Plenty of people can tell you that “Metis” means mixed. Also, “mitchif” (Archaic French), “mestizo” (Spanish) and “creole” (Louisiana French). I even knew a woman whose husband always told her she was “moskeeto” (husband-talk) because he knew she was mestizo but never got the word right. Once the Europeans got into their ships and began invading everyone else, there were plenty of mixed people who were really “white-and -”
Close by the Blackft hunting grounds, on the Canadian side, there were enough mixed people that they began to cohere into their own nation. Most people think of them as French/Cree but they might also be other combinations of Euro and tribe. Still, the “marks” of them, the fiddle playing and sashes and creaky tumbrils they used for carts, were mostly French. The wild, wonderful and profane Gabriel Dupree, who features as the hero of Peter Bowen’s mystery tales, is Metis. In fact, “Stay Away Joe” is more Metis than Indian. Charlie Russell’s sash is Metis.
The formal history book to read is called “Strange Empire: A Narrative of the Northwest” by Joseph Kinsey Howard. (Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. (First copyright 1952. ISBN 0-87351-298-7) Howard was himself a descendent of Metis and, as a journalist and writer, he made this book a work of his heart. As well, he had a cabin in one of the deep valleys along the east front of the Rockies where he could just about live their life, not so far from the cemetary of early Metis refugees where forty ancestors lie at rest.
(Partly because of Howard, a kind of writers’ colony developed there which included A.B. Guthrie, Mildred Walker, and Walker’s daughter Ripley Schemm who later married Richard Hugo.)
Why were they refugees? Because the forces of economics, human relationships, and governmental vacuum (the same neglect of the territory labeled “Assiniboia” that allowed the whiskey trade) thrust them together in early southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba with enough in common to create a nation of people in sympathy, who wished to live their own way. Though the men tended to be white and the women tended to be Indian, after a generation or two the community as a whole was soon inextricably melded into new generations who combined the best of both worlds. In 1800 there were 30,000 Metis living on the prairie. By the second Riel Rebellion in 1885 (one was put down, then regathered.) there was a settlement of twenty-five cabins sheltering a hundred people up the South Fork of the Teton Canyon, still nearly inaccessible today.
When Canada realized what had happened, and since the mounties were already there, they set about dismantling this new Red River nation that threatened to challenge their authority. But the Red River people persisted with such dedication, mostly because of the visionary leadership of Louis Riel, that only a group hanging of rebels would shut down the Rebellion. And so it came to pass. Riel, who seems to been visionary to the point of madness (possibly bipolar disorder or maybe schizophrenia) finally did not try to escape. He is one of those extraordinary figures, like Crazy Horse, who served as the focus for a movement that was both heartfelt and realistic, but ultimately not successful.
Howard points out that in 1870, the time of the first rebellion, the US had its eye on Western Canada but Canada itself was intending to become a continental nation clear to the Pacific. If the Red River Community had won the right to be its own country, it could have united Cree and Blackfeet and created a three-part coalition of enormous power which would have changed history, especially if they worked through the Fenian movement to ally with Ireland.
Many Metis fled to the territory and reservations of Montana and their names are still in the phone book: “saint” this and “mac” that and names like Augare, Baudry, Billedeaux, Cadotte, DeBoo and DeRouche... so on through the phone book, the half-French melded with the Blackfeet. Louis Riel, an educated man, taught at the Sun River mission school for a year or so. St. Mary’s valley, which opens north into Alberta, was one place Metis settled. At Heart Butte on major occasions, jigging to the music of fiddles will alternate with pow-wow style Indian dancing.
In Choteau there is an old log Metis cabin built in 1902. It is sixteen feet by twenty-four feet with a half-story loft and a lean-to for the kitchen. The corners are dove-tailed. Nine children were raised there, the current baby sleeping in a hammock over the parental bed. I love visiting it since it is furnished as it would have been a hundred years ago, so it is easy to imagine oneself back in those days. I could move in tomorrow and live there happily -- if the tourists weren’t constantly coming through!
The introduction to my 1994 paperback of “Strange Empire” was written by Nicholas C.P. Vrooman, director of the Institute for Metis Studies at the College of Great Falls in Montana. Other places to look for materials might be Pemmican Publications in Winnipeg, the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Metis Studies and Applied Research in Regina, the Turtle Mountain Tribal College in Belcourt, or the Metis Cultural Recovery Trust based in Choteau which is the group that restored that cabin.
