WANDERING ON THE COMPUTER AFTER A NAP . . .

East Slope -- new snow

So I come back from Cut Bank with a new load of cat food, driving against a high wind because another front is pushing over the Rockies, and I take a nap, because I’m sort of blitzed.  When I get back up, the fat cats are collapsed on my reading chairs, so I go

to the computer to write the post for Saturday, because I’ll post it tonight at 10PM.  That’s as late as I want to stay up.  It’s midnight on the east coast.

Check messages.  Nothing exciting.  A few exchanges between Philip Red Eagle, who’s been asked to suggest books for a new library of Native American literature, and David McNabb who’s teaching at York University.  I’ve known these people a long time.  We’re on a list that is almost inactive, but still valuable.

Philip Red Eagle

Next I decide to follow up something I ran across a few days ago, daylighting  Larry Sanger’s complaints about Wikipedia, which he helped to found.  In fact, he’s both a guy with advanced computer expertise and a formidable “philosophy of knowledge” academic background.  He has been in on the start of a predecessor Nupedia and also the start of another following wiki he hoped would be more responsible than Wikipedia, called Citizendium.  It's slow and has few posts, but it's reliable.  Sanger is a “Reedie,” which means that his undergrad degree is from Reed in Portland, a famous place where people value thinking above almost everything else.  I grew up in Portland.

Wikipedia quickly took off, but just months after it was launched, things started to go off the rails, Sanger says, and by the summer of 2001 the new online community was being "overrun" by what he described as "trolls" and "anarchist-types", who were "opposed to the idea that anyone should have any kind of authority that others do not".  Sanger responded by proposing a stronger emphasis for expert editors, individuals with the authority to resolve disputes and enforce the rules.  Tired of endless content battles and feeling he had a lack of support from Wales, Sanger eventually left the project.”

So -- all the time that some of us were struggling against what we considered character assassination and erroneous information by predatory journalists, the Wikipedia management knew very well that it was happening and simply tolerated it.  Maybe because controversy draws eyes.  The ultimate goal was always advertising, against the scruples of Sanger.  So a generation of kids, immigrants, rural students and other credulous folks read a lot of slanted and prejudiced information -- often about THEM -- writing it all down, maybe verbatim.   

Backstage, we hopeful reformers of Wikipedia DID have a little knowledge of Bomis, the porn site that offers Bomis Babes, a sort of babydoll version of females that attracts “lads,”  naive beer drinkers who value cars and sports.  This was the original source of Wikipedia venture capital.  To the Reedie crowd these guys must have seemed hungry for information that would make them seem sophisticated and adult.  But men who were threatened by women who weren't babies didn’t want to put in the effort it takes to develop thinking skills above high school level and probably wouldn’t qualify for admission to a decent university education anyway.  They’d have the money, but not the attention span.  And they like wrangling and powering people down.

So that was fun to chase around the Internet for a while!  Ripping the bandaids off the scabby outfit that operates unseen, but generally suspected, where the money lurks, ethics gives way to profit, and anonymity trumps [sic] expertise.

The happy video dolphin who rehabilitates stroke victims.

Next my regular feed of newsletters brought up http://www.statnews.com/2015/11/13/after-a-stroke-reteaching-the-brain-by-gaming/  STAT is a new online science magazine.  Carl Zimmer is a science writer with a blog of his own and a column in the NYTimes.  This little vid is a brilliant strategy for stroke rehabilitation that is based on a video game of dolphins trying to catch fish.  The player’s arm is in a cradle that controls the dolphin as it dives and twirls.  This causes the brain neurons and the arm muscles to regrow and recover skill.  It’s a lively little vid that’s fun to watch.  The scientist developing this suggests we stop taking grapes and magazines to our friends in the hospital, but instead take a video game like this, maybe one that can be played by two people, but even a single player is a HUGE improvement over lying in bed all alone for hours, or staring passively at a TV.

But you COULD write a book.  Here’s a call from Frontenac House, “Frontenac House, a medium sized publishing house in Calgary Alberta, is currently looking for poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction, and/or essays on the environment by Canadian authors. 

