Once in a while when doing research there is a surprising juxtapositiion. I’ve always been intrigued by a photo of a classroom in William Farr’s photo album of the Blackft, partly because this classroom was on the top floor of the J.H. Sherburne house, next door to the T.E. Scrivers. In the Sixties there was a fire up there, and I helped to carry out the desks, maps and books that had been there since before 1914. The roof was fixed and the downstairs continued to be habitable. When a friend found the document below in the Denver archives of the Agency records and sent it to me, I realized that these were the same children. The teacher was J.H. Sherburne’s nephew. This is mostly of local interest, but a lot of teachers are writing end-of-the-year reports right now.
Browning, Montana
June 15, 1914
To my Successor:
Dear Friend, As my school draws near a close and I sit at my desk and look over these bright little workers which have been the clay in the potter’s hands (myself) for the past nine months and as I look back retrospectively and compare the beginning of the year with the present and see the new forms and shapes the bits of clay have changed to, I cannot do so without some little pride and a great feeling of satisfaction steals into my heart when I think of the wonderful progress we have made together, of the difficulties we have met and overcome, of the joys and sorrows we have shared together and lastly a lump rises in my throat and my heart beats faster as I think of one smiling face which left us at Christmas time to the land where there is no sorrow, to a land where no cruel teacher will sit at the desk to deal out punishment or reward as the case may be and then as I look forward and see that within a few days I must part from these little friends that have grown near and dear to me I turn the thought from my mind with a shudder but thinking that during these nine months of work and play and association together I might have learned some of the peculiarities of each individual that might be of some value to my successor I shall try and give it to you in the few lines that I shall set opposite each name.
I shall take each pupil as they appear on my year register:
Sidney Brown (2nd grade) Slow worker, should enter the second grade for 2 or 3 months. Excitable nature and should not be scolded too horribly.
Francis Billedeau (1st grade) Very nervous. Willing worker but must have continual encouragement for good work.
Melvin Billedeau (1st grade) Good disposition, good work, but somewhat slow.
George Croff (3rd grade) Troubled with nervousness. A very willing worker and will do his best at all times. Very trustworthy.
Douglas Roy (2nd grade) Fair worker, tender-hearted, and fairly trustworthy.
Fetters, Joe (1st grade) Slow, poor worker, and somewhat mischievious. Not mean disposition.
Gerard, Charles (first grade) Left at Christmas and I cannot say much as he was not in my care very long.
Howard, Henry Left at Christmas for boarding school.
Howard, Joe Left at Christmas for boarding school.
Henderson, Edward Promoted to adv. room. See Status Report
Hagerty, Daniel (first grade) Poor worker, very untruthful and a troublemaker on the playground, loves to fight.
LaBuff, Henry (2nd grade) Promoted to adv. room. See Status Report.
Lemieux, Andrew (1st grade) A very desireable pupil, good worker and will work hard with a little encouragement.
Lemieux, Walter (1st grade) Very willing and obedient.
Merchant, Frank (2nd grade) Not very industrious and mischievous but not mean.
Moore, Perry (4th grade) Good worker, obedient and usually truthful.
Powell, Henry (1st grade) Good worker, truthful and obedient.
Powell, Jessie (Deceased)
Schmidt, Perry (1st grade) Left early in term.
Steele, Ray To advanced room. See Status report.
Van Lender, George (4th grade) Fair worker, trustworthy and does best work with continual encouragement and boosting.
Walters, Lincoln and Sylvan (See Status Report)
Walter, James (1st grade) Good worker, easy to give up.
Walter, Arthur (1st grade) Quarrelsome disposition, liable to play “hookie”.
Monroe, Charley (2nd grade) Good worker, usually trustworthy and will do as asked if requested but cannot be forced.
Schmidt, Leonard. (Adv. section or 3rd grade) Near-sighted, truthful, good worker and trustworthy.
Willets, Frank. Fair worker if watched but will forget to work unless watched. Not unruly but must be kept busy.
Willets, Willie (4th grade) Trustworthy, good worker and can be trusted.
Falconer, Andrew (1st grade) Slow.
Haron, Hall (1st grade) Poor attendance. Cannot pass.
Hamilton, Robt. (Adv. 1st or 2nd grade) Fair worker. Poor attendance. Trustworthy at times.
Brown, Angeline (1st adv. or sec primary) Nervous disposition, mischievous but trustworthy, good worker, but must be kept at work.
Brown, Sarah (3rd) Promoted to advanced room.
Brown, Hazel (2nd grade) Good worker, kind and loving, truthful but unless kept busy will get into mischief.
Cooper, Mary (3rd grade) Promoted to advanced room.
Croff, Emma (4th grade) Fair worker, trustworthy at times, if encouraged will do excellent work.
Croff, Stella (4th grade) AN IDEAL PUPIL. Cannot say anything against but all for her.
Douglas, Grace To advanced room.
Gerard, Mary (1st grade) Left early in term. Had promise of an ideal pupil.
LaBuff, Mary (2nd) Left on account of sickness. Fair.
Gormley, Lyda (4th grade) Good worker. Truthful and trustworthy. Obedient at all times.
Goss, Grace Went to Boarding School.
Goss, Irene Went to Boarding School.
Hammer, Pearl (3rd Avd. or 4th) Willing but slow, easily discouraged.
Livermore, Alma (2nd grade) Willling, obedient and very trustworthy.
Hammer, Lillie (1st or 2nd) Loving dispoisition, easily offended and discouraged, good worker.
Merchant, Ethel To advanced room.
Powell, Helen (2nd grade) Must be watched as to personal conduct.
Schmidt, Gladys (3rd gr) Good worker, obedient at most times.
Schmidt, Florence (2nd gr) Excellent worker and aspires to promotion at all times.
Schmidt, Ethel (4th grade) Good worker, trustworthy, but very bashful and hard to get to recite. Ideal disposition, very near-sighted.
First One/Russell, Louise (2nd grade) Good worker, trustworthy and obedient.
First One/Russell, Virginia (1st grade) Fair worker, very bashful. Obedient and trustworthy.
Walters, Laura (1st grade) Not ready for school.
Walters, Edna (1st grade) .Not ready for school.
Rutherford, Annie (3rd grade) Trustworthy at all tiimes. Fair worker and good disposition.
Henault, Marion (4th grade or 3rd advanced) Good willing worker, with encouragement will do good work.
Hamilton, Clara (1st grade) Fair worker, good disposition, but stubborn at times.
Wolftail, Agnes Good worker, trustworthy, fair worker but bashful.
Barnes, Virginia (4th grade) Good worker at times. Trustworthy.
Gormley, Gertrude (1st gr) Ideal worker and pupil.
Billedeaux, Myrtle (2nd gr) Very nervous. Willing, trustworthy.
Billedeaux, Mamie (1st gr) Good worker, quick and trustworthy.
Note: the grade under or following the name is the grade that they should enter at the beginning of the term. Of course, this cannot be followed exclusively, but will give the succeeding teacher an index to the children who have been here in the primary room. Wishing you just as pleasant a year’s work in 1914-15 as I have had in 1913-14 and unbounded success, I am sincerely,
Your Predecessor,
E.L. Chase
The class that Chase is describing is pictured in the photograph book called “The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882, 1945.” by William Farr. Two of the white faces would have been Willets kids -- Willets was Thad Scriver’s partner in the earliest days of the Browning Mercantile.
(Note: There were a few kids that the teacher plainly didn’t like. I’ve done a little editing to protect them. These were small children and their immediate descendants are still with us.)
Monday, May 16, 2005
Sunday, May 15, 2005
"Nitsitapiisinni"
“Nitsitapiisinni” means “the Real People” and especially, the old Blackft before Europeans came. It is also the name of an exhibit and its accompanying soft book from the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (www.glenbow.org) This is an excellent destination for field trips, not that far from Montana High-Line schools. The book can be ordered from the museum or from Key Porter Books Limited, 70 The Esplanade, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1R2. (www.keyporter.com)
Because Western Canadian museums were a little late creating collections of objects, they have concentrated on excellent presentation. And because they were sensitive to the issues of their aboriginal peoples, they have included them in the planning and construction of Indian exhibits. This is how “Nitsitapiisinni” came about. The book is less than a hundred pages, but includes excellent information and photos about the pre-contact tribe. These Montana Blackft participated: Doreen Blackweasel, Tom Blackweasel, and Earl Old Person. The book does not always flatter the United States!
At the end of the book is a glossary of Blackfoot words. It’s interesting because the Canadian parts of the Blackft Nation speak a slightly different dialect than the States and even on the Montana reservation one end has a little different accent than the other. This list was of words that everyone could agree upon. Mostly they are names of spiritually important entities, probably because the old language is used today most often in prayer, so these are the words that people hear over and over. The exhibit has a movie screen where two old ladies tell stories, one speaking in Blackft and the other one translating for English speakers.
To me, one of the most interesting exhibits was not that old. It was a little one-room cabin, reassembled in the exhibit hall and provided with a voice-over narration for the visitors standing in it. The little house is furnished sparely with a metal bed, a wood stove, a table, a couple of chairs and a minimum of pans and basins hanging from nails. In fancy interior decorating circles right at the moment there is a great interest in “little houses,” but I’ve never seen one of these cabins included. Chicken houses, the tiny refugee houses built quickly to shelter San Franciscans after their city was destroyed by earthquake, tool sheds, “Sunday houses” where rural Texans stayed overnight after church because the distances were so far -- all of these have been in books. It’s time to add the one-room cabins where many Indian people made the transition from lodges to multi-room houses.
When Doreen Blackweasel tells about the house, she says that they had almost nothing except that they did have enough to eat and they had their families around them. That was enough. Many have fond memories of those places, especially the young ones who stayed in them for summer, maybe with grandparents. I remember some myself.
A strength of the book is the emphasis on place through photos. Pictured are the Rockies, Chief Mountain, the Sweetgrass Hills, buffalo jumps, and the Milk River Valley. Also, there are photos of the middle times, just after the turn of the century when steam tractors were first appearing. There is a moving photo of an Indian man hand-sowing his plowed fields with lodges far in the background. He is very small against the wide prairie. The residential schools are pictured and so are men in regalia participating in the Glenbow Stampede.
This book is reliable enough and clear enough to be used with junior high readers as the spine of a classroom unit or it would be an excellent subject for an individual report. The Glenbow Museum archives are for serious scholars. The papers of Claude Schaeffer, who was the anthropologist at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, are housed there.
In the Seventies, when Darrell Kipp was first teaching graduate classes for teachers and local Blackft scholars, he took a carload of his students up to use the archives. It was the time when AIM was being obstreperous, so when the little group of definitely Indian people strolled into the library, the librarians became very nervous. They seemed to think that there would be shouting or possibly even book-throwing. But everyone was on their best behavior. Darrell explained to the librarian in charge what they were doing and everyone settled at tables with their notebooks. (No laptops in those days.) They took pages and pages of notes, material not available anyplace else. At the end of the day they all thanked the staff, who still looked a little stunned when the scholars left. They just weren’t used to Indians studying Indians!
If a field trip is possible, there is another museum to the south in Fort McLeod called “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.” A buffalo jump or piskun is a cliff where buffalo could be stampeded over, so that they would be killed or severely injured. The meat would be sliced thinly and dried to keep over the winter. When this particular piskun was excavated, among the bison bones was a broken human skull. Young men would disguise themselves as calves or wolves and try to lure buffalo into position, jumping out of the way at the last minute when the stampede was underway. This one didn’t get out of the way fast enough.
The museum is built in stages up the cliff so that one can see the many layers of bones alternating with charcoal where the offal left after butchering was finally burned. Exhibits are wonderfully inventive so that Napi tales appear and disappear on boulders and there are participatory exhibits. The best part is that the museum is in open country where it is easy to imagine both grazing bison and Blackft riders off in the distance. Often there are programs with singers or storytellers.
The URL is www.head-smashed-in.com which is worth visiting just to see the little wee silhouetted buffalo running over the cliff! The museum is a Unesco World Heritage Site. The jump itself is more than 5,500 years old -- that compares with the Egyptian pyramids. Sometimes tipi camping is available. This is not a campground experience, but rather two or three lodges alone on the prairie under the stars.
Because Western Canadian museums were a little late creating collections of objects, they have concentrated on excellent presentation. And because they were sensitive to the issues of their aboriginal peoples, they have included them in the planning and construction of Indian exhibits. This is how “Nitsitapiisinni” came about. The book is less than a hundred pages, but includes excellent information and photos about the pre-contact tribe. These Montana Blackft participated: Doreen Blackweasel, Tom Blackweasel, and Earl Old Person. The book does not always flatter the United States!
At the end of the book is a glossary of Blackfoot words. It’s interesting because the Canadian parts of the Blackft Nation speak a slightly different dialect than the States and even on the Montana reservation one end has a little different accent than the other. This list was of words that everyone could agree upon. Mostly they are names of spiritually important entities, probably because the old language is used today most often in prayer, so these are the words that people hear over and over. The exhibit has a movie screen where two old ladies tell stories, one speaking in Blackft and the other one translating for English speakers.
To me, one of the most interesting exhibits was not that old. It was a little one-room cabin, reassembled in the exhibit hall and provided with a voice-over narration for the visitors standing in it. The little house is furnished sparely with a metal bed, a wood stove, a table, a couple of chairs and a minimum of pans and basins hanging from nails. In fancy interior decorating circles right at the moment there is a great interest in “little houses,” but I’ve never seen one of these cabins included. Chicken houses, the tiny refugee houses built quickly to shelter San Franciscans after their city was destroyed by earthquake, tool sheds, “Sunday houses” where rural Texans stayed overnight after church because the distances were so far -- all of these have been in books. It’s time to add the one-room cabins where many Indian people made the transition from lodges to multi-room houses.
When Doreen Blackweasel tells about the house, she says that they had almost nothing except that they did have enough to eat and they had their families around them. That was enough. Many have fond memories of those places, especially the young ones who stayed in them for summer, maybe with grandparents. I remember some myself.
A strength of the book is the emphasis on place through photos. Pictured are the Rockies, Chief Mountain, the Sweetgrass Hills, buffalo jumps, and the Milk River Valley. Also, there are photos of the middle times, just after the turn of the century when steam tractors were first appearing. There is a moving photo of an Indian man hand-sowing his plowed fields with lodges far in the background. He is very small against the wide prairie. The residential schools are pictured and so are men in regalia participating in the Glenbow Stampede.
This book is reliable enough and clear enough to be used with junior high readers as the spine of a classroom unit or it would be an excellent subject for an individual report. The Glenbow Museum archives are for serious scholars. The papers of Claude Schaeffer, who was the anthropologist at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, are housed there.
In the Seventies, when Darrell Kipp was first teaching graduate classes for teachers and local Blackft scholars, he took a carload of his students up to use the archives. It was the time when AIM was being obstreperous, so when the little group of definitely Indian people strolled into the library, the librarians became very nervous. They seemed to think that there would be shouting or possibly even book-throwing. But everyone was on their best behavior. Darrell explained to the librarian in charge what they were doing and everyone settled at tables with their notebooks. (No laptops in those days.) They took pages and pages of notes, material not available anyplace else. At the end of the day they all thanked the staff, who still looked a little stunned when the scholars left. They just weren’t used to Indians studying Indians!
If a field trip is possible, there is another museum to the south in Fort McLeod called “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.” A buffalo jump or piskun is a cliff where buffalo could be stampeded over, so that they would be killed or severely injured. The meat would be sliced thinly and dried to keep over the winter. When this particular piskun was excavated, among the bison bones was a broken human skull. Young men would disguise themselves as calves or wolves and try to lure buffalo into position, jumping out of the way at the last minute when the stampede was underway. This one didn’t get out of the way fast enough.
The museum is built in stages up the cliff so that one can see the many layers of bones alternating with charcoal where the offal left after butchering was finally burned. Exhibits are wonderfully inventive so that Napi tales appear and disappear on boulders and there are participatory exhibits. The best part is that the museum is in open country where it is easy to imagine both grazing bison and Blackft riders off in the distance. Often there are programs with singers or storytellers.
The URL is www.head-smashed-in.com which is worth visiting just to see the little wee silhouetted buffalo running over the cliff! The museum is a Unesco World Heritage Site. The jump itself is more than 5,500 years old -- that compares with the Egyptian pyramids. Sometimes tipi camping is available. This is not a campground experience, but rather two or three lodges alone on the prairie under the stars.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
An Unbroken Circle
Here’s a Blackft joke for you: Why do no Blackft children ever have to stand in corners? Because their lodges HAVE no corners. They are round inside.
They say that when the old Blackft ladies were brought to live in cabins or even a room of a larger building, their first instinct was to try to make the room round by hanging lines across the corner and pinning blankets to them. They put their trunks and bundles around the room in a circle unless there was a need for space -- then they would store things in the corners behind the blankets.
The ordering principle of a lodge is that the door must be to the east. In the center of the lodge is the main fire, and directly behind it is the most sacred place in the lodge, where any Bundles or other sacred objects are kept, sometimes on tripods and sometimes hung from lines tied across from one tipi pole to another. You must not walk between the fire and the holy place, but always return around past the door to get to the other side.
If the man of the “house” is there, he will sit next to his holy objects and the most important wife will sit on the other side of them. She is called the “Sits Beside” wife. On formal occasions, women will range themselves in order of importance next to the “Sits Beside,” until the least important woman there will be the “Sits by the Door,” the one who has to go get more firewood or to go out to see why the dogs are making a fuss or the one who is sent on an errand. If there is no “least wife” to sit there, kids will be there to take care of these small but important duties. If they aren’t paying attention, the man may say, “I think I smell a skunk in here!” If they still don’t wake up, he might throw something at them. Men sit in order on the other side.
Even informally, the inside of the lodge is always arranged the same way from one camp to another so that if you had been away while the camp was moved and came back late at night, you would know where your bed was. The women could always find their supplies, clothing, and equipment without searching. Likewise, if the camp were in an open spot, the lodges of the band were likely to be in a circle so that you could find a specific person’s lodge, and this would almost certainly be the way of gathering for a major event, like the annual camp for ceremonial and social doin’s that we might call a pow-wow today.
If I knew how to post a diagram, I would insert here the sketch I have of where the Amskapi Pikuni usually put their lodges in relation to each other. If one were new or from another group, the natural thing to do would be to camp near friends.
If the camp were along a creek or in trees, then the circle would be replaced by scattered sites, which I expect would become habitual places just as people tend to gravitate to a favored parking place or seat in church.
More than these circles, the lives of the Blackft went round and round through the cycles of the seasons, repeating the trips to beds of camas or likely hunting spots. This would be a good place for winter, near trees; and that would be a good place for the blustery spring when high winds would blow. As they traveled they watched for landmarks, distinctive peaks in particular. An old time Indian would be always watching for high points where a lookout might spot game or enemies or weather or -- indeed -- friends. But also they would often be dropping down to low points because that’s where water collects. At some seasons of the year, they would look for high elevations, maybe following the later blooming of plants or, in fall, seeking places where light snow would making tracking of game possible. In winter it would be wise to be close enough to the Rockies to benefit from the katabatic warming winds, the “Chinook,” but not close enough to be caught in high altitude deep snow.
