbyterian meeting house was sold for $4,660, to be a private dwelling. The money was immediately put into building the Sunday School and social hall, plus a bit of interior remodeling. These were the baby boom years and there was considerable demand for family events.
Minutes report: “Since the arrival of the Ritcheys, there has been a 300% increase in regular church attendance at Browjning and a one-third increase in Sunday School attendance. financial gains reflect the same general increase and enthusiasm. Membership Training Classes are now being conducted. The Indian Committee of the Conference has purchased $812.50 worth of new furniture, and the Browning Woman’s Society of Christian Service has added $325 in new furniture and upkeep."
Along in here somewhere, Bob Scriver left teaching in the Browning school system music program and was replaced by Don Schmidt. Schmidt turned out to be a limited teacher but a gifted organist and is was probably about this time that the electronic organ was acquired, a huge jump in formality and elegance. For the following decades Don and Kathryn Schmidt were pillars of the Methodist church in many ways while making their living through photography and a small shop on the highway through Browning.
The Church Ranch, which was the acreage on Willow Creek where the Methodist church building and parsonage originally stood, had to be used for the benefit of the Blackfeet Indians or they would lose their title to it. Allen Wilcox had a proposed a Folk School. Edgar Smith thought about truck farming, sheep raising, and dairying. The land was flood plain, best suited to being a source of gravel, but no one wanted a gravel pit. Finally it was leased for pasture and the money devoted to the church budget, by now a largely white church. But the Board of Missions, a different denominational internal organization, was legally entitled to the money. Blackfeet enrolled persons were beginning to mutter about their own entitlements.
Harrod, writing in the Sixties and Seventies that were preoccupied with justice in terms of poverty and race discrimination, was of the opinion that the denomination didn’t put enough effort into trying to save the church from being dominated by white members. He tended to be sympathetic to the ministers who -- after all -- had to get through their days without losing the members of whatever kind.
Harrod says little about the remaining ministers except for Jim Bell, whom he found sympathetic. I arrived in 1961 and served as an interim in 1988-89. I’ll try to assemble some memories in the next post.
1956-58 George P. Cox
1957 - summer Dave Olson (intern) Babb, Heart Butte
1958-59 Charlotte Bridges
1959-67 James E. Bell Babb, HButte
1963 - Harry E. Pearson Blackfeet United Methodist Parish (lay)
1965- 68 Conrad Himmel
1963-64 Richard D. Fiero Heart Butte
BROWNING UNITED METHODIST PARISH
1974-1981 Walter F. Mason
1981-93 F. Richard and H. Marine
1983-1985 James R. Bentley (PM)
1986-87 Ron Barr
1987 - 88 Mary Scriver
1989 Richard (Jake) Jacobson
1989 -90 Peggy Salois
1990- 1994 Donna Lee Martin
1994 - 1998 Rowland Freeman
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