Authors are invited to submit before Dec. 15th, 2015

Here is the direct link to call on the web page:  http://www.frontenachouse.com”

Hotel Frontenac House in Quebec

I do not know why a Calgary publishing house should call itself after a famous and fabulous hotel in Quebec, though I have no objection since this is where memory meets research.  My family ate in the dining room there in the late Fifties.  We had breakfast, hoping that was the cheapest meal.  My pre-teen brothers, receiving their grapefruit halves in stemmed glass dishes, immediately thought of wine (very intriguing topic in our teetotaling household) and began a series of toasts, which greatly entertained the otherwise sober titans of industry who were actually staying there.  Morning light glinted off the spectacles of gray-haired men peeping over the top of their newspapers.

But it was summer and gnats were about.  One flew into my milk.  I was at the age when I would have swallowed a mouse to avoid drawing attention, but my father put up his finger, like a person in a movie, and the maitre d’ hustled over to see what was happening.  Staring aghast at the minor insect drowning in my milk, he exclaimed,  “Mon dieu!” and, holding it high to avoid contamination, he bore it off into the kitchen.  Soon he was back with a replacement.  SUCH drama!

Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton, Alberta

Wikipedia, which can probably be trusted in this instance, tells us:  “The Château Frontenac was designed by American architect Bruce Price, as one of a series of "château" style hotels built for the Canadian Pacific Railway company (CPR) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the newer portions of the hotel—including the central tower (1924)—were designed by Canadian architect William Sutherland Maxwell. CPR's policy was to promote luxury tourism by appealing to wealthy travelers. The Château Frontenac opened in 1893, six years after the Banff Springs Hotel, which was owned by the same company and is similar in style.”

This is the tourism style, closely related to railroads, that led to the development of lodges in Glacier National Park and the adjoining Canadian Waterton Peace Park lodges, though they tended to emphasize the frontier by using Douglas fir logs brought in on their railroad.  The Prince of Wales in Waterton is rather elegant and features a “high tea.”  It was publicity for these lodges and the park, large portraits of Blackfeet tribespeople in their regalia by Winold Reiss, that established in the minds of so many people just who these people were.

This is Mary Ground.

She sat next to me in ceremonies to make sure I didn't bungle.

And so we have come full circle and it’s teatime on the East Slope of the Rockies.

WHOOPING IT UP IN THE CYPRESS HILLS

The post is about THIS book.

Not this book

“Whoop-Up Country” is a familiar phrase, appearing on roadside history signs along nearby highways.  But not so many know the sub-title,  “The Canadian-American West, 1865-1885” by Paul F. Sharp, a professor of Western history.  If you look at my chosen “range,” especially now, when the cross-border ecology -- esp. in terms of energy sources -- is more relevant than ever, and yet we confront the same political issues that have made trouble since before the 49th parallel was determined as the border.  In fact, politicians have slammed the border shut again.  I will not be able to cross to Lethbridge (130 miles away and a major city with good shopping and an excellent university) unless I get my passport renewed.

Most histories of the East Slope of the Rockies are either wilderness-focused (most recently) or early-contact conflict tales meant to reassure the present historical society supporters that their ancestors were in the right, or at least on the winning side.  Sharp is not afraid to confront the ambiguity of violence and to include in his accounts the forces from far away.

Some time ago, a friend encouraged me to think about Clare Sheridan, an author, artist and relative-by-marriage to Winston Churchill.  Under the cover of art and romance, this intrepid female had gone to Russia to “case the joint” and befriend major figures by doing busts of them.  Just before WWII she came to Glacier Park, supposedly to work with the art colony run by Winold Reiss.  Indeed, Winold’s brother taught her how to carve logs.  His example portrait of an Indian still stands at the Big Hotel in East Glacier.  But quietly, Clare spent a lot of time with the family of Reiss’ star pupil, Gerald Tailfeathers, who was from Standoff, the Blackfoot reserve in Alberta.  His mother was Irish.  The motive was that WWII was about to begin and Winston wanted to know about the Fenians on the prairie, because to this day they have not given up resistance to England.  They were neutral during that war, but an idea was circulating that if they could capture Canada, possibly with the help of the Metis Red River Nation, they could use that to control England at a time when England was weakened.