The human life cycle and cycles of plants and animals and the great circle of the domed sky and grassy earth -- none of these passed unnoticed. The Blackft sacred number is FOUR, the four points of the compass circle. (The European sacred number is THREE because of the influence of Christian doctrine.)
A book I recommend is “Akak’stiman: A Blackfoot Framework for Decision-Making and Mediation Processes,” by Reg Crowshoe and Sybille Manneschmidt. On the front of the soft book are a photo of a circle of a lodges and a diagram of the inside of a lodge. You can get this book from the University of Calgary Press (2500 University Press, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AL, Canada, T2n 1N4. Website: www.uofcpress.com ISBN 1-55238-044-0 Copyright 2002 (second edition) 1997 (first edition).
You could not beat this book for a compact interpretation of order-making in the Blackfoot world. There is a history, an account of social structures, a description of Sacred Bundles and their functions, an account of transfer rites, some words about health and healing, and fascinating appendixes of relevant myths and histories. There are photos, maps and graphs and a good bibliography -- all in less than one hundred pages.
Most unexpected but crucial to the purpose of the book, are directions for converting these round physical relationships and their implications into practical layouts and priorities for the resolution of health and welfare issues. These dictate who is in charge, who else has priority, who is a resource, and so on. The message to those deliberating is quite clear and emphasizes that this is an indigenous, long-standing approach. May the circle be unbroken.
They say that when the old Blackft ladies were brought to live in cabins or even a room of a larger building, their first instinct was to try to make the room round by hanging lines across the corner and pinning blankets to them. They put their trunks and bundles around the room in a circle unless there was a need for space -- then they would store things in the corners behind the blankets.
The ordering principle of a lodge is that the door must be to the east. In the center of the lodge is the main fire, and directly behind it is the most sacred place in the lodge, where any Bundles or other sacred objects are kept, sometimes on tripods and sometimes hung from lines tied across from one tipi pole to another. You must not walk between the fire and the holy place, but always return around past the door to get to the other side.
If the man of the “house” is there, he will sit next to his holy objects and the most important wife will sit on the other side of them. She is called the “Sits Beside” wife. On formal occasions, women will range themselves in order of importance next to the “Sits Beside,” until the least important woman there will be the “Sits by the Door,” the one who has to go get more firewood or to go out to see why the dogs are making a fuss or the one who is sent on an errand. If there is no “least wife” to sit there, kids will be there to take care of these small but important duties. If they aren’t paying attention, the man may say, “I think I smell a skunk in here!” If they still don’t wake up, he might throw something at them. Men sit in order on the other side.
Even informally, the inside of the lodge is always arranged the same way from one camp to another so that if you had been away while the camp was moved and came back late at night, you would know where your bed was. The women could always find their supplies, clothing, and equipment without searching. Likewise, if the camp were in an open spot, the lodges of the band were likely to be in a circle so that you could find a specific person’s lodge, and this would almost certainly be the way of gathering for a major event, like the annual camp for ceremonial and social doin’s that we might call a pow-wow today.
If I knew how to post a diagram, I would insert here the sketch I have of where the Amskapi Pikuni usually put their lodges in relation to each other. If one were new or from another group, the natural thing to do would be to camp near friends.
If the camp were along a creek or in trees, then the circle would be replaced by scattered sites, which I expect would become habitual places just as people tend to gravitate to a favored parking place or seat in church.
More than these circles, the lives of the Blackft went round and round through the cycles of the seasons, repeating the trips to beds of camas or likely hunting spots. This would be a good place for winter, near trees; and that would be a good place for the blustery spring when high winds would blow. As they traveled they watched for landmarks, distinctive peaks in particular. An old time Indian would be always watching for high points where a lookout might spot game or enemies or weather or -- indeed -- friends. But also they would often be dropping down to low points because that’s where water collects. At some seasons of the year, they would look for high elevations, maybe following the later blooming of plants or, in fall, seeking places where light snow would making tracking of game possible. In winter it would be wise to be close enough to the Rockies to benefit from the katabatic warming winds, the “Chinook,” but not close enough to be caught in high altitude deep snow.
The human life cycle and cycles of plants and animals and the great circle of the domed sky and grassy earth -- none of these passed unnoticed. The Blackft sacred number is FOUR, the four points of the compass circle. (The European sacred number is THREE because of the influence of Christian doctrine.)
A book I recommend is “Akak’stiman: A Blackfoot Framework for Decision-Making and Mediation Processes,” by Reg Crowshoe and Sybille Manneschmidt. On the front of the soft book are a photo of a circle of a lodges and a diagram of the inside of a lodge. You can get this book from the University of Calgary Press (2500 University Press, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AL, Canada, T2n 1N4. Website: www.uofcpress.com ISBN 1-55238-044-0 Copyright 2002 (second edition) 1997 (first edition).
You could not beat this book for a compact interpretation of order-making in the Blackfoot world. There is a history, an account of social structures, a description of Sacred Bundles and their functions, an account of transfer rites, some words about health and healing, and fascinating appendixes of relevant myths and histories. There are photos, maps and graphs and a good bibliography -- all in less than one hundred pages.
Most unexpected but crucial to the purpose of the book, are directions for converting these round physical relationships and their implications into practical layouts and priorities for the resolution of health and welfare issues. These dictate who is in charge, who else has priority, who is a resource, and so on. The message to those deliberating is quite clear and emphasizes that this is an indigenous, long-standing approach. May the circle be unbroken.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Conclusion: the Roots of Blackfeet Self-Determination
Rosier points out that in the first half of the Twentieth Century the Blackft Nation was just like the rest of the United States:
patriotic during war time
community oriented
racially and ethnically segregated
economically stratified
democratically organized
The SINS of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council included:
squandering money on bad investments
distributing tribal proceeds to those who deserved it least
violating their own constitution and charter
faliing to live up to the ethical standards of anybody
BUT
The VIRTUES of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council included:
supplementary welfare and per capita
burial and sickness funds
credit for individual and cooperative livestock enterprises
support for job training
support for tribal enterprises like the arts and crafts cooperative
grants to full-blood groups to help maintain traditions
defending the IRA by using it, mostly as intended
providing mechanisms for orderly change
An academic theorist proposes that a democracy can protect fundamental rights and interests in a democratic order four ways:
1. Changing the size of the body of people, for instance, reducing the number of people in the tribe by requiring a higher blood quantum or requiring residence on the reservation.
2. Moving from every person voting to representative voting through districts or the other way
3. Controlling public opinion, sometimes in a negative way.
4. Giving power to a quasi-guardian, hopefully a benign one (BIA).
For forty years the question of termination dominated discussion. Termination would mean dividing the tribal assets among the people and closing down all the offices and services. Now attention has turned to sovereignty: how can the reservation become self-sustaining and self-regulating? What infrastructure is still needed? How can it be developed?
Each entity (BIA, Tribe, various sub-groups like ranchers, full-bloods, businessmen, and off-rez entities like state, county, and town) distrusted the other entities. Each tried to get the others to carry the load of welfare, law and order, and so on. In the meantime, through things like Earl Old Person and Walter Wetzel becoming active with the National Congress of American Indians, ideas from across the nation filtered back to the reservation.
Paul Rosier’s book only describes the first half of the twentieth century and is based on hour after hour after hour of reading documents like tribal minutes or correspondence between tribe and Washington, D.C. It’s much too early to write the history of the second half, and I probably won’t be around long enough to read it. What propels me in this project of posting historical materials is the individual lives of the people I’ve known in the last almost-fifty years, since I came to Browning in 1961.
The first year I was assigned to teach seventh and eighth grade English. In those years they grouped kids by “achievement” so I taught the “top” of the seventh grade and the “bottom” of the eighth grade. Looking back, I see what actually happened was that the “top” was the more assimilated kids with more white blood and with supportive families, and the “bottom” was the less assimilated kids who were more likely to be full-blood and Blackft speakers. They were also more likely to live way out in the country where the roads were bad -- too bad for school buses to get kids into town -- so their attendance was not good unless they were at Boarding School. No wonder their grades suffered. After forty years of watching, I’ve seen both groups do well, but in different ways. Kenny Scabby Robe founded Black Lodge Singers, repeatedly identified as the best Indian drum group in the country. Most of the seventh graders became management or professionals: paper pushers. There were plenty of people who were in neither group and who found a way to succeed.
A local Browning businessman, a successful entrepreneur, called to let me know he was reading this blog and to recommend another book. I asked this businessman what made him successful -- what was it in him that drove him to get up every day, do all the little stuff necessary for running a business, and so on. He said HUNGER. He went to school to get the lunch, but that wasn’t all. Somewhere in there he made the connection that if he hungered for a shiny new car, the way to get it was to get an education and then work hard. So he did. Simple as that. Hard as that. It worked.
When the people hunger for law and order, they’ll find a way to get it. When the people hunger for clean streets, they’ll get it done. When the people hunger for a Tribal Council that runs without constant warfare, they’ll look for the ways to make that happen. Step by step, little by little, evolution more than revolution.
The old buffalo people never wrote anything down. There were no elections. Leaders showed what they could do by doing it. If someone was a troublemaker, he was made to leave the rest of the group -- go somewhere else. If he couldn’t find a new group to accept him, he might starve. Food and clothing was everywhere -- getting them was simply a matter of finding and capturing them, which was much easier with a group of people who cooperated. The group was pretty much family, and so family loyalty became a value so high that it was stronger than anything else. That has remained.
For a while families were smashed by violence, booze, starvation, smallpox, bad boarding schools, loss of language and religion -- you name it. The Amskapi Pikuni were flattened as far as people can go -- farther than Iraq, almost as far as sub-Saharan Africa. But then they began to regroup. The same strategic thinking that had been used for hunting, stealing horses, and surviving extreme weather now comes to the problem of how to survive in a world even the whites don’t understand. The whole planet has been changing quickly in the last hundred years -- nations industrialized, redrawn, renamed, computerized, outsourced, ended and begun -- and we aren’t even close to the end yet. No wonder everyone gets confused and impatient.
The businessman I talked to said the town businesses are converting to use bar code technology now. A far cry from “writing it down in the book,” which they still do at the Valier grocery store. He asked me what a certain person looked like -- I suggested he Google up this guy’s picture. He knew what I meant, had a computer, and knew how to do it. It’s a new world. And will be another new world tomorrow -- and then the next day. The important thing is that Blackft can make it.
“Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954” by Paul Rosier is available in paperback now ($14.95) from a bookstore or from the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 68588-0255. Online they are at www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/ The International Book Number is ISBN 0-8032-3941-6
patriotic during war time
community oriented
racially and ethnically segregated
economically stratified
democratically organized
The SINS of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council included:
squandering money on bad investments
distributing tribal proceeds to those who deserved it least
violating their own constitution and charter
faliing to live up to the ethical standards of anybody
BUT
The VIRTUES of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council included:
supplementary welfare and per capita
burial and sickness funds
credit for individual and cooperative livestock enterprises
support for job training
support for tribal enterprises like the arts and crafts cooperative
grants to full-blood groups to help maintain traditions
defending the IRA by using it, mostly as intended
providing mechanisms for orderly change
An academic theorist proposes that a democracy can protect fundamental rights and interests in a democratic order four ways:
1. Changing the size of the body of people, for instance, reducing the number of people in the tribe by requiring a higher blood quantum or requiring residence on the reservation.
2. Moving from every person voting to representative voting through districts or the other way
3. Controlling public opinion, sometimes in a negative way.
4. Giving power to a quasi-guardian, hopefully a benign one (BIA).
For forty years the question of termination dominated discussion. Termination would mean dividing the tribal assets among the people and closing down all the offices and services. Now attention has turned to sovereignty: how can the reservation become self-sustaining and self-regulating? What infrastructure is still needed? How can it be developed?
Each entity (BIA, Tribe, various sub-groups like ranchers, full-bloods, businessmen, and off-rez entities like state, county, and town) distrusted the other entities. Each tried to get the others to carry the load of welfare, law and order, and so on. In the meantime, through things like Earl Old Person and Walter Wetzel becoming active with the National Congress of American Indians, ideas from across the nation filtered back to the reservation.
Paul Rosier’s book only describes the first half of the twentieth century and is based on hour after hour after hour of reading documents like tribal minutes or correspondence between tribe and Washington, D.C. It’s much too early to write the history of the second half, and I probably won’t be around long enough to read it. What propels me in this project of posting historical materials is the individual lives of the people I’ve known in the last almost-fifty years, since I came to Browning in 1961.
The first year I was assigned to teach seventh and eighth grade English. In those years they grouped kids by “achievement” so I taught the “top” of the seventh grade and the “bottom” of the eighth grade. Looking back, I see what actually happened was that the “top” was the more assimilated kids with more white blood and with supportive families, and the “bottom” was the less assimilated kids who were more likely to be full-blood and Blackft speakers. They were also more likely to live way out in the country where the roads were bad -- too bad for school buses to get kids into town -- so their attendance was not good unless they were at Boarding School. No wonder their grades suffered. After forty years of watching, I’ve seen both groups do well, but in different ways. Kenny Scabby Robe founded Black Lodge Singers, repeatedly identified as the best Indian drum group in the country. Most of the seventh graders became management or professionals: paper pushers. There were plenty of people who were in neither group and who found a way to succeed.
A local Browning businessman, a successful entrepreneur, called to let me know he was reading this blog and to recommend another book. I asked this businessman what made him successful -- what was it in him that drove him to get up every day, do all the little stuff necessary for running a business, and so on. He said HUNGER. He went to school to get the lunch, but that wasn’t all. Somewhere in there he made the connection that if he hungered for a shiny new car, the way to get it was to get an education and then work hard. So he did. Simple as that. Hard as that. It worked.
When the people hunger for law and order, they’ll find a way to get it. When the people hunger for clean streets, they’ll get it done. When the people hunger for a Tribal Council that runs without constant warfare, they’ll look for the ways to make that happen. Step by step, little by little, evolution more than revolution.
The old buffalo people never wrote anything down. There were no elections. Leaders showed what they could do by doing it. If someone was a troublemaker, he was made to leave the rest of the group -- go somewhere else. If he couldn’t find a new group to accept him, he might starve. Food and clothing was everywhere -- getting them was simply a matter of finding and capturing them, which was much easier with a group of people who cooperated. The group was pretty much family, and so family loyalty became a value so high that it was stronger than anything else. That has remained.
For a while families were smashed by violence, booze, starvation, smallpox, bad boarding schools, loss of language and religion -- you name it. The Amskapi Pikuni were flattened as far as people can go -- farther than Iraq, almost as far as sub-Saharan Africa. But then they began to regroup. The same strategic thinking that had been used for hunting, stealing horses, and surviving extreme weather now comes to the problem of how to survive in a world even the whites don’t understand. The whole planet has been changing quickly in the last hundred years -- nations industrialized, redrawn, renamed, computerized, outsourced, ended and begun -- and we aren’t even close to the end yet. No wonder everyone gets confused and impatient.
The businessman I talked to said the town businesses are converting to use bar code technology now. A far cry from “writing it down in the book,” which they still do at the Valier grocery store. He asked me what a certain person looked like -- I suggested he Google up this guy’s picture. He knew what I meant, had a computer, and knew how to do it. It’s a new world. And will be another new world tomorrow -- and then the next day. The important thing is that Blackft can make it.
“Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954” by Paul Rosier is available in paperback now ($14.95) from a bookstore or from the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 68588-0255. Online they are at www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/ The International Book Number is ISBN 0-8032-3941-6
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Notes on Rosier Chapter 6
Rosier’s subtitle is “We Have a Way to Make Citizens of Them” The politics of Blackfeet Self-Determination, 1945-1952
If I were called upon to provide a different sub-title, it might be, “Raising teenaged people is not easy.” This chapter provides details about approaching independence and then pulling away from it, for quite different reasons and with an ever-changing cast of characters. “Go forward, go back, and wait now!” In Blackft the word for wait is kikah! Tasteless joke: a lot of people sure wanted to kick each other.
The first blow was that John Collier resigned in January, 1945, removing a trusted champion of Indians. Now the U.S. Congress, which wanted to send money for reconstruction to the war-devastated countries overseas, was not inclined to send money and sympathy to Indian tribes. By the end of this year, three Blackft political groups had formed:
1. Extreme terminationists led by Brian Connolly and Leo Kennerly, who wanted to just end all federal supervision.
2. Moderate terminationists like Joe Brown and George Pambrun, who favored gradually transferring federal functions to tribe, county and state.
3. Segregationists like James White Calf and Charles Reevis, who wanted continued federal oversight, mostly because they didn’t trust the Tribal Council. By now these men were in their seventies.
The returning veterans had a hard time accepting the restrictions on their ability to borrow or their treatment as less than able to make their own decisions.
Charles Heacock spent months trying to teach the Tribal Council people how to do modern business accounting and budgeting, but it was uphill work. Few could resist making exceptions in emergency situations and, if it would make a big fuss, not writing down the sums loaned, so as to postpone trouble. Most of the funds available had been put into livestock. The figures continued to improve: bigger herds, more families owning herds, better profits from those herds. In 1950 the extension staff estimated that 145 families were self-supporting. Loans were being repaid. But as people felt more pride, they were not so willing to accept extension oversight and advice.
The tribe wanted to help choose the superintendent of the agency. The Office of Indian Affairs shrugged them off, but hired Freal McBride, a popular superintendent of Browning schools. Unfortunately, he died shortly after in a car crash. The next agent was Warren O’Hara, who was less trusted and who got into a war with Brian Connolly over the trustworthiness of the Tribal Council. Now the kind of animosity that had been directed at the Agency was re-targeted at the Tribal Council.
In 1946 Peter Vielle, a fifty-year-old half-blood (some say Cree), spearheaded an organization that wanted all relief operations to be shouldered by the federal government so that all profit would be free for individual distribution. This played into the hands of William Zimmerman with Indian Affairs, who declared that with the Tribe’s income from oil money, they were morally obligated to provide welfare as well as law and order. In January 1948 the Tribal Council contracted with Glacier and Pondera counties to administer welfare under federal supervision.
Rosier asserts “the government essentially used Blackfeet money held in the U.S. Treasury to finance the Marshall Plan because Congress’s $75,000 cap on all Indian withdrawals from the Treasury amounted to appropriation by fiat.” Blackfeet who had just sacrificed years of their lives or who had lost family members felt betrayed by this. When the Blackft Council was prevented from distributing as much as they wanted to by a cap on per capita, they simply re-defined the rest of the money as welfare and distributed it anyway. Sauce for the gander...
In 1947 the Tribal Council unanimously passed Resolution No. 20, which requested the termination of Secretary of the Interior oversight of, among other things:
Section 5(b): leases, permits and contracts referring to tribal land
Section 5(f): business contracts in excess of ten thousand dollars
Section 5(h): terms for the deposit of tribal funds
Section 8: individual per capita payments of more than one hundred dollars or distributions that totaled more than “one-half of the accrued surplus.”
This had to be voted on by the Tribe as a whole, with a minimum of 30% participation, voted for by a majority. The Secretary of the Interior could veto the election, but the Council could hold a referendum. Then the the Nation as a whole could approve the referendum if they had the approval of two-thirds of eligible voters.
Zimmerman’s strategy was to initiate an audit of the Tribe, which “revealed” all sorts of corruption and failure of accountability. What he mostly wanted to protect was Interior control of section 5(b) No. 2, relating to oil and range leasing. O’Hara, the agent, didn’t support the resolution because he felt that if the Tribe wouldn’t take charge and finance their own welfare and judicial affairs, they weren’t mature enough to manage their finances.