Maybe it’s not surprising that a tightly woven group, ethnically based and often victims of prejudice from outsiders (Metis were the original half-breeds), should try to maintain their existence. Two hundred years later, the Metis community still exists. In fact, the Little Shell Band of Indians (which is largely Metis) is still petitioning for legal status as a tribe.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
"Viet Cong at Wounded Knee" by Woody Kipp
“Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist” by Woody Kipp (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 68588-0255. Copyright 2004. ISBN 0-8032-2760-4) is another in the American Indian Lives series. Woody grew up a little farther along the High Line, west of Sid Larson, in Cut Bank, an oil town like Shelby. Maybe the most salient difference between the two is that Sid went to law school and Woody went to journalism school. Sid writes cool; Woody writes hot. Of course, they’re different tribes -- their families had different styles -- and yet they both ended up college professors. Both were avid readers as kids and as adults.
The title of Woody’s autobiography is clear: that he became a Marine, was proud of it, then gradually “went native” as his commanding officer said, and ended up radicalized with tracer bullets zipping over his head at Wounded Knee, that iconic example of American insurgency. He sticks close to his theme, like a man with a hand on a rope during a blinding blizzard.
When I asked someone about Woody, they said, "Well... I don't know what to tell you, but there sure are a lot of women mad at him." Clearly, reading the dance card presented here, he hasn't forgotten many or maybe ANY of them, including a woman in Vietnam and his Blackfeet daughters who are babies in this book. Neither has he forgotten what he was drinking during each incident, nor the make and year of his rez bomb at the time.
Woody is six years younger than me, and if he hadn't gone to high school in Cut Bank instead of Browning, I'd have been his English teacher. Most of the other Blackfeet "Viet Cong" his age were in my classes. Because of being the informal bailiff when drunks were tried the “morning after” by Bob Scriver, who was City Magistrate and JP in the Fifties and Sixties in Browning, I knew most of the older drinkers he mentions and I knew both Louis Plenty Treaty and Joe Eagle Child because of sitting in their Thunder Pipe Bundle Circle. Though I'm a Napi-yah-kee -- white woman -- and pretty much a non-drinker, I agree with his descriptions of that time. I knew those Browning bars from the outside. They're gone now. Alcohol is easy compared to meth. That "’Nam" and empowerment generation was easy compared to their children and grandchildren.
All that out of the way, this book is free of theory and lecturing, quite simple and straightforward, one story after another, the way information is transmitted in the old Blackfeet world. Sure ‘nuff, it begins with his birth and ends with Wounded Knee II, but without chest-pounding or even TOO much rolling around in the pathos and deprivation of it all -- which was quite real. The stories I liked best, of course, were about being out on the ranch with his older brother. The stories that Woody tells are on the lean side, but if you know the times and the characters, they are pretty eloquent. They mark a clear set of stepping stones for a baby born to a Blackfeet woman named "Shanghai Monroe" but raised by Joe and Isabell Kipp, then in their fifties, in the white corner of Glacier County. It's pretty clear how he ended up being shot at by artillery he had been taught to operate in Vietnam. What's less clear is why he went on back to Missoula to finish up college. But that's the next book maybe.
The great usefulness of this book, I think, is that it is clear, short, and accessible enough for anyone to read. No need to be a fancy literati. Maybe there's a little too much about booze and women (after a while it sounds like bragging) but that would keep those readers interested. It has no tricky humor like Sherman Alexie nor is there anything kinky. Strangely, there's a kind of "Kipp-ness" to it. Since the second-to-the-original Kipp adopted a lot of survivors of Heavy Runner's band after the Baker Massacre, a lot of Kipps are really Heavy Runners. What everyone forgets is that Heavy Runner was a PEACE chief. It was Mountain Chief who was brilliantly resistant. Heavy Runner was thoughtful and conciliatory. It's a kind of sweetness. Which got him killed.
But part of Kipp-ness is getting out there and participating in whatever comes along. This is different from the writing done by Jim Welch, who grew up on a different reservation anyway (Fort Belknap near Havre). Welch, like Kipp, learned to write in Missoula, but he learned as an academic and a poet. Woody learned as a journalist though he did take a course from Richard Hugo. (Sid Larson began his college years at Eastern in Billings -- very different from hippie Missoula.)