Ken Robison, the pre-eminent Montana and Fort Benton historian explains,  “The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was a Celtic scholar, named his organisation after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill

All along I’ve been aware of how many Irish were part of Montana, even the horseback statue of Meagher brandishing his sword in front of the state capitol.  Wiki: “He was most notable for recruiting and leading the Irish Brigade, and encouraging support among Irish immigrants for the Union.”  I thought it was partly because of the Boston connection (the banks and mining moguls) and partly because Ulstermen tend to cluster on frontiers. But until I read Sharp’s chapter entitled “Massacre at Cypress Hills” I didn’t realize how strongly the international political sentiments entered into Blackfeet life.

The short version of this tale is that it was not a “massacre.” (The Baker massacre, entirely separate, was absolutely a genocidal massacre.)  But it was a precipitating precursor, entangled with Fort Benton where merchandizing tried to both evade and profit from crime.  (Meagher, the first territorial governor of Montana was lost overboard from a boat anchored on the levee and never found again.)  By the time in question, the controlling interests of the Hudson’s Bay Company had pretty much ended with the wiping out of beavers.  Bison hide hunters with new accurate long guns and wolvers with strychnine were roving the land, interfering with the tribes.  The big preoccupation was stealing horses back and forth.  The little obsession was whiskey and all sides craved it.  In a time of short lives and epidemic disease, it was one of the few ways to get a bit of relief.  Even the judicious Clark, like a ship captain, had given out a bit of “grog” as celebration and reward.  

The next influential man in this turmoil is “Colonel John J. Donnelly.” http://fortbenton.blogspot.com/2012/01/larger-than-life-frontier-character.html

Ken Robison says:  “Frontier Fort Benton was a town of colorful characters, but they broke the mold with John J. Donnelly. In the span of six decades, Colonel Donnelly fought with distinction through the Civil War, led Irish Fenian Army invasions of Canada, led a civilian army in the Nez Perce War, served as Fenian agitator, Louis Riel advisor, attorney, county clerk and recorder, and probate judge, and was elected Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives.”  

He tried three times to raise a Fenian force to invade Canada, working his way West and finally connecting with Louis Riel.  (I haven’t gotten to the Nez Perce yet, but Vollman’s major work, “The Dying Grass” is beside my reading chair.)  And he was very much involved in the Cypress Hills “massacre,” which was more accurately described as a series of skirmishes, some in unsettled country and some in the unsettled courts of Fort Benton and Alberta.  Much of the latter dynamics had to do with fear of Fenian politics.  It’s complex, largely undocumented, and -- in any case -- I lost my interest in history largely because it was all dates, personalities and military events like these, so  if you like that sort of thing, Ken Robison is your excellent guide.  In this period it’s all swords and horses.  

Robison again:  “In 1866 together with many other Irish Civil War veterans Colonel Donnelly joined the Fenian movement to invade Canada to punish the English for their occupation of Ireland. The Fenians dreamed of capturing Canada, forcing the English to free Ireland in exchange for return of Canada. A thousand strong force of Fenian troops took the field in June, 1866, crossed the Niagara River into Ontario, defeated a company of Queen’s Own Rifles of Toronto, and captured Fort Erie. Shortly afterward the Battle of Pigeon Hill practically ended this outbreak. In this battle Col. Donnelly had 200 men in his command, and was able to hold his position from 9 o’clock a. m. until sundown, with 2,300 men opposing him. He had twelve men killed and seventeen wounded, with Donnelly among the wounded. He was captured, but escaped, and a large reward was offered for him.”  In the end he committed suicide.

Canada deployed the mounties about this time and things settled down, comparatively, but the political forces still linger.  When I taught in Cut Bank for those ill-fated few months. there was an Irish citizen high school student who became disgusted with the way I ran the classroom, gathered up his books and stalked out, declaring he came for an education.  I don’t know what the administration did with him, but he got away with one of my best ecological histories of Ireland.  The American rabble was nonplussed.  They came to be athletic heroes and were succeeding rather well.  This student had recently inherited land in Ireland and probably went back there.  He wore the band-collared pin-striped flannel shirts associated with Ireland.