In January 1948, a new council, headed by Henry Magee, came to office and withdrew the resolution. By August 1949, they were angry enough at the Interior’s heavy hand to go dig it back up. This time the Secretary of the Interior, Oscar Chapman, said that they could proceed with the election if it were absolutely fair and clean. By 1950, everyone was angry with the Council, accusing them of the usual crimes. In the confused situation the referendum was split out into five referendums, one on each item. Four were rejected by at least 65% of the voters. The only one that passed was the removal of caps on per capita. In the Council election on the same day, the entire council was replaced. George Pambrun and Joe Brown were brought back and two women were elected. Eighty candidates ran.
Probably some voters were influenced by the short-lived tribal cooperative store, which cost a hundred thousand dollars to set up but never showed a profit, mostly because the co-op members thought that since it was “their” store, they didn’t have to pay for anything. Also, salaries were high. Others pointed to “hay loans,” some of which were handed out to people who had no livestock. 1950 was an unusually harsh winter and the per capita meant to help fell short for lack of funds: some were paid and some struggled to Browning in a blizzard to discover they were not. The Council ignored the necessity of keeping books. They felt they were being doubted and they would not take advice, but they had very little experience in the discipline and skills necessary. Even after the records were set up by outside auditors, the Council either invented their own systems or simply ignored the obligation.
By now there were several national “pan-Indian” political bodies. Felix Cohen was a link to the Association on American Indian Affairs, whose president was Oliver La Farge. These people were willing and able to take on Indian Agency employees who were active in local politics in an unseemly way. The Cold War had begun and the US Government had learned to be covert. Rosier points out that the Blackft Nation and Guatemala were about equidistant from Washington, D.C. Once again the definition of “tribe” was slipping around, now moving away from blood quantum to “cultural” or “social” “Indian-identified.” Cohen acquired a local associate, attorney Cedor Aronow. New pressure for Council reform came from Council members themselves, who hoped to reduce expenses. Walter Wetzel was the new Chair.
The main outcome of the energy expended on this election was that it educated a lot of people about what was possible and what was involved. It also revealed the centrality of oil to the tribe -- oil was the “new buffalo.” But oil can be used up.
If I were called upon to provide a different sub-title, it might be, “Raising teenaged people is not easy.” This chapter provides details about approaching independence and then pulling away from it, for quite different reasons and with an ever-changing cast of characters. “Go forward, go back, and wait now!” In Blackft the word for wait is kikah! Tasteless joke: a lot of people sure wanted to kick each other.
The first blow was that John Collier resigned in January, 1945, removing a trusted champion of Indians. Now the U.S. Congress, which wanted to send money for reconstruction to the war-devastated countries overseas, was not inclined to send money and sympathy to Indian tribes. By the end of this year, three Blackft political groups had formed:
1. Extreme terminationists led by Brian Connolly and Leo Kennerly, who wanted to just end all federal supervision.
2. Moderate terminationists like Joe Brown and George Pambrun, who favored gradually transferring federal functions to tribe, county and state.
3. Segregationists like James White Calf and Charles Reevis, who wanted continued federal oversight, mostly because they didn’t trust the Tribal Council. By now these men were in their seventies.
The returning veterans had a hard time accepting the restrictions on their ability to borrow or their treatment as less than able to make their own decisions.
Charles Heacock spent months trying to teach the Tribal Council people how to do modern business accounting and budgeting, but it was uphill work. Few could resist making exceptions in emergency situations and, if it would make a big fuss, not writing down the sums loaned, so as to postpone trouble. Most of the funds available had been put into livestock. The figures continued to improve: bigger herds, more families owning herds, better profits from those herds. In 1950 the extension staff estimated that 145 families were self-supporting. Loans were being repaid. But as people felt more pride, they were not so willing to accept extension oversight and advice.
The tribe wanted to help choose the superintendent of the agency. The Office of Indian Affairs shrugged them off, but hired Freal McBride, a popular superintendent of Browning schools. Unfortunately, he died shortly after in a car crash. The next agent was Warren O’Hara, who was less trusted and who got into a war with Brian Connolly over the trustworthiness of the Tribal Council. Now the kind of animosity that had been directed at the Agency was re-targeted at the Tribal Council.
In 1946 Peter Vielle, a fifty-year-old half-blood (some say Cree), spearheaded an organization that wanted all relief operations to be shouldered by the federal government so that all profit would be free for individual distribution. This played into the hands of William Zimmerman with Indian Affairs, who declared that with the Tribe’s income from oil money, they were morally obligated to provide welfare as well as law and order. In January 1948 the Tribal Council contracted with Glacier and Pondera counties to administer welfare under federal supervision.
Rosier asserts “the government essentially used Blackfeet money held in the U.S. Treasury to finance the Marshall Plan because Congress’s $75,000 cap on all Indian withdrawals from the Treasury amounted to appropriation by fiat.” Blackfeet who had just sacrificed years of their lives or who had lost family members felt betrayed by this. When the Blackft Council was prevented from distributing as much as they wanted to by a cap on per capita, they simply re-defined the rest of the money as welfare and distributed it anyway. Sauce for the gander...
In 1947 the Tribal Council unanimously passed Resolution No. 20, which requested the termination of Secretary of the Interior oversight of, among other things:
Section 5(b): leases, permits and contracts referring to tribal land
Section 5(f): business contracts in excess of ten thousand dollars
Section 5(h): terms for the deposit of tribal funds
Section 8: individual per capita payments of more than one hundred dollars or distributions that totaled more than “one-half of the accrued surplus.”
This had to be voted on by the Tribe as a whole, with a minimum of 30% participation, voted for by a majority. The Secretary of the Interior could veto the election, but the Council could hold a referendum. Then the the Nation as a whole could approve the referendum if they had the approval of two-thirds of eligible voters.
Zimmerman’s strategy was to initiate an audit of the Tribe, which “revealed” all sorts of corruption and failure of accountability. What he mostly wanted to protect was Interior control of section 5(b) No. 2, relating to oil and range leasing. O’Hara, the agent, didn’t support the resolution because he felt that if the Tribe wouldn’t take charge and finance their own welfare and judicial affairs, they weren’t mature enough to manage their finances.
In January 1948, a new council, headed by Henry Magee, came to office and withdrew the resolution. By August 1949, they were angry enough at the Interior’s heavy hand to go dig it back up. This time the Secretary of the Interior, Oscar Chapman, said that they could proceed with the election if it were absolutely fair and clean. By 1950, everyone was angry with the Council, accusing them of the usual crimes. In the confused situation the referendum was split out into five referendums, one on each item. Four were rejected by at least 65% of the voters. The only one that passed was the removal of caps on per capita. In the Council election on the same day, the entire council was replaced. George Pambrun and Joe Brown were brought back and two women were elected. Eighty candidates ran.
Probably some voters were influenced by the short-lived tribal cooperative store, which cost a hundred thousand dollars to set up but never showed a profit, mostly because the co-op members thought that since it was “their” store, they didn’t have to pay for anything. Also, salaries were high. Others pointed to “hay loans,” some of which were handed out to people who had no livestock. 1950 was an unusually harsh winter and the per capita meant to help fell short for lack of funds: some were paid and some struggled to Browning in a blizzard to discover they were not. The Council ignored the necessity of keeping books. They felt they were being doubted and they would not take advice, but they had very little experience in the discipline and skills necessary. Even after the records were set up by outside auditors, the Council either invented their own systems or simply ignored the obligation.
By now there were several national “pan-Indian” political bodies. Felix Cohen was a link to the Association on American Indian Affairs, whose president was Oliver La Farge. These people were willing and able to take on Indian Agency employees who were active in local politics in an unseemly way. The Cold War had begun and the US Government had learned to be covert. Rosier points out that the Blackft Nation and Guatemala were about equidistant from Washington, D.C. Once again the definition of “tribe” was slipping around, now moving away from blood quantum to “cultural” or “social” “Indian-identified.” Cohen acquired a local associate, attorney Cedor Aronow. New pressure for Council reform came from Council members themselves, who hoped to reduce expenses. Walter Wetzel was the new Chair.
The main outcome of the energy expended on this election was that it educated a lot of people about what was possible and what was involved. It also revealed the centrality of oil to the tribe -- oil was the “new buffalo.” But oil can be used up.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Rosier: Notes for Chapter 5
Rosier’s sub-heading is “Reconciling the Old Men to the New Way,” Income Distribution in an Infant Democracy, 1940-1945
Blackft understood war. Men (and some women) enlisted in higher percentages than the general Montana population, which was already higher than the rest of the nation. Younger and more assimilated people migrated to the Pacific coast where they took on the work of building ships and airplanes. (Small coherent populations of Blackft have existed there ever since.) Even older and more full-blood people left the reservation to help get the crops of eastern Oregon and Washington gathered. And the oil wells began to pay well as they supplied needed fuel.
But it was a two-edged sword: the more that Blackft people succeeded in this much needed work, the more the government -- which needed all the money for supporting the war -- wanted to escape the burden of supporting the tribe. There were two kinds of talk about ending the reservation: on the one hand the federal people were beginning to say, “You don’t really need us anymore.” On the other hand the more successful Blackft were saying, “Take all these restrictions and rules and leave us.” But this frightened those who felt they still needed a sanctuary.
What was coming into question now was the definition of the reservation itself. To old full-bloods it was supposed to be a bit of their old world preserved as a refuge and protection for the originial buffalo people -- not all these young scramblers. (In fact, oldsters valued the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a protection from all the energetic mixed bloods.) To others it was an island of sovereignty owed to them as a treaty obligation -- they were ready to try running it themselves so it would be a financial asset. As the German concentration camps of the Holocaust came to light, some began to say that the reservation was a concentration camp, which meant that legislators had to confront Indians as victims of holocaust and Americans as the perpetrators.
The full-bloods were actually better represented in tribal government than they purported, but they were as factionalized as the whole population, partly because Starr School -- with Jim White Calf as spokesperson -- was separated physically and philosophically from the south reservation.
The default strategy was to buy time -- things would get better in the future -- and to some degree this worked. The Cattle Repayment Program started in 1934 and sheep raising began to pay off. Nevertheless, the Tribal Council was now wrestling with the same problems the Office of Indian Affairs had never been able to solve plus constant demands to “show us the money.” The Blackfeet Tribal BUSINESS Council was now asked more and more to act as the government of a sovereign country. At one point the Department of the Interior recommended that the two duties be split between two councils.
At least some people were beginning to understand the principles of capitalism, how to borrow money to make money, and the need for conscientious bookkeeping to support it. But others felt that money loaned or invested or reserved simply stopped existing -- the only money they recognized was per capita payments into their own hands.
Both state and federal agencies were trying to withdraw from welfare functions, each saying the other should be responsible. With the new oil money, a tribal welfare program was begun that tried to coordinate with Aid for Dependent Children, Old Age Assistance, Aid for the Needy Blind, eye glasses, dental work, special surgery, milk distribution to children, burial expenses, and other emergencies.
Ewers, who organized and supervised the creation of the Museum of the Plains Indian, observed in reports that the population always had a percentage who rode along on the work and gifts of the more energetic. Those who were achieving grew tired of having to support those who just didn’t seem to get any traction under their feet, but they wanted to protect the old people. At the same time, those who had no power or income constantly generated jealousy and accusations against leaders and the prosperous. Ewers felt some of this was cultural and tied it to “give-aways.” The danger was that these groups would harden enough to pull the tribe apart.
Another Special Investigating Committee of the House Committee on Indian Affairs visited the reservation in the summer of 1944. The next spring, as encouraged by the government, the Blackfeet made some changes in their constitution. The idea was to fine-tune the document until the problems were solved. Since US senators were also using this Committee as a way of discrediting the Wheeler/Howard Act in order to withdraw it, recording was slightly skewed, neglecting the positive. There was a provision discussed for members of the tribe to renounce membership on their own behalf for their own reasons.
In late fall D’Arcy McNickle was sent to try to arbitrate. He was brushed off. But it is important to note that: “Not once during the subcommittee hearing, the constitutional convention, or the public meetings did a full-blood complain of religious or cultural persecution.” Examination of the records show that full-bloods got their share of loans. (These two assertions were not true on other reservations.) In the end oil leases were left in the hands of the government. Accusations of corruption did not end.
The full-bloods quoted in this chapter include some of the most colorful personalities of the time: Brian (Briney) Connelly, Charlie Reevis, Chewing Black Bone (the seated old man in Bob Scriver’s sculpture called “Transition.”), Juniper Old Person (father of Earl Old Person), Levi Burd, Wright Hagerty each were worthy of biographies!
At Lucille McKay’s funeral yesterday, Earl Old Person told a Joe Brown joke. It seems that some white man from back east came to town. He needed gas and was told that the owner of the service station was So-and-so Brown. Then he got a motel room and the motel was run by Such-and-such Brown. He went drinking at a bar owned by Someone Brown and got into a fight which ended with him going to jail where he was tried by Judge Brown. Overwhelmed by Browns (and Earl was telling about real people who really did have those properties), the man said, “I’m never coming back here again. What’s the name of this town?” BROWNing!!! The sharp edge of the joke, of course, was that Joe Brown, as chair of the Blackfeet Tribal Council, was helping out his family.
Blackft understood war. Men (and some women) enlisted in higher percentages than the general Montana population, which was already higher than the rest of the nation. Younger and more assimilated people migrated to the Pacific coast where they took on the work of building ships and airplanes. (Small coherent populations of Blackft have existed there ever since.) Even older and more full-blood people left the reservation to help get the crops of eastern Oregon and Washington gathered. And the oil wells began to pay well as they supplied needed fuel.
But it was a two-edged sword: the more that Blackft people succeeded in this much needed work, the more the government -- which needed all the money for supporting the war -- wanted to escape the burden of supporting the tribe. There were two kinds of talk about ending the reservation: on the one hand the federal people were beginning to say, “You don’t really need us anymore.” On the other hand the more successful Blackft were saying, “Take all these restrictions and rules and leave us.” But this frightened those who felt they still needed a sanctuary.
What was coming into question now was the definition of the reservation itself. To old full-bloods it was supposed to be a bit of their old world preserved as a refuge and protection for the originial buffalo people -- not all these young scramblers. (In fact, oldsters valued the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a protection from all the energetic mixed bloods.) To others it was an island of sovereignty owed to them as a treaty obligation -- they were ready to try running it themselves so it would be a financial asset. As the German concentration camps of the Holocaust came to light, some began to say that the reservation was a concentration camp, which meant that legislators had to confront Indians as victims of holocaust and Americans as the perpetrators.
The full-bloods were actually better represented in tribal government than they purported, but they were as factionalized as the whole population, partly because Starr School -- with Jim White Calf as spokesperson -- was separated physically and philosophically from the south reservation.
The default strategy was to buy time -- things would get better in the future -- and to some degree this worked. The Cattle Repayment Program started in 1934 and sheep raising began to pay off. Nevertheless, the Tribal Council was now wrestling with the same problems the Office of Indian Affairs had never been able to solve plus constant demands to “show us the money.” The Blackfeet Tribal BUSINESS Council was now asked more and more to act as the government of a sovereign country. At one point the Department of the Interior recommended that the two duties be split between two councils.
At least some people were beginning to understand the principles of capitalism, how to borrow money to make money, and the need for conscientious bookkeeping to support it. But others felt that money loaned or invested or reserved simply stopped existing -- the only money they recognized was per capita payments into their own hands.
Both state and federal agencies were trying to withdraw from welfare functions, each saying the other should be responsible. With the new oil money, a tribal welfare program was begun that tried to coordinate with Aid for Dependent Children, Old Age Assistance, Aid for the Needy Blind, eye glasses, dental work, special surgery, milk distribution to children, burial expenses, and other emergencies.
Ewers, who organized and supervised the creation of the Museum of the Plains Indian, observed in reports that the population always had a percentage who rode along on the work and gifts of the more energetic. Those who were achieving grew tired of having to support those who just didn’t seem to get any traction under their feet, but they wanted to protect the old people. At the same time, those who had no power or income constantly generated jealousy and accusations against leaders and the prosperous. Ewers felt some of this was cultural and tied it to “give-aways.” The danger was that these groups would harden enough to pull the tribe apart.
Another Special Investigating Committee of the House Committee on Indian Affairs visited the reservation in the summer of 1944. The next spring, as encouraged by the government, the Blackfeet made some changes in their constitution. The idea was to fine-tune the document until the problems were solved. Since US senators were also using this Committee as a way of discrediting the Wheeler/Howard Act in order to withdraw it, recording was slightly skewed, neglecting the positive. There was a provision discussed for members of the tribe to renounce membership on their own behalf for their own reasons.
In late fall D’Arcy McNickle was sent to try to arbitrate. He was brushed off. But it is important to note that: “Not once during the subcommittee hearing, the constitutional convention, or the public meetings did a full-blood complain of religious or cultural persecution.” Examination of the records show that full-bloods got their share of loans. (These two assertions were not true on other reservations.) In the end oil leases were left in the hands of the government. Accusations of corruption did not end.
The full-bloods quoted in this chapter include some of the most colorful personalities of the time: Brian (Briney) Connelly, Charlie Reevis, Chewing Black Bone (the seated old man in Bob Scriver’s sculpture called “Transition.”), Juniper Old Person (father of Earl Old Person), Levi Burd, Wright Hagerty each were worthy of biographies!
At Lucille McKay’s funeral yesterday, Earl Old Person told a Joe Brown joke. It seems that some white man from back east came to town. He needed gas and was told that the owner of the service station was So-and-so Brown. Then he got a motel room and the motel was run by Such-and-such Brown. He went drinking at a bar owned by Someone Brown and got into a fight which ended with him going to jail where he was tried by Judge Brown. Overwhelmed by Browns (and Earl was telling about real people who really did have those properties), the man said, “I’m never coming back here again. What’s the name of this town?” BROWNing!!! The sharp edge of the joke, of course, was that Joe Brown, as chair of the Blackfeet Tribal Council, was helping out his family.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Notes from Rosier Chapter 4
Rosier's sub-heading for this chapter is “Contours of the Blackfeet Economy, 1934-1940.” It could be equally well “be awful careful what you wish for -- you’re liable to get it.” Self-government was harder than it looked.
Indian New Deal organizations and programs seemed to work well. The Big Claim payout of 1936 was not dissipated carelessly by most people, who needed such basics as furniture and clothes for their children. But the “magic” of oil wells was more problematic. Given permission to lease, the Tribe had to learn how to negotiate a lease agreement that would protect the tribe and motivate the lessor to drill. (A constant problem was a signed lease followed by no drilling, which meant that no payments followed either.) Felix Cohen was largely responsible for teaching the Council how to design a lease.
At first there was great hope that cattle raising would turn out to more-or-less like buffalo raising, but this couldn’t happen. The weather swings were too violent and cows were dependent on humans to buffer them with shelter and grass. The hard winter and dry summer of 1919-1920 wiped out tens of thousands of cattle. Sorting, calving and maintaining cows is labor-intensive work. Some folks had big vigorous families or enough money to hire help and managed to reach critical mass with their herds. Others just ended up eating or losing the cows. A few were aggressive enough that they ignored restrictions and succeeded that way.