The dust jacket does one of my favorite tricks -- Sherman Alexie did it earlier. On the front is Woody in his dance costume with his dance roach and his face painted. On the back cover is Woody in a three piece suit, braids and spectacles. What you learn from reading the book is that when he's in costume, without his glasses, he can't see beyond his formerly broken nose. In his suit, with his glasses, he can see you very well and he's smiling.
Sid claims that when he was born, his ears were pierced, a sign of having been an old wise person in a former life. Woody’s claim is that the family got snowed in and ran out of canned evaporated milk, so for six days he was fed chewed-up bull elk meat and did well on it.
When I last saw Woody, this just-past Christmas Day, he had grown a rather remarkable Yosemite Sam mustache and was in love again. He says he’ll finish the second book soon, a book that is really a continuation of the first book (which was about war) but leads into the spiritual growth that redeems the first book (peace). I look forward to it.
The title of Woody’s autobiography is clear: that he became a Marine, was proud of it, then gradually “went native” as his commanding officer said, and ended up radicalized with tracer bullets zipping over his head at Wounded Knee, that iconic example of American insurgency. He sticks close to his theme, like a man with a hand on a rope during a blinding blizzard.
When I asked someone about Woody, they said, "Well... I don't know what to tell you, but there sure are a lot of women mad at him." Clearly, reading the dance card presented here, he hasn't forgotten many or maybe ANY of them, including a woman in Vietnam and his Blackfeet daughters who are babies in this book. Neither has he forgotten what he was drinking during each incident, nor the make and year of his rez bomb at the time.
Woody is six years younger than me, and if he hadn't gone to high school in Cut Bank instead of Browning, I'd have been his English teacher. Most of the other Blackfeet "Viet Cong" his age were in my classes. Because of being the informal bailiff when drunks were tried the “morning after” by Bob Scriver, who was City Magistrate and JP in the Fifties and Sixties in Browning, I knew most of the older drinkers he mentions and I knew both Louis Plenty Treaty and Joe Eagle Child because of sitting in their Thunder Pipe Bundle Circle. Though I'm a Napi-yah-kee -- white woman -- and pretty much a non-drinker, I agree with his descriptions of that time. I knew those Browning bars from the outside. They're gone now. Alcohol is easy compared to meth. That "’Nam" and empowerment generation was easy compared to their children and grandchildren.
All that out of the way, this book is free of theory and lecturing, quite simple and straightforward, one story after another, the way information is transmitted in the old Blackfeet world. Sure ‘nuff, it begins with his birth and ends with Wounded Knee II, but without chest-pounding or even TOO much rolling around in the pathos and deprivation of it all -- which was quite real. The stories I liked best, of course, were about being out on the ranch with his older brother. The stories that Woody tells are on the lean side, but if you know the times and the characters, they are pretty eloquent. They mark a clear set of stepping stones for a baby born to a Blackfeet woman named "Shanghai Monroe" but raised by Joe and Isabell Kipp, then in their fifties, in the white corner of Glacier County. It's pretty clear how he ended up being shot at by artillery he had been taught to operate in Vietnam. What's less clear is why he went on back to Missoula to finish up college. But that's the next book maybe.
The great usefulness of this book, I think, is that it is clear, short, and accessible enough for anyone to read. No need to be a fancy literati. Maybe there's a little too much about booze and women (after a while it sounds like bragging) but that would keep those readers interested. It has no tricky humor like Sherman Alexie nor is there anything kinky. Strangely, there's a kind of "Kipp-ness" to it. Since the second-to-the-original Kipp adopted a lot of survivors of Heavy Runner's band after the Baker Massacre, a lot of Kipps are really Heavy Runners. What everyone forgets is that Heavy Runner was a PEACE chief. It was Mountain Chief who was brilliantly resistant. Heavy Runner was thoughtful and conciliatory. It's a kind of sweetness. Which got him killed.
But part of Kipp-ness is getting out there and participating in whatever comes along. This is different from the writing done by Jim Welch, who grew up on a different reservation anyway (Fort Belknap near Havre). Welch, like Kipp, learned to write in Missoula, but he learned as an academic and a poet. Woody learned as a journalist though he did take a course from Richard Hugo. (Sid Larson began his college years at Eastern in Billings -- very different from hippie Missoula.)
The dust jacket does one of my favorite tricks -- Sherman Alexie did it earlier. On the front is Woody in his dance costume with his dance roach and his face painted. On the back cover is Woody in a three piece suit, braids and spectacles. What you learn from reading the book is that when he's in costume, without his glasses, he can't see beyond his formerly broken nose. In his suit, with his glasses, he can see you very well and he's smiling.