I had not realized how many Irish studies classes are offered in Missoula, but I’m hoping that one of them will revive this material and get a bit more clarity about it while local paper trails and people like Robison, who is retired, still exist accessibly.  Also, it is way past time to realize that the Blackfeet people and land have been part of the story from the beginning.  I’ll keep you posted as I follow the trail that Sharp laid down.

WHY GONE THOSE TIMES?

fgrtv

Eddie Big Beaver

Two exceptionally honorable, handsome, and traditional Amskapi Pikuni (US Blackfeet) men I admired were very old in the Sixties:  Louis Plenty Treaty and Chewing Black Bones.  I knew them because they posed for portraits by Bob Scriver.  Eddie Big Beaver also posed for Bob’s “No More Buffalo,” but Eddie was a different sort of man who had also posed for Phimister Proctor and lived in the big cities.  He was a park ranger for years and died tragically before I was in Browning.  By that time he had become fairly assimilated.  I wrote a blog post about him and some of his children, whom I taught in Browning.  

"No More Buffalo" by Bob Scriver

All three of these men are included in Adolf Hungry Wolf’s marvelous four book series about the Pikunni that is available through the Blackfeet Heritage Center and that is now owned by the Browning Public Schools.  Adolf arrived in Browning a couple of years after me but made it a point to sit down with these old people, born at the end of the buffalo days, and to collect old photos of them.

In order to find the entry about Louis Plenty Treaty, it is necessary to know that he also went by Louis Bear Child.  Many Blackfeet had more than one name.  In 1974 Adolf took Louis up Starr School to check out his cabin where he hadn’t lived for twenty years.  By then Maggie, his wife, had gone on “over the horizon” and Louis was living in the Browning old folks’ home.  Though he had moved away from the little old-timer enclave, he had felt confident enough about the building belonging to him that he had left his Crow-Water-Society Bundle tied high in the rafters.  The goal of the trip was to get it and transfer it to Adolf, meaning to teach him the songs and movements that went with opening it.  On the way Louis was trying to find (remember) the song that accompanied the first unbinding and spreading of the skins, tobacco, rattles.

But when they got to the cabin, there was a padlock on the door and it was obvious that someone was living there.  The squatters returned but didn’t make trouble once they understood who Louis was.  The Bundle was gone.  As it turned out, a previous squatter had removed it, but no one knew what she did with it.  Probably sold it.

In those years Bob was deeply interested in these Bundles, which were being destroyed by fundamentalist Christians and simply disappearing, maybe sold though they weren’t flashy objects.  Our deepest glimpse of what they meant to the people was not about Bundles but about the Horn Society, which was meant to encourage the bison to multiply with many calves.  It was deeply secret because it included ritual coitus.  

Ceremonial staffs

The people were gathered in a big circle and we arrived a little before men holding tall staffs with a crook on end would run around the outside of the circle.  It was an arduous task and a stumble, or worse, a fall, would indicate something very bad was in the future.  Louis ran, barely balancing his tall staff.  He was not a young man, but he had done hard physical work in his youth -- cutting wood and haying with wagons.  His face was intense.  He did not stumble.

Adolf includes a photo of Louis in 1933, dressed in a black leather jacket.  His hair is cut to above his ears so that he looks very modern, even hip.  He was leaving for Washington DC to act as an interpreter and councillor for James White Calf, a much more famous man.

Louis Plenty Treaty in 1933

In William Farr’s book, “The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882-1945,” there is a photo of him standing in his field with his long braids, leaning on a shovel.

He is one of the people in Scriver’s circle of portraits called “Opening of the Thunder Pipe Bundle.”

Louis is the one with the blackened face.

Chewing Black Bones was in an earlier bronze.

"Transition"

The portrait of Chewing Black Bones is sold in two forms.  “Transition” shows him seated on the ground, Marie Williamson standing in the middle wearing her elk tooth dress, and a little boy on her other side.  No one remembers his name.