Government infusions of cattle always went to the already successful -- but why give them to those who didn’t understand cattle? Some moved over to sheep, where there were two payouts a year: once for meat and once for wool. The animals were a little easier to manage. The Lamb and Wool Producers Association was organized in 1937.
Government people were sent in to try to understand the situation and see what could be done. David Rodnick, an anthropologist, warned of the dangers of creating a two-tier reservation where the “whiter” people dominated the wealth and the old Indians became ever more angry as they ended up on the bottom again and again. Politics split open over questions of whether tribal assets should go to infrastructure and loans to help the already self-sufficient, or whether it should simply go to per capita payouts and welfare to those in need. There was no question that the need was real. “Full-blood” equalled old and often sick, as well as the handicap of not being able to cope with a paper rule-ridden world.
John Krall was the tribe’s extension agent, trying to sort out what had been good about Campbell’s programs and continue with new organizations. He was constantly frustrated and claimed between half and a third of the population were just lazy -- simply wouldn’t try. Krall’s strong suit was that he had served as state director of rehabilitation and resettlement, so he knew how to use the federal Resettlement Administration and Distribution of Surplus Commodities.
Too often the Tribal Council would see something (maybe too many people dissipating their herds through sales), enact a regulation which caused an outcry which was addressed with contradictions from the Office of Indian Affairs which made everyone angry and brought in a protesting group. (When counselling alcoholics, one is taught to fear triangles which too often lead to strategies like blaming, rescuing, and sinking into victimhood in a way that traps all three corners.)
The Recommendation Committe on Loans (later the Credit Committee) was supposed to supervise the Revolving Credit Fund. The Tribal Council composed a two hundred thousand dollar plan for economic rehabilitation. They were thinking in terms of relocating young families out onto the irrigated flats to raise crops. Of course, they were more likely to be mixed blood, but they had to be young in order to do the necessary work. This was the Two Medicine Irrigation Project. Not everyone understood that a loan had to be repaid. And, as Rosier remarks, if one compares the efforts of the Tribe in these years with the efforts of Montana counties to support their populations, it’s clear that times in general were very hard. Drought had created a dustbowl that crept farther and farther north into Indian country.
Full bloods felt left out -- H. Scudder Mekeel, another anthropologist reported “the constant and growing problem of keeping Indians fed and alive.” As starving people moved to Browning in the same way that rural starving people always move to towns in search of food, the slum worsened on Moccasin Flats.
These are the years in which “arts and crafts” began to be promoted as a way for Indians, especially old-timers, to make money. Some people were aware than water rights had to be guarded, since small surrounding dryland towns were feeling thirsty.
In 1938 ten of the thirteen Tribal Council members were voted out, including Joe Brown who had worked so hard and intelligently. Hazlett was installed by a landslide. The people had been restless over the many changes, especially the ones they didn’t understand or that cut against them, and Stuart Hazlett knew how to take advantage of this. One-eighth Indian, he lived in Choteau and worked for the newspaper. He was a Carlisle graduate but he was tainted by being fired as agency lease clerk for his part in slipping Blackfeet fee patents for land to whites in 1919. His strategy continues to the present day: written attacks on the standing order through long eloquent letters to the newspaper and promises of reform. The Blackfeet Indian Welfare Association also became one of his useful connections. (Mae Coburn Williamson was elected to the Tribal Council at this time. She was the first female Tribal Council member, quite wealthy by marriage to a white lawyer in Cut Bank. She is the center figure in the sculpture by Bob Scriver that is called “Transition.”)
Accusations of both imagined and real corruption, theft, and diversion of funds flew in every direction for the next while until everyone was discredited and besmirched. The damage has continued ever since. “Majority rule” meant “winner take all.” Finally Joe Brown was restored to office but not before the Indian Office was very much hardened against the Blackft. They became willing to accuse tribal leaders, which they had not done before, and they began to deduct the costs of many services (education, hospital) from any Blackft monies they had. By this time, all thoughts of cattle had been overwhelmed by the potential of oil profits as war began.
Indian New Deal organizations and programs seemed to work well. The Big Claim payout of 1936 was not dissipated carelessly by most people, who needed such basics as furniture and clothes for their children. But the “magic” of oil wells was more problematic. Given permission to lease, the Tribe had to learn how to negotiate a lease agreement that would protect the tribe and motivate the lessor to drill. (A constant problem was a signed lease followed by no drilling, which meant that no payments followed either.) Felix Cohen was largely responsible for teaching the Council how to design a lease.
At first there was great hope that cattle raising would turn out to more-or-less like buffalo raising, but this couldn’t happen. The weather swings were too violent and cows were dependent on humans to buffer them with shelter and grass. The hard winter and dry summer of 1919-1920 wiped out tens of thousands of cattle. Sorting, calving and maintaining cows is labor-intensive work. Some folks had big vigorous families or enough money to hire help and managed to reach critical mass with their herds. Others just ended up eating or losing the cows. A few were aggressive enough that they ignored restrictions and succeeded that way.
Government infusions of cattle always went to the already successful -- but why give them to those who didn’t understand cattle? Some moved over to sheep, where there were two payouts a year: once for meat and once for wool. The animals were a little easier to manage. The Lamb and Wool Producers Association was organized in 1937.
Government people were sent in to try to understand the situation and see what could be done. David Rodnick, an anthropologist, warned of the dangers of creating a two-tier reservation where the “whiter” people dominated the wealth and the old Indians became ever more angry as they ended up on the bottom again and again. Politics split open over questions of whether tribal assets should go to infrastructure and loans to help the already self-sufficient, or whether it should simply go to per capita payouts and welfare to those in need. There was no question that the need was real. “Full-blood” equalled old and often sick, as well as the handicap of not being able to cope with a paper rule-ridden world.
John Krall was the tribe’s extension agent, trying to sort out what had been good about Campbell’s programs and continue with new organizations. He was constantly frustrated and claimed between half and a third of the population were just lazy -- simply wouldn’t try. Krall’s strong suit was that he had served as state director of rehabilitation and resettlement, so he knew how to use the federal Resettlement Administration and Distribution of Surplus Commodities.
Too often the Tribal Council would see something (maybe too many people dissipating their herds through sales), enact a regulation which caused an outcry which was addressed with contradictions from the Office of Indian Affairs which made everyone angry and brought in a protesting group. (When counselling alcoholics, one is taught to fear triangles which too often lead to strategies like blaming, rescuing, and sinking into victimhood in a way that traps all three corners.)
The Recommendation Committe on Loans (later the Credit Committee) was supposed to supervise the Revolving Credit Fund. The Tribal Council composed a two hundred thousand dollar plan for economic rehabilitation. They were thinking in terms of relocating young families out onto the irrigated flats to raise crops. Of course, they were more likely to be mixed blood, but they had to be young in order to do the necessary work. This was the Two Medicine Irrigation Project. Not everyone understood that a loan had to be repaid. And, as Rosier remarks, if one compares the efforts of the Tribe in these years with the efforts of Montana counties to support their populations, it’s clear that times in general were very hard. Drought had created a dustbowl that crept farther and farther north into Indian country.
Full bloods felt left out -- H. Scudder Mekeel, another anthropologist reported “the constant and growing problem of keeping Indians fed and alive.” As starving people moved to Browning in the same way that rural starving people always move to towns in search of food, the slum worsened on Moccasin Flats.
These are the years in which “arts and crafts” began to be promoted as a way for Indians, especially old-timers, to make money. Some people were aware than water rights had to be guarded, since small surrounding dryland towns were feeling thirsty.
In 1938 ten of the thirteen Tribal Council members were voted out, including Joe Brown who had worked so hard and intelligently. Hazlett was installed by a landslide. The people had been restless over the many changes, especially the ones they didn’t understand or that cut against them, and Stuart Hazlett knew how to take advantage of this. One-eighth Indian, he lived in Choteau and worked for the newspaper. He was a Carlisle graduate but he was tainted by being fired as agency lease clerk for his part in slipping Blackfeet fee patents for land to whites in 1919. His strategy continues to the present day: written attacks on the standing order through long eloquent letters to the newspaper and promises of reform. The Blackfeet Indian Welfare Association also became one of his useful connections. (Mae Coburn Williamson was elected to the Tribal Council at this time. She was the first female Tribal Council member, quite wealthy by marriage to a white lawyer in Cut Bank. She is the center figure in the sculpture by Bob Scriver that is called “Transition.”)
Accusations of both imagined and real corruption, theft, and diversion of funds flew in every direction for the next while until everyone was discredited and besmirched. The damage has continued ever since. “Majority rule” meant “winner take all.” Finally Joe Brown was restored to office but not before the Indian Office was very much hardened against the Blackft. They became willing to accuse tribal leaders, which they had not done before, and they began to deduct the costs of many services (education, hospital) from any Blackft monies they had. By this time, all thoughts of cattle had been overwhelmed by the potential of oil profits as war began.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Lucille Victoria Romsa McKay 1923 - 2005
Lucille Victoria Romsa McKay, 82, has died. She was only ten years younger than George Kicking Woman, who managed with Molly to keep alive the old-time way of life as a full-blood, but Lucille epitomized what the mixed bloods hoped for as modern Americans without forsaking Blackft roots. I don’t have the links that would connect her to Joe Brown, the charismatic leader of the early Tribal Council whose geneology I posted earlier, but if you look at the names you’ll see the echoes. Her mother was a Brown.
I taught Lucille’s children in the early Sixties. More promising young people would be hard to find: smart, good-looking, funny, energetic, and enterprising. Lucille was small, pretty, and indefatigable. This is the way the best Blackfeet women have always been.
The following is from Lucille’s obituary in the Great Falls Tribune on May 8, 2005.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lucille is survived by her children: Diane Magee, Mary Johnson, Tom McKay, Mike McKay and Joe McKay, all of Browning; her sister, Marie A. Croff of Browning; 21 grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren; many nieces and nephews, and several great- and great-great nieces and nephews.
Lucille was born in the old hospital in Blackfoot, Montana, on January 6, 1923, to Jesse Romsa and Sara Adell Brown Romsa. She was the oldest of three children -- Benny and Marie were the younger siblings. The family spent their early years ranching on the Milk River. Later, Lucille moved with her family to their ranch on Badger Creek, just below Old Agency.
Lucille attended school in Browning, where she graduated in the top of her class and then went on to attend the University of Montana. The war interrupted her formal education after one year and she returned to Browning.
She married her high school sweetheart, Iliff McKay, on Nov. 24, 1943. Except for time spent in Spokane while Iliff attended the Kinman Business School and a short time while he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the couple spent their lives on the Blackfeet Reservation.
Iliff died in 1979. Lucille never remarried.
Lucille not only made one of the first efforts by an Indian woman to obtain a college education, she was also an Indian career woman long before it was a popular life choice. In her early working life, Lucille worked as an assistant clerk for the Glacier County Clerk and Recorder in Cut Bank. While raising her family of five children, she worked as a checker at the Buttrey store in Browning and at the old Blackfeet Tribal Store. Once all of her children were in school, she went to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Credit Program at the Blackfeet Agency and later went on to become the first Tribal Credit Officer for the BIA and for the Blackfeet Tribal Credit Program.
While raising her family and working at her own job, Lucille and husband Iliff also started one of the first Indian-owned businesses on the Blackfeet Reservation: the Junction Drive-Inn. Started in the early 1950’s from the family’s Tribal claim monies, the business went on to provide summer employment and a place to grow and learn for many young people on the Reservation.
In 2002, Lucille received a Presidential Achievement Award from President George W. Bush for Illiff’s and her achievements through the Junction Drive-Inn. That award was presented at the National Indian Business Leaders Summit in Phoenix, Ax. When asked what she wanted the business leaders at the conference to know about the Drive-Inn, she responded, “Tell them that we used to do it all by hand, including peeling potatoes.”
Still the longest-operating Indian owned business on the Blackfeet Reservation, young people who worked there went on to become doctors, lawyers, tribal judges, tribal council members, professional administrators for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, as well as many, many professional educators. Lucille and Iliff always thought of the many young people who worked for them at the Drive-Inn as their second family.
Throughout the time that her children were attending schools in Browning, Lucille was a strong supporter of school activities and events. In the early 1960’s, Lucille’s station wagon was often the unofficial “pep bus,” as the school did not send an official bus. She traveled across the state, often through blizzards, to make sure that someone was there to support the kids. Lucille also helped out as a Girl Scout leader in earlier times.
Lucille saw formal education as an important step toward a better life and helping Indian people. She was proud of her own children in that regard and her family was featured in the University of Montana Alumni magazine for the generations who had attended and earned degrees from the University. Today, Lucille’s five children who survive her continue to live and work on the Reservation. Dianne Magee is an elementary school principal; Mary Johnson is the Superintendent of Browning Public Schools; Tom McKay is the Administrative Officer for the Blackfeet Housing Program; Mike McKay is the Assistant Administrator for the Blackfeet Care Center (nursing home); and Joe McKay is a practicing attorney.
Lucille also has numerous nieces, nephews, grandchildren and children of her “Drive-Inn family” who also went on to earn college degrees.
Lucille was also very active in the Catholic Church in Browning. She was a member of the Altar Society and the Kateri Tekawitha Society. She traveled to Rome when Kateri Tekawitha was beatified by the church.
Lucille epitomized the values of Indian women living in a modern world. She gave her life to the care of family, her community and her spirituality. To Lucille, these important things were not separate, they were woven together as one.
Lucille enjoyed playing cards and dancing. In her youth, she loved the old time barn dances and could be counted on to dance to the last song. Later in life she took up the women’s traditional dance and followed the pow-wow circuit with her sister, Marie, throughout the United States and Canada.
Lucille also loved to travel. She had traveled to China, Eastern Europe, Finland, Metagorie, Rome, Ireland and Taiwan. She also made junkets with other elderly friends to Las Vegas and around the western United States.
I taught Lucille’s children in the early Sixties. More promising young people would be hard to find: smart, good-looking, funny, energetic, and enterprising. Lucille was small, pretty, and indefatigable. This is the way the best Blackfeet women have always been.
The following is from Lucille’s obituary in the Great Falls Tribune on May 8, 2005.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lucille is survived by her children: Diane Magee, Mary Johnson, Tom McKay, Mike McKay and Joe McKay, all of Browning; her sister, Marie A. Croff of Browning; 21 grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren; many nieces and nephews, and several great- and great-great nieces and nephews.
Lucille was born in the old hospital in Blackfoot, Montana, on January 6, 1923, to Jesse Romsa and Sara Adell Brown Romsa. She was the oldest of three children -- Benny and Marie were the younger siblings. The family spent their early years ranching on the Milk River. Later, Lucille moved with her family to their ranch on Badger Creek, just below Old Agency.
Lucille attended school in Browning, where she graduated in the top of her class and then went on to attend the University of Montana. The war interrupted her formal education after one year and she returned to Browning.
She married her high school sweetheart, Iliff McKay, on Nov. 24, 1943. Except for time spent in Spokane while Iliff attended the Kinman Business School and a short time while he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the couple spent their lives on the Blackfeet Reservation.
Iliff died in 1979. Lucille never remarried.
Lucille not only made one of the first efforts by an Indian woman to obtain a college education, she was also an Indian career woman long before it was a popular life choice. In her early working life, Lucille worked as an assistant clerk for the Glacier County Clerk and Recorder in Cut Bank. While raising her family of five children, she worked as a checker at the Buttrey store in Browning and at the old Blackfeet Tribal Store. Once all of her children were in school, she went to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Credit Program at the Blackfeet Agency and later went on to become the first Tribal Credit Officer for the BIA and for the Blackfeet Tribal Credit Program.
While raising her family and working at her own job, Lucille and husband Iliff also started one of the first Indian-owned businesses on the Blackfeet Reservation: the Junction Drive-Inn. Started in the early 1950’s from the family’s Tribal claim monies, the business went on to provide summer employment and a place to grow and learn for many young people on the Reservation.
In 2002, Lucille received a Presidential Achievement Award from President George W. Bush for Illiff’s and her achievements through the Junction Drive-Inn. That award was presented at the National Indian Business Leaders Summit in Phoenix, Ax. When asked what she wanted the business leaders at the conference to know about the Drive-Inn, she responded, “Tell them that we used to do it all by hand, including peeling potatoes.”
Still the longest-operating Indian owned business on the Blackfeet Reservation, young people who worked there went on to become doctors, lawyers, tribal judges, tribal council members, professional administrators for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, as well as many, many professional educators. Lucille and Iliff always thought of the many young people who worked for them at the Drive-Inn as their second family.
Throughout the time that her children were attending schools in Browning, Lucille was a strong supporter of school activities and events. In the early 1960’s, Lucille’s station wagon was often the unofficial “pep bus,” as the school did not send an official bus. She traveled across the state, often through blizzards, to make sure that someone was there to support the kids. Lucille also helped out as a Girl Scout leader in earlier times.
Lucille saw formal education as an important step toward a better life and helping Indian people. She was proud of her own children in that regard and her family was featured in the University of Montana Alumni magazine for the generations who had attended and earned degrees from the University. Today, Lucille’s five children who survive her continue to live and work on the Reservation. Dianne Magee is an elementary school principal; Mary Johnson is the Superintendent of Browning Public Schools; Tom McKay is the Administrative Officer for the Blackfeet Housing Program; Mike McKay is the Assistant Administrator for the Blackfeet Care Center (nursing home); and Joe McKay is a practicing attorney.
Lucille also has numerous nieces, nephews, grandchildren and children of her “Drive-Inn family” who also went on to earn college degrees.
Lucille was also very active in the Catholic Church in Browning. She was a member of the Altar Society and the Kateri Tekawitha Society. She traveled to Rome when Kateri Tekawitha was beatified by the church.
Lucille epitomized the values of Indian women living in a modern world. She gave her life to the care of family, her community and her spirituality. To Lucille, these important things were not separate, they were woven together as one.
Lucille enjoyed playing cards and dancing. In her youth, she loved the old time barn dances and could be counted on to dance to the last song. Later in life she took up the women’s traditional dance and followed the pow-wow circuit with her sister, Marie, throughout the United States and Canada.
Lucille also loved to travel. She had traveled to China, Eastern Europe, Finland, Metagorie, Rome, Ireland and Taiwan. She also made junkets with other elderly friends to Las Vegas and around the western United States.
A Little Essay on Rosier's Chapter Three (1934-35)
This chapter is about matters that remain ambiguous to me, I think because they really WERE ambiguous. What the Office of Indian Affairs thought they were doing was preparing the tribes to be on their own, self-governing and self-sustaining. What the tribes thought they were doing was mostly surviving -- they could not see into the future and they did not trust assurances that all would be well.
Much of the struggle in these years was still trying to come to terms with the split between full-blood and mixed-blood -- who now outnumbered full-bloods two to one and who now included not just half-bloods, but quarter and one-eighth. No one wanted to cut off their own children, so people fought to maintain the enrollment of those with a lesser blood quantum, but also the full bloods fought to keep what they felt was their entitlement, not necessarily earned by those who came later and didn’t remember the buffalo life. White officials were split within themselves: on the one hand, they couldn’t help feeling that the full-bloods were the REAL Indians and that they should be protected -- yet, legally, the lesser quantums were defined as Indians (so far) and to be really honest, they were the ones with the capacity to learn the new world and thrive in it. The more assimilated they were, the more it seemed likely that they could lead the tribe to success. BUT one could not define “Indianness” by blood quantum, since some clung to old ways even though they were largely white and some full-bloods made the leap to the modern world.
The idea that the government had seized was that of the business corporation, and their attention was on getting the Blackfeet to write a constitution. Yet there were elements in the constitution that had nothing to do with commerce -- like giving the Tribal Council the power to banish individuals, just as the agent had done to Horace Clarke. The suspicion was that the mostly mixed-blood council would banish -- ironically -- the old troublesome full-bloods from the reservation. Also the government was just beginning to use the word “sovereignty” without any clarity about what it meant. And what was happening to the idea of “tribe?” Was it to be replaced by the notion of a corporation? Should everyone be issued shares and malcontents be “bought out,” given money for their shares and sent on their way?
Once the Constitution was prepared, ratified by the “tribe” as defined at that moment, sent to the Office of Indian Affairs, and months later returned and voted on, then work began on a Charter. I could not figure out the difference between a Constitution and a Charter. I’m guessing that the Constitution tried to define the tribe and the Charter tried to define the Tribal Council, which was seen as a “business council.”
The great preoccupation was with the handling of money: leases, access to loans for infrastructure and other development, and at least a loosening of the grip of the Office of Indian Affairs. There doesn’t seem to be much loosening, partly because government officials (there is SO much irony all through here) was afraid that the tribe would be so devoted to short term profit and so neglectful of long-term conservation, that they would cut all the timber to sell, overgraze, issue per capita instead of reserving funds for emergencies, and so on. (Sounds like government management!)
Little attention was paid to self-governance matters that normal states would be expected to undertake, like law and order or education or protection of the indigent, helpless, aged and so on or even taxation. The idea seems to have been to let the State of Montana assume those responsibilities, on grounds that the Indians were citizens now and entitled to everything that any other citizen of Montana could expect. This has been a bone in the throat for the state ever since, because at the same time the tribes claimed exemption from state taxes and resisted the enforcement of state laws. Many whites and landless Indians benefited from this, finding that in this way the reservation was still like a territory. They walked under the Blackft umbrella.
Another peculiarity was that Glacier National Park is also like a little nation of its own -- a creature of the federal government that had no accountability or obligation to the state of Montana. The Park has its own management hierarchy, its own goals, its own law and order, and its own boundary. In this time period the Park was negotiating to get “the ceded strip,” between what was originally sold to be the Park and what was still reservation. The original Park boundary was supposed to be “from peak to peak,” but in fact was surveyed far down the shoulder on the reservation side. Another point of contention was that Blackfeet had reserved the right to hunt in the Park, but the Park tried to keep them out. Cases about this are still going through the courts in the 21st century.
The Depression was making life miserable all across the nation and even around the world. Women’s rights were beginning to become important and Blackft women were beginning to assert themselves. Mostly they were active through the Blackft Indian Welfare Association, but soon there would be female council members.
Agent Campbell was followed by Agent Stone, who did such a good job that he was transferred to Wyoming to help underachieving tribes there -- this meant that all the groundwork in terms of trust and definition among the Blackfeet was lost. The same thing happened with O’Hara, the next agent. It was a kind of Peter Principle -- if a man were succeeding, give him a more hopeless situation.
The full-blood/mixed blood schism has become today a split between the “north reservation” and the “south reservation” because most of the full-bloods were in Heart Butte and Old Agency. But there was a little bubble of full-blood old-timers in Starr School where Jim Whitecalf often acted as spokesman. They were doomed by the fact that the small community was included in the Browning voting district and Browning was overwhelmingly where the mixed bloods dominated. Starr School full-bloods did not feel represented and, of course, they were not. Whites and mixed bloods scoffed at Jim Whitecalf.
Here’s a final irony. Two books, “Piegan” by R.L. Lancaster and “Shadow of the Buffalo” by Adolph Hungry Wolf lifted up Jim Whitecalf as a great chief and ceremonialist. He lived to be a very old man, one willing to deal with whites right up to the end. His little house up by Starr School was visited by white pilgrims all through the hippie era. Many mixed bloods would have liked to feel so venerated.
Much of the struggle in these years was still trying to come to terms with the split between full-blood and mixed-blood -- who now outnumbered full-bloods two to one and who now included not just half-bloods, but quarter and one-eighth. No one wanted to cut off their own children, so people fought to maintain the enrollment of those with a lesser blood quantum, but also the full bloods fought to keep what they felt was their entitlement, not necessarily earned by those who came later and didn’t remember the buffalo life. White officials were split within themselves: on the one hand, they couldn’t help feeling that the full-bloods were the REAL Indians and that they should be protected -- yet, legally, the lesser quantums were defined as Indians (so far) and to be really honest, they were the ones with the capacity to learn the new world and thrive in it. The more assimilated they were, the more it seemed likely that they could lead the tribe to success. BUT one could not define “Indianness” by blood quantum, since some clung to old ways even though they were largely white and some full-bloods made the leap to the modern world.
The idea that the government had seized was that of the business corporation, and their attention was on getting the Blackfeet to write a constitution. Yet there were elements in the constitution that had nothing to do with commerce -- like giving the Tribal Council the power to banish individuals, just as the agent had done to Horace Clarke. The suspicion was that the mostly mixed-blood council would banish -- ironically -- the old troublesome full-bloods from the reservation. Also the government was just beginning to use the word “sovereignty” without any clarity about what it meant. And what was happening to the idea of “tribe?” Was it to be replaced by the notion of a corporation? Should everyone be issued shares and malcontents be “bought out,” given money for their shares and sent on their way?
Once the Constitution was prepared, ratified by the “tribe” as defined at that moment, sent to the Office of Indian Affairs, and months later returned and voted on, then work began on a Charter. I could not figure out the difference between a Constitution and a Charter. I’m guessing that the Constitution tried to define the tribe and the Charter tried to define the Tribal Council, which was seen as a “business council.”
The great preoccupation was with the handling of money: leases, access to loans for infrastructure and other development, and at least a loosening of the grip of the Office of Indian Affairs. There doesn’t seem to be much loosening, partly because government officials (there is SO much irony all through here) was afraid that the tribe would be so devoted to short term profit and so neglectful of long-term conservation, that they would cut all the timber to sell, overgraze, issue per capita instead of reserving funds for emergencies, and so on. (Sounds like government management!)
Little attention was paid to self-governance matters that normal states would be expected to undertake, like law and order or education or protection of the indigent, helpless, aged and so on or even taxation. The idea seems to have been to let the State of Montana assume those responsibilities, on grounds that the Indians were citizens now and entitled to everything that any other citizen of Montana could expect. This has been a bone in the throat for the state ever since, because at the same time the tribes claimed exemption from state taxes and resisted the enforcement of state laws. Many whites and landless Indians benefited from this, finding that in this way the reservation was still like a territory. They walked under the Blackft umbrella.
Another peculiarity was that Glacier National Park is also like a little nation of its own -- a creature of the federal government that had no accountability or obligation to the state of Montana. The Park has its own management hierarchy, its own goals, its own law and order, and its own boundary. In this time period the Park was negotiating to get “the ceded strip,” between what was originally sold to be the Park and what was still reservation. The original Park boundary was supposed to be “from peak to peak,” but in fact was surveyed far down the shoulder on the reservation side. Another point of contention was that Blackfeet had reserved the right to hunt in the Park, but the Park tried to keep them out. Cases about this are still going through the courts in the 21st century.
The Depression was making life miserable all across the nation and even around the world. Women’s rights were beginning to become important and Blackft women were beginning to assert themselves. Mostly they were active through the Blackft Indian Welfare Association, but soon there would be female council members.
Agent Campbell was followed by Agent Stone, who did such a good job that he was transferred to Wyoming to help underachieving tribes there -- this meant that all the groundwork in terms of trust and definition among the Blackfeet was lost. The same thing happened with O’Hara, the next agent. It was a kind of Peter Principle -- if a man were succeeding, give him a more hopeless situation.
The full-blood/mixed blood schism has become today a split between the “north reservation” and the “south reservation” because most of the full-bloods were in Heart Butte and Old Agency. But there was a little bubble of full-blood old-timers in Starr School where Jim Whitecalf often acted as spokesman. They were doomed by the fact that the small community was included in the Browning voting district and Browning was overwhelmingly where the mixed bloods dominated. Starr School full-bloods did not feel represented and, of course, they were not. Whites and mixed bloods scoffed at Jim Whitecalf.
Here’s a final irony. Two books, “Piegan” by R.L. Lancaster and “Shadow of the Buffalo” by Adolph Hungry Wolf lifted up Jim Whitecalf as a great chief and ceremonialist. He lived to be a very old man, one willing to deal with whites right up to the end. His little house up by Starr School was visited by white pilgrims all through the hippie era. Many mixed bloods would have liked to feel so venerated.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
The Formidable Descendants of James W. & Sarah Brown
This information is from Blackfeet Heritage, 1907-1908, a book of geneology records found in a shoebox, evidently used as the index for the issuing of rations and possibly land allotments.
JAMES W. BROWN, white. His father was also James and mother was Elizabeth. He had a sister named Sarah in Ohio and a brother named George in Paris, IL)
married
SARAH, full Piegan, whose father was Melting Marrow and mother was Bird Sailing This Way. [Melting Marrow, if it is the same as “Melting Tallow” or “Grease Melters” is the name of the band, rather than an individual. It is a distinguished family but the name comes from their practice of putting pot of fat on the fire to melt as soon as they had made camp.] Melting Tallow’s father was Little Spotted Calf. Bird Sailing This Way’s parents were Many White Swan (father) and Under Otter (mother).
Their children were JOSEPH, WILLIAM (35), JESSIE (27 and married), Leo (11), and Geneva, who married Bob Stewart. Three children died in infancy.
The family lives on the South Fork of Milk River just above Hagerty’s.
SON JOSEPH W. BROWN (30 years old in 1907-8)
married by the priest at Holy Family Mission on Oct. 13, 1897, to
FRANCES ARNOUX, (1/4th Piegan, 31 at census)
Her father was James Arnoux, whose parents were Edmund Armoux and Emma Crane Arnoux. Her mother was Susan Arnoux, whose father was Augustus Armelle. Her sibs were Monroe, Marion, George, and Mary who married Sam Dunbar.
The children of Joseph and Frances were:
Wesley William Brown, born Sept. 13, 1898.
Joseph Aloysius Brown, born April 8, 1900.
Theodore Nelson Brown, born September 24, 1901.
Lawrence Ignatius Brown, born July 13, 1903.
Alma Adelia Brown, born May 14, 1907.
They lived on Greasewood Creek.
SON WILLAM (36, half Piegan)
married by the priest at Holy Family Mission on October 19, 1898, to
VICTORIA LUKIN
Her father was HECTOR LUKIN, and her mother was MARY (full Piegan). Mary Lukin had a half-brother, Young Man Chief. Victoria’s sibs were John, Peter, and Dora.
The children of William and Victoria were:
Sarah Adele Brown (8)
Norman Hector Brown (6)
Joseph Sydney Brown (4)
Angeline Agnes Brown (2)
This family lived on the North Fork of Milk River, three miles above the agency.
SON JESSIE BROWN (25, half Piegan)
married July 15, 1903, by the priest at Holy Family Mission
CATHERINE GOBERT (24, half Piegan)
Their children were:
Hazel Brown, born July 21, 1906
Bernadine Brown, born June 11, 1907
This family lived on Milk River above Hagerty.
Catherine’s father was ROCK GOBERT (white) and her mother was Maggie or MARGUERITE KENNERLY (full Piegan, 57). Maggie’s father was Mountain Chief and her mother was a full-blood. Her full brother was Night Gun and her half-brother was Black Weasel. Her first husband was Rock Gobert, a white man whom she married in 1868. He died November 1, 1886.
Marguerite’s children with Gobert were:
Mollie Gobert Davis, married to William Davis (32) with four children
Edward Gobert (28) widower with two children.
Catherine Gobert Brown (two children)
Agnes Gobert Devereaux (Round Face) wife of Charley Devereaux with two children.
Annie Gobert (20) unmarried
Marguerite’s second husband was HENRY KENNERLY (whiteman) whom she married in 1896 by a priest.
Their children were:
James Kennerly (10)
Leo Kennerly (8)
Rock Gobert had two children by a former wife:
Johnny Gobert
Angeline Gobert (Percival)
MARY LUKIN (62, Full Blood)
Mary’s father was LAME BULL, signer of the Treaty called by his name. Lame Bull’s father was Amidst the Crowd and his mother was Bobcat.
Mary’s mother was AIMING TOGETHER.
Lame Bull’s sibs were Pretending to Strike (sister), deceased, leaving Double Runner; a son deceased leaving two children; Eddie Double Runner and one other. Half Dog, a brother, deceased leaving a daughter, Sua-t-aka, wife of Red Fox; Beaver Hair, a sister, died leaving a son, Chief.
AIMING TOGETHER’s sibs were Sta-sa-apee, a sister died leaving a son, Fast Runner and Wolf Runner, both dead. One daughter, a child of Fast Runner, is maarried and living near Heart Butte. Little Woman, a sister is dead leaving a son, Old Iron, and a daughter, Under Children, now deceased leaving a son, Sitting in a Crowd. No Chief, a brother, died leaving children, now all dead. Cut Finger, a son, has two children. Ernest Cut Finger and Maggie, wife of Ear Rings. Last Snake, a sister, died and had children now dead.
Mary Lukin’s first husband was GEORGE STEELE, the Indian Agent. they were married by “Indian custom.” He died in 1916. Steele was one of the first county commissioners of Choteau County, Montana, established in 1865. He was later a member of the State Legislature and a business partner of Joe Kipp.
By this marriage, Mary and George had two children:
Dora Steele, married to GEORGE WELLS, a white man. They had one child, a girl, who went to England with her father. Adelaide Steele, married William Thomas, a white man. She died leaving three children:
Marie Thomas (15)
George Thomas (13)
Rachel Thomas (11)
The girls were sent to relatives in Dubuque, Iowa, and the son remained with his father in Highwood, Montana.
This book of families can be bought from the Blackfeet Heritage Center in Browning. They have a website. This material is not necessarily accurate. Picture someone sitting at a table writing down information as people file past and then picture someone else many decades later trying to type it out from old smudgy penciled file cards.
The names of many of these people are familiar, recent history and the present. When I taught high school in Browning in the early 1960’s, among my students were Mary Jo Brown and Mary Lynn Lukin. They were exceptionally intelligent, organized and graceful young women who went on to college and other successes. For many years Mary Lynn Lukin ran the Advance By Choice program at Montana State University in Bozeman where she was “auntie” to many students. Today’s Rock Gobert is a popular musician. He’s a vivid personality and I wish you could hear him cut loose with his guitar and band on the back of a flatbed truck at the North American Indian Days parade in July!
Major Steele’s name remains only on a mountain near Heart Butte, “Major Steele’s Back.” (It’s swaybacked.)
JAMES W. BROWN, white. His father was also James and mother was Elizabeth. He had a sister named Sarah in Ohio and a brother named George in Paris, IL)
married
SARAH, full Piegan, whose father was Melting Marrow and mother was Bird Sailing This Way. [Melting Marrow, if it is the same as “Melting Tallow” or “Grease Melters” is the name of the band, rather than an individual. It is a distinguished family but the name comes from their practice of putting pot of fat on the fire to melt as soon as they had made camp.] Melting Tallow’s father was Little Spotted Calf. Bird Sailing This Way’s parents were Many White Swan (father) and Under Otter (mother).
Their children were JOSEPH, WILLIAM (35), JESSIE (27 and married), Leo (11), and Geneva, who married Bob Stewart. Three children died in infancy.
The family lives on the South Fork of Milk River just above Hagerty’s.
SON JOSEPH W. BROWN (30 years old in 1907-8)
married by the priest at Holy Family Mission on Oct. 13, 1897, to
FRANCES ARNOUX, (1/4th Piegan, 31 at census)
Her father was James Arnoux, whose parents were Edmund Armoux and Emma Crane Arnoux. Her mother was Susan Arnoux, whose father was Augustus Armelle. Her sibs were Monroe, Marion, George, and Mary who married Sam Dunbar.
The children of Joseph and Frances were:
Wesley William Brown, born Sept. 13, 1898.
Joseph Aloysius Brown, born April 8, 1900.
Theodore Nelson Brown, born September 24, 1901.
Lawrence Ignatius Brown, born July 13, 1903.
Alma Adelia Brown, born May 14, 1907.
They lived on Greasewood Creek.
SON WILLAM (36, half Piegan)
married by the priest at Holy Family Mission on October 19, 1898, to
VICTORIA LUKIN
Her father was HECTOR LUKIN, and her mother was MARY (full Piegan). Mary Lukin had a half-brother, Young Man Chief. Victoria’s sibs were John, Peter, and Dora.
The children of William and Victoria were:
Sarah Adele Brown (8)
Norman Hector Brown (6)
Joseph Sydney Brown (4)
Angeline Agnes Brown (2)
This family lived on the North Fork of Milk River, three miles above the agency.
SON JESSIE BROWN (25, half Piegan)
married July 15, 1903, by the priest at Holy Family Mission
CATHERINE GOBERT (24, half Piegan)
Their children were:
Hazel Brown, born July 21, 1906
Bernadine Brown, born June 11, 1907
This family lived on Milk River above Hagerty.
Catherine’s father was ROCK GOBERT (white) and her mother was Maggie or MARGUERITE KENNERLY (full Piegan, 57). Maggie’s father was Mountain Chief and her mother was a full-blood. Her full brother was Night Gun and her half-brother was Black Weasel. Her first husband was Rock Gobert, a white man whom she married in 1868. He died November 1, 1886.
Marguerite’s children with Gobert were:
Mollie Gobert Davis, married to William Davis (32) with four children
Edward Gobert (28) widower with two children.
Catherine Gobert Brown (two children)
Agnes Gobert Devereaux (Round Face) wife of Charley Devereaux with two children.
Annie Gobert (20) unmarried
Marguerite’s second husband was HENRY KENNERLY (whiteman) whom she married in 1896 by a priest.
Their children were:
James Kennerly (10)
Leo Kennerly (8)
Rock Gobert had two children by a former wife:
Johnny Gobert
Angeline Gobert (Percival)
MARY LUKIN (62, Full Blood)
Mary’s father was LAME BULL, signer of the Treaty called by his name. Lame Bull’s father was Amidst the Crowd and his mother was Bobcat.
Mary’s mother was AIMING TOGETHER.
Lame Bull’s sibs were Pretending to Strike (sister), deceased, leaving Double Runner; a son deceased leaving two children; Eddie Double Runner and one other. Half Dog, a brother, deceased leaving a daughter, Sua-t-aka, wife of Red Fox; Beaver Hair, a sister, died leaving a son, Chief.
AIMING TOGETHER’s sibs were Sta-sa-apee, a sister died leaving a son, Fast Runner and Wolf Runner, both dead. One daughter, a child of Fast Runner, is maarried and living near Heart Butte. Little Woman, a sister is dead leaving a son, Old Iron, and a daughter, Under Children, now deceased leaving a son, Sitting in a Crowd. No Chief, a brother, died leaving children, now all dead. Cut Finger, a son, has two children. Ernest Cut Finger and Maggie, wife of Ear Rings. Last Snake, a sister, died and had children now dead.