When the seated figure is sold alone, he’s called “The Last Warrior” and, indeed, he was.  On page 1021 of “The Blackfoot Papers” is a photo of him taken in 1910 in his protective hairlock shirt showing the two scalps he took in war, both long hair.  His own hair was remarkably thick and long, worn in the men’s three-braid manner when he was young.  His daughter said each braid was “thick as a pickle!”

Chewing Black Bone was an observant and meticulous man who incongruously wore glasses most of his life.  When weather allowed he lived in a lodge apart from the family ranch-house on Two Medicine, dressed in buckskin, mended his own moccasins, and despised politicians.  His daughter, Agnes MadPlume, made it possible for him to live this way and pretty much maintained old ways herself.  

Despite all this, Chewing Black Bone was a close friend of two remarkable white men:  James Willard Schultz and Keith Seele.  In a letter to his son, Hart, Schultz told about Chewing Black Bone returning an ancient horned headdress to the Yanktonais Sioux in 1939.  Winold Reiss had painted him wearing it.  His most important religious role had been as a Weather Dancer in an Okan lodge, or Sun Dance.  It was another endurance assignment, to stand in a booth blowing an eagle bone whistle for long periods of time.

Schultz, who was a bit disreputable, had a studio next to the Browning Merc, so Bob in boyhood knew him, though he was instructed to stay away from him.  Keith Seele was an eminent and entirely conscientious Egyptologist from the U of Chicago who was involved in the excavations that tried to save whatever there was that would be destroyed by the building of the Aswan Dam.  He was in Egypt when Chewing Black Bone neared his end, was notified, and came at once to Browning.  

We were close to Keith and Diedericka Seele and loved to take a picnic out to Cut Bank Creek and sit by the last of the campfire, listening to Keith tell stories about Egypt. At first Chewing Black Bone did not want to pose for Bob, but Keith helped to persuade the old man.  Keith, who had once intended on going into the ministry, had also been devoted to Schultz.  

This may be Louis in his captured headdress.

The face painting is for the Horn Society.

I think the common denominator was the love of ancient lands and times.  As Schultz’ book title asked,  “Why Gone Those Times?”  There is no answer.  In the times of flowering, the “climax cultures” as the anthros call them, it seems the natural order of the world, deeply true.  But then circumstances that can’t be controlled wipe everything out despite our best efforts to remember.  And we can't yet know what the next flowering climax will be like.

A TEXAS POSTCARD FINDS THE BLACKFEET RESERVATION

Hello Ma'am,

Mike Bailey here at the Brazoria County Historical Museum in Angleton, Texas.  I found this card in a box of postcards recently  donated, the back of the card says Mr. and Mrs. Wades-in-the-Water... Browning, Montana,  1953.  I saw where you had put some materials on a blog and saw the name mentioned above. I was hoping that you would be able to identify the people pictured and give us a bit more information.

Thanks and regards,

M. Bailey 

This is the photo on the post card.

More photos at:   http://blackfootdigitallibrary.org/en/asset/photograph-wades-water-and-his-wife%2C-julia-wades-water  and a number of other sources.

The material I’m quoting below draws on The Blackfoot Papers, a four-volume archive containing all the materials collected in the career of Adolf Hungry Wolf (which continues).  www.blackfootpapers.com   These books are owned and managed for sale by the Browning Public Schools.  They are invaluable -- a “museum in a box” with images and information collected from hundreds of sources.  [The original name of these People is Siksika or, on the Montana side they are Amskapi Pikunni.  Siksika is translated either plural on the US side or singular on the Canadian side.]