Mary Lukin’s first husband was GEORGE STEELE, the Indian Agent. they were married by “Indian custom.” He died in 1916. Steele was one of the first county commissioners of Choteau County, Montana, established in 1865. He was later a member of the State Legislature and a business partner of Joe Kipp.
By this marriage, Mary and George had two children:
Dora Steele, married to GEORGE WELLS, a white man. They had one child, a girl, who went to England with her father. Adelaide Steele, married William Thomas, a white man. She died leaving three children:
Marie Thomas (15)
George Thomas (13)
Rachel Thomas (11)
The girls were sent to relatives in Dubuque, Iowa, and the son remained with his father in Highwood, Montana.
This book of families can be bought from the Blackfeet Heritage Center in Browning. They have a website. This material is not necessarily accurate. Picture someone sitting at a table writing down information as people file past and then picture someone else many decades later trying to type it out from old smudgy penciled file cards.
The names of many of these people are familiar, recent history and the present. When I taught high school in Browning in the early 1960’s, among my students were Mary Jo Brown and Mary Lynn Lukin. They were exceptionally intelligent, organized and graceful young women who went on to college and other successes. For many years Mary Lynn Lukin ran the Advance By Choice program at Montana State University in Bozeman where she was “auntie” to many students. Today’s Rock Gobert is a popular musician. He’s a vivid personality and I wish you could hear him cut loose with his guitar and band on the back of a flatbed truck at the North American Indian Days parade in July!
Major Steele’s name remains only on a mountain near Heart Butte, “Major Steele’s Back.” (It’s swaybacked.)
Friday, May 06, 2005
Rosier -- Notes from Chapter Two
THE MERIAM REPORT: Becoming citizens was not the only major change in 1928. On the national level, the Meriam Report hit hard, criticizing the results of the Dawes Act (allotment of tribal property to individuals) and the failure of the BIA to develop the tribes economically. [This report is easy to find with a search engine and enlightening to read in its entirety.] The report concluded that “great natural resources cannot be economically administered or developed in small allotments” so “consideration should be given to the possibilities of using the corporate form of organization,” which they considered to be a “modern business device.”
THE LIGGETT REPORT:
Senators Frazier, Burton Wheeler, and W.B. Pine of Oklahoma arrived in Browning on July 24 to hold hearings. [Recently much of the report has appeared as a series in “The Glacier Reporter.”] The most scandalous finding was “that between 1912 and 1929 more than two hundred thousand of the Blackfeet’s most valuable acres had been sold after the Indian owners were given fee patents.” The culprits were identified as Agent Horace Wilson, Lease Clerk Stuart Hazlett and a little circle of whites including “the Sherburne Mercantile Company, which acquired forty thousand acres of Indian land.” No records were kept by the Agency. Likewise, grazing and livestock was casually handled to say the least.
By 1929 there were 2,510 mixed bloods (1,452 in 1914) and
1,130 full-bloods (1,189 in 1914.)
The Five Year Industrial Plan system of granges still stood as an alternative to the Blackft Tribal Business Council. A “third force,” the State of Montana, began to look attractive for medical, educational and agricultural services.
THE BLACKFEET GET A NEW DEAL
The issues did not change, but the personnel did. Hoover is the President of the US, Harold Ickes became Sec of the Interior, John Collier became the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Joe Brown took leadership of the Tribal Council. The conclusion of the 1933 final hearings was that the Blackfeet were ready to run their own affairs. Liggett had written that they were woefully uneducated. Rosier concluded the truth was probably in between. Anyway, reform was underway.
THE FIRST BLACKFEET DEBATE
700 Blackfeet assembled to discuss reform. Not much enthusiasm for putting all assets into a common fund. Oil distracted everyone. The consensus was “no deal.”
THE GREAT PLAINS CONGRESS
March 2, 1934; Rapid City, SD; 60,000 Plains Indians, 18 Blackfeet.
A lively topic was the “checkerboarding” of reservations, not on purpose, but because of patented allotments being sold to whites, which made it hard to manage the reservation as a unit. In fact, the Blackfeet gave Collier the name “Spotted Eagle” to represent checkerboarding! No clear consensus developed among the Plains Indians.
THE SECOND BLACKFEET DEBATE
More power was to be given to the Tribal Council, taking it from the Agency and the granges. The grange idea was given up. Bird Rattler, Many Hides, Weaselhead, Oldchief and John Ground all finally pled for one community. 88 voted for one corporation. 24 opposed. Brown insisted on the right of the tribe to determine the definition of tribal membership.
THE BLACKFEET AND THE SENATE DEBATE
Wheeler and Collier argue the limits of tribal self-governance. Brown pointed out that there were Indians on the school board and they could run for the state senate. He claimed they dominated Glacier County. Wheeler held the Blackfeet up as a great example of success.
THE BLACKFEET AND THE HOUSE DEBATE
Brown advocated and admired the education help and Indian preference for BIA jobs. He praised Collier, even when critics attacked.
THE INDIAN REORGANIZATION ACT
June 5, 1934, Brown and Leo Kennerly (as Secretary of the Tribal Council) sent unanimous approval of the Wheeler-Howard Indian Bill to congress. Collier’s original 48 page bill was cut down to 5. The Court of Indian Affairs was dropped. All the labor had brought forth a mouse. As usual, politics reduced a major new creation to near-ineffectiveness.
THE BLACKFEET VOTE
This document was supposed to be ratified by the tribes. On the Tribal Council, 12 of the 13 voted in favor. In the every-member vote on October 27, 823 voted in favor with 171 voting against. There was a bad winter storm, but 994 of eligible voters out of 1785 got there to vote. Of the mail vote, 114 of 148 voted in favor. All went forward full of optimism.
* * * * * * * * * * *
It was in 1929 that the last of the Sign Talkers were gathered to make a silent film recording their eloquent hand gestures. At that event the footprints of each participant were recorded -- Indians in moccasins and white men in boots. The bronze castings of the prints became the focus of an effort to create some kind of shelter to protect and honor this record of early days. Adrien Voisin, a fine Paris-trained sculptor whose wife was a sign-talker, was in Browning in that time period, sharing a studio with John Clarke, the deaf/mute sculptor grandson of the original Malcolm Clarke whose murder had such terrible consequences. John, of course, “spoke” both American Standard Language signs and Plains Indian sign talk. Voisin made a series of busts of Blackft people, including John Clarke and his mother. These are now in the Denver Art Museum. Two other sculptors were in and out of the Voisin/Clarke studio: one was Charlie Beil, who finally established his studio in Banff where he did a series of small Blackft busts, focusing on Canadian Blackft, and supplied the Calgary Stampede with trophy bronzes.
The other was a fourteen year old boy named Bob Scriver, but at that point called “Robert.” He made a little riverbank clay horse with its rider seated on the ground in front of it. The rider was his cousin, Margaret MacFie, about the same age. He built a little carrier for the figures so she could take them back to Montreal with her. In 1956 Charlie Beil came back into Scriver’s life as one of the judges of the contest to choose an heroic statue of Charles M. Russell, and they were close friends from then on.
THE LIGGETT REPORT:
Senators Frazier, Burton Wheeler, and W.B. Pine of Oklahoma arrived in Browning on July 24 to hold hearings. [Recently much of the report has appeared as a series in “The Glacier Reporter.”] The most scandalous finding was “that between 1912 and 1929 more than two hundred thousand of the Blackfeet’s most valuable acres had been sold after the Indian owners were given fee patents.” The culprits were identified as Agent Horace Wilson, Lease Clerk Stuart Hazlett and a little circle of whites including “the Sherburne Mercantile Company, which acquired forty thousand acres of Indian land.” No records were kept by the Agency. Likewise, grazing and livestock was casually handled to say the least.
By 1929 there were 2,510 mixed bloods (1,452 in 1914) and
1,130 full-bloods (1,189 in 1914.)
The Five Year Industrial Plan system of granges still stood as an alternative to the Blackft Tribal Business Council. A “third force,” the State of Montana, began to look attractive for medical, educational and agricultural services.
THE BLACKFEET GET A NEW DEAL
The issues did not change, but the personnel did. Hoover is the President of the US, Harold Ickes became Sec of the Interior, John Collier became the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Joe Brown took leadership of the Tribal Council. The conclusion of the 1933 final hearings was that the Blackfeet were ready to run their own affairs. Liggett had written that they were woefully uneducated. Rosier concluded the truth was probably in between. Anyway, reform was underway.
THE FIRST BLACKFEET DEBATE
700 Blackfeet assembled to discuss reform. Not much enthusiasm for putting all assets into a common fund. Oil distracted everyone. The consensus was “no deal.”
THE GREAT PLAINS CONGRESS
March 2, 1934; Rapid City, SD; 60,000 Plains Indians, 18 Blackfeet.
A lively topic was the “checkerboarding” of reservations, not on purpose, but because of patented allotments being sold to whites, which made it hard to manage the reservation as a unit. In fact, the Blackfeet gave Collier the name “Spotted Eagle” to represent checkerboarding! No clear consensus developed among the Plains Indians.
THE SECOND BLACKFEET DEBATE
More power was to be given to the Tribal Council, taking it from the Agency and the granges. The grange idea was given up. Bird Rattler, Many Hides, Weaselhead, Oldchief and John Ground all finally pled for one community. 88 voted for one corporation. 24 opposed. Brown insisted on the right of the tribe to determine the definition of tribal membership.
THE BLACKFEET AND THE SENATE DEBATE
Wheeler and Collier argue the limits of tribal self-governance. Brown pointed out that there were Indians on the school board and they could run for the state senate. He claimed they dominated Glacier County. Wheeler held the Blackfeet up as a great example of success.
THE BLACKFEET AND THE HOUSE DEBATE
Brown advocated and admired the education help and Indian preference for BIA jobs. He praised Collier, even when critics attacked.
THE INDIAN REORGANIZATION ACT
June 5, 1934, Brown and Leo Kennerly (as Secretary of the Tribal Council) sent unanimous approval of the Wheeler-Howard Indian Bill to congress. Collier’s original 48 page bill was cut down to 5. The Court of Indian Affairs was dropped. All the labor had brought forth a mouse. As usual, politics reduced a major new creation to near-ineffectiveness.
THE BLACKFEET VOTE
This document was supposed to be ratified by the tribes. On the Tribal Council, 12 of the 13 voted in favor. In the every-member vote on October 27, 823 voted in favor with 171 voting against. There was a bad winter storm, but 994 of eligible voters out of 1785 got there to vote. Of the mail vote, 114 of 148 voted in favor. All went forward full of optimism.
* * * * * * * * * * *
It was in 1929 that the last of the Sign Talkers were gathered to make a silent film recording their eloquent hand gestures. At that event the footprints of each participant were recorded -- Indians in moccasins and white men in boots. The bronze castings of the prints became the focus of an effort to create some kind of shelter to protect and honor this record of early days. Adrien Voisin, a fine Paris-trained sculptor whose wife was a sign-talker, was in Browning in that time period, sharing a studio with John Clarke, the deaf/mute sculptor grandson of the original Malcolm Clarke whose murder had such terrible consequences. John, of course, “spoke” both American Standard Language signs and Plains Indian sign talk. Voisin made a series of busts of Blackft people, including John Clarke and his mother. These are now in the Denver Art Museum. Two other sculptors were in and out of the Voisin/Clarke studio: one was Charlie Beil, who finally established his studio in Banff where he did a series of small Blackft busts, focusing on Canadian Blackft, and supplied the Calgary Stampede with trophy bronzes.
The other was a fourteen year old boy named Bob Scriver, but at that point called “Robert.” He made a little riverbank clay horse with its rider seated on the ground in front of it. The rider was his cousin, Margaret MacFie, about the same age. He built a little carrier for the figures so she could take them back to Montreal with her. In 1956 Charlie Beil came back into Scriver’s life as one of the judges of the contest to choose an heroic statue of Charles M. Russell, and they were close friends from then on.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Rosier, Chapter One notes (continued)
1924 is the year Indians were given citizenship. Now Hamilton’s theme is “self-determination.” The council is angry at Campbell and votes to fire him, but they have no authority. Now the full-bloods need Campbell and the Office of Indian Affairs to protect them against the mixed-bloods. Richard Sanderville (Chief Bull) is an ally of the full-bloods and critic of Hamilton.
As the Kevin-Sunburst and Cut Bank Oil Fields (both close enough to the reservation to be possibly pumping out oil from under it) boom and prosper, the pro-development forces in the tribe get more agitated. Louis S. Irwin, the tribe’s legal advisor, tried to slow them down but H.L. Lambert, who was a friend of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs promised them everything. Finally BTBC went for Lambert (7 to 1 with one abstention). A gathering of the tribe voted 55 to 1 in favor of Lambert. Then the Office of Indian Affairs shut the whole thing down.
Oscar Boy, a full-blood Carlisle grad, was against Lambert getting a lease and so were Levi Burd and Malcolm Clark, who felt that Lambert would shut out the mixed bloods.
Louis W. Hill also objected to Lambert on grounds that he would have a monopoly and Hill wished to lease. In the end, he was given a small lease and so were others, but the Dept. of the Interior hovered closely, remembering the Osage. Now the problem was that Hill wasn’t drilling. If he didn’t drill, there would be no development.
J.L. (NOT J.H.) Sherburne applied for a lease and was rejected on grounds that his application was incomplete and missing elements. John Galbraith was going in with Sherburne but his own lease was cancelled for noncompliance. Hill also had difficulty on these grounds. The rich could afford the wait -- the hungry tribespeople could not.
The idea was to hit the Kootenai Formation, which the oilmen would only pretend to do. They were also interested in the Milk River anti-cline. The supervisor of all this was Albert Fall, who was convicted not long after in the Teapot Dome scandal and served criminal time.
1927 John Galbraith thought the thing to do was to mortgage the tribal timber and drill for themselves. George Starr (full-blood) bid.
1928 Browning-Fertig Oil Co. (One assimilated Indian and 3 whites.)
1929 Loss of confidence in Campbell, accusations of corruption, continued complaints of starvation and no shelter, all add up to Senator Burton Wheeler calling for hearings in 1929. The Acting Superintendent is now Forrest Stone.
As the Kevin-Sunburst and Cut Bank Oil Fields (both close enough to the reservation to be possibly pumping out oil from under it) boom and prosper, the pro-development forces in the tribe get more agitated. Louis S. Irwin, the tribe’s legal advisor, tried to slow them down but H.L. Lambert, who was a friend of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs promised them everything. Finally BTBC went for Lambert (7 to 1 with one abstention). A gathering of the tribe voted 55 to 1 in favor of Lambert. Then the Office of Indian Affairs shut the whole thing down.
Oscar Boy, a full-blood Carlisle grad, was against Lambert getting a lease and so were Levi Burd and Malcolm Clark, who felt that Lambert would shut out the mixed bloods.
Louis W. Hill also objected to Lambert on grounds that he would have a monopoly and Hill wished to lease. In the end, he was given a small lease and so were others, but the Dept. of the Interior hovered closely, remembering the Osage. Now the problem was that Hill wasn’t drilling. If he didn’t drill, there would be no development.
J.L. (NOT J.H.) Sherburne applied for a lease and was rejected on grounds that his application was incomplete and missing elements. John Galbraith was going in with Sherburne but his own lease was cancelled for noncompliance. Hill also had difficulty on these grounds. The rich could afford the wait -- the hungry tribespeople could not.
The idea was to hit the Kootenai Formation, which the oilmen would only pretend to do. They were also interested in the Milk River anti-cline. The supervisor of all this was Albert Fall, who was convicted not long after in the Teapot Dome scandal and served criminal time.
1927 John Galbraith thought the thing to do was to mortgage the tribal timber and drill for themselves. George Starr (full-blood) bid.
1928 Browning-Fertig Oil Co. (One assimilated Indian and 3 whites.)
1929 Loss of confidence in Campbell, accusations of corruption, continued complaints of starvation and no shelter, all add up to Senator Burton Wheeler calling for hearings in 1929. The Acting Superintendent is now Forrest Stone.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
The Fleeing Value of the Reservation
Before continuing with the notes from Rosier, I want to emphasize the value offered by the Blackft reservation and the failure by the tribe to capture it because of schisms that prevent political unity.
1. The first value came from the buffalo, which were killed into oblivion. But in this case the Blackft, by supplying dry meat and tanned hides to traders and other entrepreneurs such as Cree willing to trap, did capture some value.
2. When the buffalo were gone and the government was shipping in commodities as treaty payments and compensations, all the profit of shipping contracts went to off-rez contractors, while the materials didn’t always make it through, transformed in transit, or were dismally substandard though full price was paid.
3. The third value came from the grass, once the buffalo were gone and the prairie was clear for the big open range herds coming up from Texas. Though the tribe theoretically had cattle and horses, they rarely got much out of them, while the cattle barons trespassed at will. Later, the Blackft got lower leasing fees than other reservations, though their grazing was much bettter.
4. The next value came from the railroad right-of-way along the High Line (indeed, CREATING the term “high line”) which James J. Hill needed in order to keep the Canadians from draining shipping. The best pass in the north, Marias Pass, opened onto the Blackfeet reservation. The whole railway hinged on it.
5. Besides right-of-way grants, the railroad took more than they were granted, used Blackft timber, water, and gravel, sometimes without payment and sometimes with “special” prices.
6. Prospectors searched everywhere on the rez with no payment for permission. The Sweetgrass Hills were taken because of Gold Butte, where there really was a productive gold mine. Luckily, they didn’t find much more.
7. On the southern land a million-dollar irrigation system was built that the Blackft didn’t want, didn’t use, and didn’t work properly anyhow. In the St. Marys Valley there was diversion and damming of water that benefited people all along the High-Line clear to the Dakotas.
8. Moving the boundary of the reservation was a great source of speculation. Whites occupied and used reservation land, then arranged to get ownership by moving the boundary.
9. Agents treated Blackft money and assets like their own and sold cattle or hay to their friends in “sweet deals.”
10. Glacier National Park was sold to save the People from starving. It also helped James J. Hill keep his railroad busy and his big hotels hopping, esp. through the Prohibition years. The “romantic” tourist potential of Blackft land was concentrated on Glacier Park, where Indians camped on the lawn in return for eating the restaurant leftovers in the kitchen after supper.
All this was possible because of the many conflicts and complexities of the population:
1. A split developed early between full-bloods and mixed-bloods.
2. This split was emphasized by the generational differences, since most full bloods were older and had had quite different life experiences.
3. Whites used mixed-bloods as means and access, either by marrying Indians or by operating through the entitlements of their children, which they supplemented with their own resources.
4. Therefore the full/mixed blood split was aggravated by prosperity among the mixed bloods but poverty to the point of starvation in the full-bloods.
5. Also, the mixed bloods tended to live in the settlements, so they picked up ideas and made networks. The full bloods tended to live in outlying areas where they just weren’t told what was going on -- even when it was time to vote or attend meetings.
6. Campbell, in his fondness for the full-bloods and his insistence on the necessity of subsistence farming, drove the split even deeper. After his trick of taking votes among his small grange groups and obeying them instead of the tribal council, being in dispersed “districts” was always seen as opposed to centralized management through the Tribal Council and agency.
7. Because Campbell ignored the development of oil resources while Cut Bank drillers sucked money out of the ground, probably out from under the reservation, the craving for oil development became ever stronger. But even then there were splits: between those who wished the tribe to drill for oil with their own companies and those who would rather lease to off-rez companies (like James J. Hill), between those who felt the Blackft should manage such resources as a corporate entity or those who thought it was better for individuals with patented land to make oil drilling contracts of their own.
8. At this point some wanted to return to ownership of land in common, repealing the Dawes Act, but others noted that the mixed bloods -- who had encumbered their allotments by borrowing and had even lost some of their land to nonpayment of debts -- would unjustly benefit when the full-bloods -- who had hung onto their land -- put their allotments back in.
9. The United States government technically held all unpatented land in trust for individual Indians. (Like George W. Bush’s idea for Social Security.) This was done in such a confused and negligent way that they have remained hopelessly snarled ever since. Now, of course, there is a lawsuit forcing reform.
10. No matter what the supposedly independent Blackft Tribal Business Council did, the Agent had the power to override them. There were very few agents who lasted more than a year and many lasted only months, while another large proportion spent many months “away.” No one could predict what the Agent would say and, in any event, he was at the mercy of his bosses back East, who never understood or cared what the realities were so far away from Washington, D.C.
Modern tribal members are now awakened to the value of the many rights-of-way across the reservation for electrical lines, electronic transmission towers, oil pipelines, fiberoptic lines, highway improvements, and other infrastructure. They are also alarmed and vigilant about water rights, since global warming and drought are shrinking what once seemed an inexhaustible supply of water from the Rocky Mountain snowpack. But they are probably even more divided amongst themselves than before. About half of the tribal members don’t live on the reservation anymore and are anxious to have profits today rather than re-investment in the future. The potential of tribal taxes and casinoes are controversial.
1. The first value came from the buffalo, which were killed into oblivion. But in this case the Blackft, by supplying dry meat and tanned hides to traders and other entrepreneurs such as Cree willing to trap, did capture some value.
2. When the buffalo were gone and the government was shipping in commodities as treaty payments and compensations, all the profit of shipping contracts went to off-rez contractors, while the materials didn’t always make it through, transformed in transit, or were dismally substandard though full price was paid.
3. The third value came from the grass, once the buffalo were gone and the prairie was clear for the big open range herds coming up from Texas. Though the tribe theoretically had cattle and horses, they rarely got much out of them, while the cattle barons trespassed at will. Later, the Blackft got lower leasing fees than other reservations, though their grazing was much bettter.
4. The next value came from the railroad right-of-way along the High Line (indeed, CREATING the term “high line”) which James J. Hill needed in order to keep the Canadians from draining shipping. The best pass in the north, Marias Pass, opened onto the Blackfeet reservation. The whole railway hinged on it.
5. Besides right-of-way grants, the railroad took more than they were granted, used Blackft timber, water, and gravel, sometimes without payment and sometimes with “special” prices.
6. Prospectors searched everywhere on the rez with no payment for permission. The Sweetgrass Hills were taken because of Gold Butte, where there really was a productive gold mine. Luckily, they didn’t find much more.
7. On the southern land a million-dollar irrigation system was built that the Blackft didn’t want, didn’t use, and didn’t work properly anyhow. In the St. Marys Valley there was diversion and damming of water that benefited people all along the High-Line clear to the Dakotas.
8. Moving the boundary of the reservation was a great source of speculation. Whites occupied and used reservation land, then arranged to get ownership by moving the boundary.
9. Agents treated Blackft money and assets like their own and sold cattle or hay to their friends in “sweet deals.”
10. Glacier National Park was sold to save the People from starving. It also helped James J. Hill keep his railroad busy and his big hotels hopping, esp. through the Prohibition years. The “romantic” tourist potential of Blackft land was concentrated on Glacier Park, where Indians camped on the lawn in return for eating the restaurant leftovers in the kitchen after supper.
All this was possible because of the many conflicts and complexities of the population:
1. A split developed early between full-bloods and mixed-bloods.
2. This split was emphasized by the generational differences, since most full bloods were older and had had quite different life experiences.
3. Whites used mixed-bloods as means and access, either by marrying Indians or by operating through the entitlements of their children, which they supplemented with their own resources.
4. Therefore the full/mixed blood split was aggravated by prosperity among the mixed bloods but poverty to the point of starvation in the full-bloods.
5. Also, the mixed bloods tended to live in the settlements, so they picked up ideas and made networks. The full bloods tended to live in outlying areas where they just weren’t told what was going on -- even when it was time to vote or attend meetings.
6. Campbell, in his fondness for the full-bloods and his insistence on the necessity of subsistence farming, drove the split even deeper. After his trick of taking votes among his small grange groups and obeying them instead of the tribal council, being in dispersed “districts” was always seen as opposed to centralized management through the Tribal Council and agency.
7. Because Campbell ignored the development of oil resources while Cut Bank drillers sucked money out of the ground, probably out from under the reservation, the craving for oil development became ever stronger. But even then there were splits: between those who wished the tribe to drill for oil with their own companies and those who would rather lease to off-rez companies (like James J. Hill), between those who felt the Blackft should manage such resources as a corporate entity or those who thought it was better for individuals with patented land to make oil drilling contracts of their own.
8. At this point some wanted to return to ownership of land in common, repealing the Dawes Act, but others noted that the mixed bloods -- who had encumbered their allotments by borrowing and had even lost some of their land to nonpayment of debts -- would unjustly benefit when the full-bloods -- who had hung onto their land -- put their allotments back in.
9. The United States government technically held all unpatented land in trust for individual Indians. (Like George W. Bush’s idea for Social Security.) This was done in such a confused and negligent way that they have remained hopelessly snarled ever since. Now, of course, there is a lawsuit forcing reform.
10. No matter what the supposedly independent Blackft Tribal Business Council did, the Agent had the power to override them. There were very few agents who lasted more than a year and many lasted only months, while another large proportion spent many months “away.” No one could predict what the Agent would say and, in any event, he was at the mercy of his bosses back East, who never understood or cared what the realities were so far away from Washington, D.C.
Modern tribal members are now awakened to the value of the many rights-of-way across the reservation for electrical lines, electronic transmission towers, oil pipelines, fiberoptic lines, highway improvements, and other infrastructure. They are also alarmed and vigilant about water rights, since global warming and drought are shrinking what once seemed an inexhaustible supply of water from the Rocky Mountain snowpack. But they are probably even more divided amongst themselves than before. About half of the tribal members don’t live on the reservation anymore and are anxious to have profits today rather than re-investment in the future. The potential of tribal taxes and casinoes are controversial.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
NOTES from Paul Rosier's "Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954
CHAPTER ONE (first half)
Probably the most important concept in Rosier’s book is the idea that the difference between the termination of the reservation and “self-determination” or sovereignty, is whether it is initiated and controlled by someone outside the tribe or those within the tribe.
The next most important point of his is the enormous difficulty and yet compelling necessity that those within the tribe find one unified voice that will give them the effectiveness they need to be sovereign.
CHANGES TO BLACKFEET TRIBAL LIFE
1400? At some point in the past (hundreds of years ago -- maybe when white intruders destabilized the east coast) this group of people separated from a main group to the east, where they were a woodland people, and moved to the prairie where they became bison-dependent. The main evidence for this is stories from the elders and the language. In the process they turned away from water-based transportation (canoes), occupations (trapping water animals), and fishing.
1700 The horse reached the Blackfeet and guns about the same time. Partly because the dog-based ways could easily be adapted to horses, the Blackfeet bloomed into a “climax culture” that lasted between one and two hundred years. It crashed because of disease brought in by whites and because of the end of the bison. War played a lesser role.
1869 was the winter of the Baker Massacre, AKA the Massacre on the Marias. (To compare, the War Between the States was 1961-63.)
1883-94 is called the Starvation Winter. Bison were hunted out and the Indian Agent failed to provide food. 600 died. One result of this was a sharp change in the population.
1885 there were 18 mixed-blood enrollees and 2,000 full blood.
By1914 there were 1,452 mixed and 1,189 full-bloods
Most mixed bloods had white or mixed-blood fathers which meant their assimilation and advantages were driven by the fathers, who might be French trappers, traders, cattlemen, agents, or entrepreneurs.
This change created two classes of enrollees:
A mixed blood, pro-assimilation, relatively prosperous group and
A full-blood, impoverished, assimilation-resistant, non-English-speaking group, dependent on a mixed-blood (Hamilton) interpreter.
At this point in history, the same split between non-English immigrants and assimilated native-born was present among white people throughout the US, but was ameliorated by the middle-class presence of small towns and family farms. The non-English speakers were European but they came on purpose in order to assimilate with the English speakers. Their own language was preserved in churches for a while.
ALLOTMENT of land
1887 is the year of the General Allotment Act, an outgrowth of the Homestead Experience and also a response to maintaining small agrarian land-holders over against the growing impact of industrial and agricultural capitalism hungry for natural resources to develop. At the same time as pretending to help people find homesteads, it was a good excuse for releasing “surplus” lands for development. An additional twist was that the railroads were dependent on increasing homesteads and also that irrigation had been dug on the reservation that now was part of the “surplus.” This act was stalled for a long time.
March 1, 1907 the allotment act was passed. It was opposed by the Office of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior.
This was the Gilded Age, just ending, during which the major millionaires of America were created. Reservation land allotments tended to align with blood degree and the nature of the person’s business. Best grazing and wheat land drifted to the mixed blood entrepreneurs and ranchers. Hamilton, a mixed-blood educated at Carlisle, became the interpreter and spokesman for the full-bloods, who had a hard time dealing direct with the US Congress. Hamilton worked passionately for the full-bloods, but it meant that they could only work through him. He more or less “owned” them politically.
1913 The Tribal Business Committe was made up of 2 fullblood and 3 mixed blood members, including James Perrine (1/4 Blackfeet and a major sheep man) and Richard Sanderville who aligned with Malcolm Clark, Charles Buck (1/4 Blackfeet and a major cattle rancher who brought in black Angus). Also aligned with the mixed bloods were the agent, Arthur E. McFatridge, and Wolf Tail (owner of the largest horse herd on the reservation.)
1914, there is a hearing by a Joint Commission of Congress. Agent McFatridge is fired.
BLACKFEET TRIBAL BUSINESS COUNCIL
1915, the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council is created and immediately (December 13, 1915) votes to reject the sale of surplus land by 8 to 1. Hamilton (the mixed blood who represents full-bloods) is elected president. He has two preoccupations: agency corruption and preserving the tribal land base. He is not attacked on these issues but by character assassination.
1916 SB 793 Amendment to the Allotment Act of 1907 passed by the Senate but not by the House. Montana US Senator Walsh wanted to sell the “surplus land.”
A contingent opposing this Amendment (mostly full-bloods) went to Washington, D.C. Hamilton, Curley Bear, Bird Rattler, Wolf Plume and Oliver Sanderville. Mixed bloods who went included Malcolm Clark, Richard Sanderville, Mountain Chief (a Christian full-blood) John Galbreath and Charles Devereaux.
The million dollar debt incurred by the building of an irrigation system was weighing on the Blackfeet. They did not ask for the system and the “surplus” land included much of it. Some wanted to sell the “surplus” and pay off the debt. Others thought that the “surplus” should be leased, partly because the value of the land was increasing daily.
The Blackfeet leaders were much handicapped by the thickets of legal terminology, customs, equivalents, laws, regulations, etc. Only a few whites really understood. In the end they managed to reserve all mineral rights, probably because no one thought there were any minerals.
ACT OF June 30, 1919
The Blackfeet were exempted from having to sell their “surplus” land and instead all enrolled Blackfeet received an additional 80 acres. This was a win for Hamilton.
1916 The Blackfeet began to want to develop oil. (The regulations dated to 1891.) The Oklahoma Osage had become fabulously rich from oil and everyone was influenced by this, but some wanted to develop cautiously. (The Osage were persuaded to “plunge” quickly. The tribe was afflicted by a terrible series of murders committed by whites who married into the tribe, then killed all intervening inheritors. There was no chance for the people to learn how to manage money in those amounts.)
At this point the Blackfeet are aware that they have assets: good land, timber, livestock, and possibly oil. The split comes in the way they want to use these. The mixed bloods tend to want to develop minerals, ranches and wheat farms for the long term. They understand development, leasing, and paper instruments. The full-bloods are just anxious to stay alive. They have no housing, no dependable food, and have a hard time understanding a lot of theoretical stuff.
1917-1918 were good crop years with prices supported by WWI. (Wheat and wool for uniforms)
1919 was a drought summer and a harsh winter.
1920-21 was such a low point that two-thirds of the tribe were on rations from the agency.
1921 Frank Campbell, red-headed, 6’2”, energetic, and experienced. He had worked for the BIA for twenty years:
Superintendent of the Fort Peck Indian School
Allotting agent at Poplar
Livestock supervisor for the Blackfeet
Interim agent for the Blackfeet for 8 months between 1917- 1919 when the reservation had 4 agents, one after another!
His first act was to visit every single family. He took the agency physician with him. He felt great sympathy for the full-bloods he met in places like Heart Butte and Old Agency, and believed that if he could just get them to do subsistence farming, at least they wouldn’t starve.
THE FIVE YEAR INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM
Campbell organized 29 chapters of the Piegan Farming and Livestock Association. Many full-bloods broke away from Hamilton at this point and allied with Campbell.
Others were sceptical, like Found A Gun, who said farming was just a stopgap. Others were angry at Campbell because he couldn’t keep whites from trespassing, he helped other tribes which meant he was gone a lot, they wanted a cash crop rather than subsistence, and they resented Campbell’s reluctance to develop the oil.
Montana State Senator Frank J. McCabe (a Browning resident) joined Hamilton and in 1926 their group took 10 of the 13 seats on the BTBC.
1924 is the year Indians were given citizenship.
Probably the most important concept in Rosier’s book is the idea that the difference between the termination of the reservation and “self-determination” or sovereignty, is whether it is initiated and controlled by someone outside the tribe or those within the tribe.
The next most important point of his is the enormous difficulty and yet compelling necessity that those within the tribe find one unified voice that will give them the effectiveness they need to be sovereign.
CHANGES TO BLACKFEET TRIBAL LIFE
1400? At some point in the past (hundreds of years ago -- maybe when white intruders destabilized the east coast) this group of people separated from a main group to the east, where they were a woodland people, and moved to the prairie where they became bison-dependent. The main evidence for this is stories from the elders and the language. In the process they turned away from water-based transportation (canoes), occupations (trapping water animals), and fishing.
1700 The horse reached the Blackfeet and guns about the same time. Partly because the dog-based ways could easily be adapted to horses, the Blackfeet bloomed into a “climax culture” that lasted between one and two hundred years. It crashed because of disease brought in by whites and because of the end of the bison. War played a lesser role.
1869 was the winter of the Baker Massacre, AKA the Massacre on the Marias. (To compare, the War Between the States was 1961-63.)
1883-94 is called the Starvation Winter. Bison were hunted out and the Indian Agent failed to provide food. 600 died. One result of this was a sharp change in the population.
1885 there were 18 mixed-blood enrollees and 2,000 full blood.
By1914 there were 1,452 mixed and 1,189 full-bloods
Most mixed bloods had white or mixed-blood fathers which meant their assimilation and advantages were driven by the fathers, who might be French trappers, traders, cattlemen, agents, or entrepreneurs.
This change created two classes of enrollees:
A mixed blood, pro-assimilation, relatively prosperous group and
A full-blood, impoverished, assimilation-resistant, non-English-speaking group, dependent on a mixed-blood (Hamilton) interpreter.
At this point in history, the same split between non-English immigrants and assimilated native-born was present among white people throughout the US, but was ameliorated by the middle-class presence of small towns and family farms. The non-English speakers were European but they came on purpose in order to assimilate with the English speakers. Their own language was preserved in churches for a while.
ALLOTMENT of land
1887 is the year of the General Allotment Act, an outgrowth of the Homestead Experience and also a response to maintaining small agrarian land-holders over against the growing impact of industrial and agricultural capitalism hungry for natural resources to develop. At the same time as pretending to help people find homesteads, it was a good excuse for releasing “surplus” lands for development. An additional twist was that the railroads were dependent on increasing homesteads and also that irrigation had been dug on the reservation that now was part of the “surplus.” This act was stalled for a long time.
March 1, 1907 the allotment act was passed. It was opposed by the Office of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior.
This was the Gilded Age, just ending, during which the major millionaires of America were created. Reservation land allotments tended to align with blood degree and the nature of the person’s business. Best grazing and wheat land drifted to the mixed blood entrepreneurs and ranchers. Hamilton, a mixed-blood educated at Carlisle, became the interpreter and spokesman for the full-bloods, who had a hard time dealing direct with the US Congress. Hamilton worked passionately for the full-bloods, but it meant that they could only work through him. He more or less “owned” them politically.
1913 The Tribal Business Committe was made up of 2 fullblood and 3 mixed blood members, including James Perrine (1/4 Blackfeet and a major sheep man) and Richard Sanderville who aligned with Malcolm Clark, Charles Buck (1/4 Blackfeet and a major cattle rancher who brought in black Angus). Also aligned with the mixed bloods were the agent, Arthur E. McFatridge, and Wolf Tail (owner of the largest horse herd on the reservation.)
1914, there is a hearing by a Joint Commission of Congress. Agent McFatridge is fired.
BLACKFEET TRIBAL BUSINESS COUNCIL
1915, the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council is created and immediately (December 13, 1915) votes to reject the sale of surplus land by 8 to 1. Hamilton (the mixed blood who represents full-bloods) is elected president. He has two preoccupations: agency corruption and preserving the tribal land base. He is not attacked on these issues but by character assassination.
1916 SB 793 Amendment to the Allotment Act of 1907 passed by the Senate but not by the House. Montana US Senator Walsh wanted to sell the “surplus land.”
A contingent opposing this Amendment (mostly full-bloods) went to Washington, D.C. Hamilton, Curley Bear, Bird Rattler, Wolf Plume and Oliver Sanderville. Mixed bloods who went included Malcolm Clark, Richard Sanderville, Mountain Chief (a Christian full-blood) John Galbreath and Charles Devereaux.
The million dollar debt incurred by the building of an irrigation system was weighing on the Blackfeet. They did not ask for the system and the “surplus” land included much of it. Some wanted to sell the “surplus” and pay off the debt. Others thought that the “surplus” should be leased, partly because the value of the land was increasing daily.
The Blackfeet leaders were much handicapped by the thickets of legal terminology, customs, equivalents, laws, regulations, etc. Only a few whites really understood. In the end they managed to reserve all mineral rights, probably because no one thought there were any minerals.
ACT OF June 30, 1919
The Blackfeet were exempted from having to sell their “surplus” land and instead all enrolled Blackfeet received an additional 80 acres. This was a win for Hamilton.
1916 The Blackfeet began to want to develop oil. (The regulations dated to 1891.) The Oklahoma Osage had become fabulously rich from oil and everyone was influenced by this, but some wanted to develop cautiously. (The Osage were persuaded to “plunge” quickly. The tribe was afflicted by a terrible series of murders committed by whites who married into the tribe, then killed all intervening inheritors. There was no chance for the people to learn how to manage money in those amounts.)