White people get all excited by Indian names, so -- not to disappoint -- “Wades in the Water” or “Soyaw” (1871-1947) was the son of Running Crane and Blazing in Sight, also translated as Light-over-the-Hill.  He had a terrific face that was also what whites thought an Indian should look like, so he was photographed by T. J. Hileman, who is probably the producer of this postcard, as well as portrayed in the famous Winold Reiss portraits on the Great Northern calendars.  (He was on the 1945 one.)  His wife was also portrayed.  She didn’t die until Jan. 4, 1954.  Julia (Stacht-sepist-aki, Under Owl Woman) was a noted craftworker and probably made both their outfits.  Both of them belonged to the Crazy Dogs, order-keepers or Indian police, which meant Julia would have been considered a warrior.  He was Chief of Police and jailer for many years in Browning and was respected as a chief, which his father and grandfather had been before him -- not out of inheritance, but out of personal quality.  He was old enough to have participated in buffalo hunting and horse raiding as a teenager, with all that implies in terms of killing and taking scalps. These people are transitional, beginning their lives in the last of the buffalo days and ending them after WWII.

Other names include his maternal grandfather, No Coat, who was a Thunder Pipe Bundle Keeper.  The Bundle was acquired by the Museum of the Plains Indian.  His maternal aunts and uncles include:  Rattler, Mad Plume, Morning Gun.  His brother is Little Petrified Rock (buffalo stone or iniskum).  Other relatives are Comes In By Herself, Crane Old Woman, Good Success (married to Charley Rose -- not THAT Charlie Rose), and Deathly Woman, wife of Cree Medicine.

Locals and others “up” on the history of the rez will know that Julia was the mother of Nora Spanish from a first marriage.  Nora and Bill Spanish were strong figures in terms of representing the tribe when I first came in 1961, esp. through the Museum of the Plains Indian.  Adolf includes many photos plus the Reiss paintings.  I’ll repeat a story told by Adam White Man to Claude Schaeffer on Dec. 12, 1952.  (Schaeffer was the resident anthropologist at the Museum of the Plains Indian.)

Museum of the Plains Indian

“Wades in the Water” had an older brother who died.  He felt sorrowful and went up into the mountains to fast.  A vision came to him.  In his first dream a bear appeared and transformed into a person.  This person told him to return home.  He was wearing a special shirt with circle designs and had his face specially painted.  He carried a white goose-wing fan, a small wooden human effigy, and a short bone whistle.  The spirit person said,  “I’m the Thunder.  If you are near a person struck with lightning, you can treat them with the whistle and effigy.”

Towards morning Wades in the Water awakened.  He looked from his fasting place and saw a multi-dotted bird sitting nearby.  All at once a thunder storm arose.  The lightning flashed nearby.  Then the storm ceased.  After that we went back home.  Adam knew him at the time of this storm.

Adam confirmed the story of Nora (Spanish, telling about her father’s version).  She said Wades painted a cross of white paint on the left side, below his eye, as a sign of power from Jesus.  Wades informed Adam that ‘Our Lord gave him power.’  (It was said) that the circles represented sacred medals.  There were two separate dreams, one with Thunder and the other with Jesus.  Adam said it’s very unusual for an Indian to receive power from Jesus.

Wades in the Water doctored Rides at the Door when the latter was struck by lightning (at the Sun Dance camp) in back of the Museum.  He doctored by blowing the whistle which caused him to regain consciousness.  When doctoring, Wades in the Water threw the effigy at Rides at the Door.  The effigy stood up.  Wades had told Rides, ‘If I throw the effigy and it stands up, you will recover.’  Rides told Adam,  ‘After I regained consciousness, Wades gave me his effigy to sleep- with that night.  (He was told,) if effigy appeared to him in his sleep, it was a sign of recovery.  So Rides slept with it and it appeared in his dream as a little boy.”

Don’t imagine that these people went around in full ceremonial regalia.  This clothing is worth thousands of dollars today and is sold in fine arts auctions.  There is much technical writing in various places about the kinds of beads used, the sort of stitch with which they were attached, the evolution of patterns from abstract to floral, the degree to which the buckskin is left with the shape of the animal or squared off and tailored.  Early “suits” are in more pieces: detachable sleeves and leggings that do not necessarily match each other in terms of pattern and color.  The familiar Sioux fanned style of headdress was preceded among the Blackfeet by a sort of stovepipe stand-up style, which has now returned because people began to respond to anthropological research instead of popular media images. Blackfeet put a high value on creative individual ideas within the preceding traditions.

These portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Wades in the Water are by Winold Reiss.  winoldreiss.org