At this point the Blackfeet are aware that they have assets: good land, timber, livestock, and possibly oil. The split comes in the way they want to use these. The mixed bloods tend to want to develop minerals, ranches and wheat farms for the long term. They understand development, leasing, and paper instruments. The full-bloods are just anxious to stay alive. They have no housing, no dependable food, and have a hard time understanding a lot of theoretical stuff.
1917-1918 were good crop years with prices supported by WWI. (Wheat and wool for uniforms)
1919 was a drought summer and a harsh winter.
1920-21 was such a low point that two-thirds of the tribe were on rations from the agency.
1921 Frank Campbell, red-headed, 6’2”, energetic, and experienced. He had worked for the BIA for twenty years:
Superintendent of the Fort Peck Indian School
Allotting agent at Poplar
Livestock supervisor for the Blackfeet
Interim agent for the Blackfeet for 8 months between 1917- 1919 when the reservation had 4 agents, one after another!
His first act was to visit every single family. He took the agency physician with him. He felt great sympathy for the full-bloods he met in places like Heart Butte and Old Agency, and believed that if he could just get them to do subsistence farming, at least they wouldn’t starve.
THE FIVE YEAR INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM
Campbell organized 29 chapters of the Piegan Farming and Livestock Association. Many full-bloods broke away from Hamilton at this point and allied with Campbell.
Others were sceptical, like Found A Gun, who said farming was just a stopgap. Others were angry at Campbell because he couldn’t keep whites from trespassing, he helped other tribes which meant he was gone a lot, they wanted a cash crop rather than subsistence, and they resented Campbell’s reluctance to develop the oil.
Montana State Senator Frank J. McCabe (a Browning resident) joined Hamilton and in 1926 their group took 10 of the 13 seats on the BTBC.
1924 is the year Indians were given citizenship.
Monday, May 02, 2005
A Fragrant Air
If you are lucky, you might be on the prairie and realize suddenly that the air around you is fragrant. Likely you are near a bed of sweetgrass. This grass is so eagerly sought and harvested that it disappears, but it is available commercially for gardens and now is the time to plant it. Braids, which is how the grass is managed, sell for about $4. They make excellent gifts as they are a sign of blessing and safety. I have never heard of anyone being allergic to the smell.
There are three other plants with the same sweetness. One is sweet clover, a brushy plant with small yellow flowers that horses love to eat. Another is balsam pine, or sweet pine, which is what the Sweetgrass Hills should be named, since little sweetgrass grows there, but sweet pine does. These fragrant needles are used some places to fill novelty pillows, sometimes with a little ditty on them: “I balsam when I pine fir yew.” And balsam poplar has the smell in spring when it buds. Nice ladies used to soak the buds in water and dip their handkerchiefs to make them smell sweet.
Sweetgrass will grow as far north as Zone 1. (Browning, Montana, is Zone 3.) It likes moist sandy soil and burned-over places. Some people check the margins of the railroad tracks where the train wheels are likely to have set fires and where there are often “borrow ditches” where cat tails grow because water accumulates there.
Often when walking on the prairie, one smells sweetgrass, but can’t find it. Outside of human cultivation the grass may grow as scattered strands among other grasses. It is easier to see these when the light is coming in low from close to the horizon, as at dawn or dusk. The old people say that sometimes the grass “hides” and cannot be found until the searcher has the right frame of mind. That might be an attitude of patience and gratitude, so that one becomes observant and welcoming. If one sees the grass in a renewed way, sometimes it will spring into perception on all sides.
Scientists say that sweetgrass is “feral,” meaning that it was once cultivated by humans but has returned to being wild. The evidence includes the difficulty of growing the plants from seeds (only a small percentage of the seeds will germinate) and its need to be regularly harvested to keep from choking itself out. Probably people took small plugs with them to plant in likely spots, so that when they came back by that place on their regular seasonal travels, the grass would be ready. Something similar was done with tobacco and sarvisberries.
If one looks at a world globe from the top so that the North Pole is in the middle of the Arctic Sea, one will see the “circumpolar” (around the pole) world. In recent times this sea has been frozen but at different times in history it has been open, at least in the warmest months. Scientists believe it may be opening again now. The area around this Arctic Sea was occupied by people who had a shared or at least traded culture. The stories and religious assumptions are similar. The indigenous peoples of the far Siberian or Scandinavian north may have similar practices and equipment. Another thing they share is sweetgrass.
Sweetgrass should dry in a dark place where air circulates. Braid strands before it is dried or after it has dried a little bit, but not after it is dried enough to be stiff. Without any further treatment this sweetgrass will smell pleasant. Put it with linen or clothing as a sachet in the same way that lavendar is used.
As a smudge, sweetgrass is crumbled onto hot coals in the ceremonial setting. It might be combined with some other substance, like sweet pine. The ritual leader will provide directions. As a smudge in a home, it is easy to keep a braid near the stove and cut a bit onto the still-warm burner. When I make my morning coffee, I use the hot burner to smudge a little sweetgrass while I make my morning prayer. When much sweetgrass is available, it might be strewn on the floor of a tent or as in Russia on all Saint’s Day, strewn on the steps of the church.
SOURCES:
(Use Google to find)
Wakeda Trading Post: dried braids of grass
The Sweetgrass Company: soaps and baskets
The Wandering Bull, Inc. dried braids 1-800-206-6544
Canadian Sweetgrass: 1-204-525-4552
Chicester, Inc. braids 1-800-206-6544
Primitive Originals: braids
Grasslands, Inc. starter plugs
Redwood City Seed Company: plugs. Box 361, Redwood City, CA 94064 Phone: (650-325-7333) Fax (650) 325-4056
Plants of the Southwest 1-800-788-7333
Learning about sweetgrass reveals two things about the Old People of the prairie. The first is their pride in their homes and their determination to make them beautiful and pleasant shelters. The work of women included a constant airing and scenting of the contents of the lodge. The strong summer sun was an excellent agent for bleaching and disinfecting and the wind could give materials a good thrashing.
The other is that women spent their lives in close examination of the ground because they constantly gathered edible parts of plants. They knew the plants even when the leaves weren’t calling attention to themselves by flowering, and understood the cycle of plant lives. With their digging sticks always handy, they constantly tested the skin of the earth for what was just under the surface. Many times the buffalo were scarce so that it was not the mighty hunter on horseback who fed the people, but rather the old granny with her familar bit of strong worn wood.
We can easily plant sweetgrass in our yards, so that this source of blessing and pleasure is always close at hand.
There are three other plants with the same sweetness. One is sweet clover, a brushy plant with small yellow flowers that horses love to eat. Another is balsam pine, or sweet pine, which is what the Sweetgrass Hills should be named, since little sweetgrass grows there, but sweet pine does. These fragrant needles are used some places to fill novelty pillows, sometimes with a little ditty on them: “I balsam when I pine fir yew.” And balsam poplar has the smell in spring when it buds. Nice ladies used to soak the buds in water and dip their handkerchiefs to make them smell sweet.
Sweetgrass will grow as far north as Zone 1. (Browning, Montana, is Zone 3.) It likes moist sandy soil and burned-over places. Some people check the margins of the railroad tracks where the train wheels are likely to have set fires and where there are often “borrow ditches” where cat tails grow because water accumulates there.
Often when walking on the prairie, one smells sweetgrass, but can’t find it. Outside of human cultivation the grass may grow as scattered strands among other grasses. It is easier to see these when the light is coming in low from close to the horizon, as at dawn or dusk. The old people say that sometimes the grass “hides” and cannot be found until the searcher has the right frame of mind. That might be an attitude of patience and gratitude, so that one becomes observant and welcoming. If one sees the grass in a renewed way, sometimes it will spring into perception on all sides.
Scientists say that sweetgrass is “feral,” meaning that it was once cultivated by humans but has returned to being wild. The evidence includes the difficulty of growing the plants from seeds (only a small percentage of the seeds will germinate) and its need to be regularly harvested to keep from choking itself out. Probably people took small plugs with them to plant in likely spots, so that when they came back by that place on their regular seasonal travels, the grass would be ready. Something similar was done with tobacco and sarvisberries.
If one looks at a world globe from the top so that the North Pole is in the middle of the Arctic Sea, one will see the “circumpolar” (around the pole) world. In recent times this sea has been frozen but at different times in history it has been open, at least in the warmest months. Scientists believe it may be opening again now. The area around this Arctic Sea was occupied by people who had a shared or at least traded culture. The stories and religious assumptions are similar. The indigenous peoples of the far Siberian or Scandinavian north may have similar practices and equipment. Another thing they share is sweetgrass.
Sweetgrass should dry in a dark place where air circulates. Braid strands before it is dried or after it has dried a little bit, but not after it is dried enough to be stiff. Without any further treatment this sweetgrass will smell pleasant. Put it with linen or clothing as a sachet in the same way that lavendar is used.
As a smudge, sweetgrass is crumbled onto hot coals in the ceremonial setting. It might be combined with some other substance, like sweet pine. The ritual leader will provide directions. As a smudge in a home, it is easy to keep a braid near the stove and cut a bit onto the still-warm burner. When I make my morning coffee, I use the hot burner to smudge a little sweetgrass while I make my morning prayer. When much sweetgrass is available, it might be strewn on the floor of a tent or as in Russia on all Saint’s Day, strewn on the steps of the church.
SOURCES:
(Use Google to find)
Wakeda Trading Post: dried braids of grass
The Sweetgrass Company: soaps and baskets
The Wandering Bull, Inc. dried braids 1-800-206-6544
Canadian Sweetgrass: 1-204-525-4552
Chicester, Inc. braids 1-800-206-6544
Primitive Originals: braids
Grasslands, Inc. starter plugs
Redwood City Seed Company: plugs. Box 361, Redwood City, CA 94064 Phone: (650-325-7333) Fax (650) 325-4056
Plants of the Southwest 1-800-788-7333
Learning about sweetgrass reveals two things about the Old People of the prairie. The first is their pride in their homes and their determination to make them beautiful and pleasant shelters. The work of women included a constant airing and scenting of the contents of the lodge. The strong summer sun was an excellent agent for bleaching and disinfecting and the wind could give materials a good thrashing.
The other is that women spent their lives in close examination of the ground because they constantly gathered edible parts of plants. They knew the plants even when the leaves weren’t calling attention to themselves by flowering, and understood the cycle of plant lives. With their digging sticks always handy, they constantly tested the skin of the earth for what was just under the surface. Many times the buffalo were scarce so that it was not the mighty hunter on horseback who fed the people, but rather the old granny with her familar bit of strong worn wood.
We can easily plant sweetgrass in our yards, so that this source of blessing and pleasure is always close at hand.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Birds of a Feather
The old Blackft did more than travel together. Besides belonging to a band of fellow travelers and the complex of extended families that traveled with it, boys belonged from a young age to cohort groups. Girls tended to stick to their families and learn from their mothers and aunties, but boys ran with each other. It seems a natural development in many societies. McClintock gives his account of some cohort groups in “The Old North Trail.”
The Sinopaix (Society of Kit Foxes) was known for giving dances, but this hasn’t happened for a long time. In fact, in most places on the prairie, kit foxes (a smaller version than the red fox) had completely died out until the last few years when they were restored on the reservation. In the old days, the Sinopaix would not hurt kit foxes, though they wore their skins, but today the skins are illegal to have and every human being is forbidden to kill the clever little creatures. Sinopaix dances weren’t war dances, but imitations of kit foxes. Maybe after the people have seen them enough and learned what they are like, the dances will return but without kit fox skins.
Tsin-Ksi-six (Society of Mosquitoes) was a pesky bunch that were supposed to have originated with a man who, being pursued by mosquitoes, bared himself and let them suck out all the blood they wanted. They taught him a dance -- naturally, imitating mosquitoes. The gimmick was that these fellows had eagle-claw bracelets and after they did their dance four times, they ran through the camp “biting” people by scratching them with the claws. If a person resisted, they scratched him or her all the harder, but if a person just said, “Go ahead. Take what you need!” they only scratched a little. If someone really got mad and resisted, then the whole Mosquito Society would descend on that person and really scratch.
Kuko (Society of Doves) would hardly be associated with what we consider the symbolism of doves: peace and love. Instead, it was an organization invented by an old man named Change Camp, who organized all the young men and boys who had no status or importance in the tribe. Change Camp taught them if they stayed in a mob, everyone would have to obey them. If they were not obeyed, they played mean tricks. They shot arrow holes in the buffalo paunch water pouches when the women carried them from the stream and dumped on the ground the berries they had gathered. The powerful older societies who could have disciplined them just said it was best to ignore them -- they were too much trouble otherwise. No doubt if they got too bad, people would change camps! But it’s interesting that this group appeared about 1850 or so, when disease and horses had upset the old ways, so that family ties were loosened and chiefs were missing. They sound like ghetto gangs, created by the need to form some kind of powerful group to identify with, determined to make people pay attention to them.
Muto Ka-iks (Buffalo Society) was a women’s group and is the other extreme from the bad doves. They were the women of most importance and virtue and their ritual was one of the key religious ceremonies. Basically, they pretended to be cow buffalo and acted out going to water, grazing, chewing their cud, and being run over a cliff. Some descriptions include calving. They wore distinctive headdresses and revered the digging sticks with which they gathered food.
Knut-Some-Taix (Society of Mad Dogs) is the group sometimes called “Crazy Dogs” or “Warrior Dogs.” At one time it consisted of the most powerful chiefs and was very prestigious.
The Mutsaix (Society of the Brave Dogs) was started by Red Blanket, so powerful that the hill where he was put into a burial tree is still called “Red Blanket Hill.” His wife Generous Woman was also buried there and it is a sign of her importance that when she was very old and toothless, she was still cherished enough to have been taken along on a travois. Red Blanket invited only men he really respected into his society -- they were rule-makers and rule-keepers. If people didn’t do what was right, they would beat them, tear down their lodge and disperse their belongings, and even kill them. But they used this power for good rather than for their selfish amusement like those mosquitoes.
These groups were fluid and membership crossed through bands and maybe even over into other tribal groups. New ones would spring up and old ones would die out. When the last of the “Old Bulls,” the most powerful of the oldest men, finally died out on the reservation, then people knew the life of self-governance and travel on the prairie was truly gone.
The self-governance of the bands was organized around force of personality, the respect an individual had acquired by actual deeds whether in war or in the camp or while hunting. No one “took minutes” but people listened and remembered and repeated their narratives of who had come to importance, how and why so that they weren’t forgotten. There were no elections, but there were probably -- as there are now -- popularity contests. And as in all cultures, probably some people were too brave for their own good and others were too clever at insinuations and false tales. This is being human.
Today many modern societies are growing back. The Moose, Elks, Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions might not be as active in Browning, but the 4-H and Scouting movements are re-grouping. The churches are strong. War in the Middle East has meant a new generation of American Veterans to meet and tell tales at their club -- but with female veterans the stories will be different, not even considering the difference in ages between these young, tanned, technologically hip warriors in desert camo and their WWII veteran great-grandfathers and Korea or Vietnam grandfathers. So far they haven’t sponsored many dances, but they are present at every parade.
These are the myriad small connections that hold a society together until it can be called a “culture.”
The Sinopaix (Society of Kit Foxes) was known for giving dances, but this hasn’t happened for a long time. In fact, in most places on the prairie, kit foxes (a smaller version than the red fox) had completely died out until the last few years when they were restored on the reservation. In the old days, the Sinopaix would not hurt kit foxes, though they wore their skins, but today the skins are illegal to have and every human being is forbidden to kill the clever little creatures. Sinopaix dances weren’t war dances, but imitations of kit foxes. Maybe after the people have seen them enough and learned what they are like, the dances will return but without kit fox skins.
Tsin-Ksi-six (Society of Mosquitoes) was a pesky bunch that were supposed to have originated with a man who, being pursued by mosquitoes, bared himself and let them suck out all the blood they wanted. They taught him a dance -- naturally, imitating mosquitoes. The gimmick was that these fellows had eagle-claw bracelets and after they did their dance four times, they ran through the camp “biting” people by scratching them with the claws. If a person resisted, they scratched him or her all the harder, but if a person just said, “Go ahead. Take what you need!” they only scratched a little. If someone really got mad and resisted, then the whole Mosquito Society would descend on that person and really scratch.
Kuko (Society of Doves) would hardly be associated with what we consider the symbolism of doves: peace and love. Instead, it was an organization invented by an old man named Change Camp, who organized all the young men and boys who had no status or importance in the tribe. Change Camp taught them if they stayed in a mob, everyone would have to obey them. If they were not obeyed, they played mean tricks. They shot arrow holes in the buffalo paunch water pouches when the women carried them from the stream and dumped on the ground the berries they had gathered. The powerful older societies who could have disciplined them just said it was best to ignore them -- they were too much trouble otherwise. No doubt if they got too bad, people would change camps! But it’s interesting that this group appeared about 1850 or so, when disease and horses had upset the old ways, so that family ties were loosened and chiefs were missing. They sound like ghetto gangs, created by the need to form some kind of powerful group to identify with, determined to make people pay attention to them.
Muto Ka-iks (Buffalo Society) was a women’s group and is the other extreme from the bad doves. They were the women of most importance and virtue and their ritual was one of the key religious ceremonies. Basically, they pretended to be cow buffalo and acted out going to water, grazing, chewing their cud, and being run over a cliff. Some descriptions include calving. They wore distinctive headdresses and revered the digging sticks with which they gathered food.
Knut-Some-Taix (Society of Mad Dogs) is the group sometimes called “Crazy Dogs” or “Warrior Dogs.” At one time it consisted of the most powerful chiefs and was very prestigious.
The Mutsaix (Society of the Brave Dogs) was started by Red Blanket, so powerful that the hill where he was put into a burial tree is still called “Red Blanket Hill.” His wife Generous Woman was also buried there and it is a sign of her importance that when she was very old and toothless, she was still cherished enough to have been taken along on a travois. Red Blanket invited only men he really respected into his society -- they were rule-makers and rule-keepers. If people didn’t do what was right, they would beat them, tear down their lodge and disperse their belongings, and even kill them. But they used this power for good rather than for their selfish amusement like those mosquitoes.
These groups were fluid and membership crossed through bands and maybe even over into other tribal groups. New ones would spring up and old ones would die out. When the last of the “Old Bulls,” the most powerful of the oldest men, finally died out on the reservation, then people knew the life of self-governance and travel on the prairie was truly gone.
The self-governance of the bands was organized around force of personality, the respect an individual had acquired by actual deeds whether in war or in the camp or while hunting. No one “took minutes” but people listened and remembered and repeated their narratives of who had come to importance, how and why so that they weren’t forgotten. There were no elections, but there were probably -- as there are now -- popularity contests. And as in all cultures, probably some people were too brave for their own good and others were too clever at insinuations and false tales. This is being human.
Today many modern societies are growing back. The Moose, Elks, Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions might not be as active in Browning, but the 4-H and Scouting movements are re-grouping. The churches are strong. War in the Middle East has meant a new generation of American Veterans to meet and tell tales at their club -- but with female veterans the stories will be different, not even considering the difference in ages between these young, tanned, technologically hip warriors in desert camo and their WWII veteran great-grandfathers and Korea or Vietnam grandfathers. So far they haven’t sponsored many dances, but they are present at every parade.
These are the myriad small connections that hold a society together until it can be called a “culture.”
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