Sid claims that when he was born, his ears were pierced, a sign of having been an old wise person in a former life. Woody’s claim is that the family got snowed in and ran out of canned evaporated milk, so for six days he was fed chewed-up bull elk meat and did well on it.
When I last saw Woody, this just-past Christmas Day, he had grown a rather remarkable Yosemite Sam mustache and was in love again. He says he’ll finish the second book soon, a book that is really a continuation of the first book (which was about war) but leads into the spiritual growth that redeems the first book (peace). I look forward to it.
Monday, June 13, 2005
"Catch Colt" by Sidner J. Larson
When I was still living in Portland, OR, in the Nineties and yearning to be back in Montana, I began to subscribe to “list servs” about Native American Literature, which is why I was aware of a big conference about “Nat Lit” in Eugene, OR, at the U of O.
“Nat Lit” is a whole spectrum of kinds of writing, not just from poetry to fiction to non-fiction, but from simple narrative to historical reconstruction to autobiography to post-modern criticism, about which I knew nothing. In fact, I usually can barely follow the latter and when it fades over into Native American studies, I am sometimes alarmed by the ferocity of the rhetoric. Most people think of Indian fiction as jolly stories like “Stay Away, Joe.” They remember the jokes, and let the rest go. This cannot happen with NA Studies which is usually insurgecy-based.
Driving down to the Eugene campus daily during the conference introduced me to the actual authors, which was entirely different than reading their books. I’d think about them all the way home up the freeway in the dark and still not get it figured out. Sid Larson, the organizer, seemed to revel in the excitement, the rivalries, the insights and goofiness. He bounded around in very white tennis shoes, remembering everyone’s name, joking, pulling people over to sit by him during the few times he rested. He was so irresistible that this shy person (me) was motivated to keep in touch over the ten years or more since. Now that I’m back on the High-Line I can even share gossip.
His cousin, Jimmie Welch, was and is a famous writer, especially in France where they bring the highest theories to bear on his strong painful stories. Jimmie’s father, also Jimmie, was Bob Scriver’s best friend when they were kids, and I guess I thought that meant I was entitled to be a friend, though the listserv people thought I was being far too familiar to say “Jimmie.” Neither Jimmie nor Sid objected.
The name of Sid’s autobiography is “Catch Colt,” a humorous slang term for a baby born to an unmarried woman. Not that he lacked for family. He has cousins, aunts, uncles, everywhere along the High-Line of Montana. Most of all, he belonged to the Human Family and knew how to hustle. He went to school, bought a bar and made a success of it, went to the University of Nebraska Law School but was crippled in his practice since he had a conscience and stood up for Indians, and finally landed as a professor of English and Native American Literature and Studies. At Shelby High his senior year English teacher, Terry Radcliffe, probably had something to do with this. Radcliffe also taught Sid what he calls “the Zen of running” which is probably why Sid is still sane.
Right now he is in Iowa and feeling the “long withdrawing roar” of universities running out of money and throwing overboard all the minority studies and special humanities programs they so recently were proud to invent. What now? Will Indian professors retreat to the tribal colleges? Will they move into government jobs? I predict unforeseen consequences.
”Catch Colt” would be an inspiration to any High Line kid -- any color -- whose family has struggled with the patchy economics and the over-extended family, but I worry a little that he makes the drinking seem too attractive. (I’m being sarcastic -- he never misses a chance to show how defeating and stupid it is.) Exactly ten years have passed since this book was published and a lot more living has flown by. He speaks of writing a new revised version, now that many folks have “gone on ahead” to wait for the rest of us. I hope like heck he does it. For one thing he breaks up stereotypes right and left, cheerfully trampling over romantic notions and then handing you a little ball of fat that has a curled up bit of bone in it which, when the fat has melted in your stomach, will spring out and pierce you.
Sid and Jimmie were related through their mothers, who both belonged to Fort Belknap Gros Ventre people. Though Welch is usually represented as Blackfeet, he spent very little time in Browning. Sid is writing a “high theory” book about Jimmie’s writing. I hope I’ll be able to read it with understanding, but I trust that a lawyer’s logic and a barkeep’s story-telling will probably come together into something pretty special. Athlete’s endurance and raunchy stories, cowboy men and Indian women, ceremonial protocol and a vision quest fortified by a lot of book-reading -- it’s a mix that makes “Stay Away, Joe” look, well, pale. He’s not the only Indian to be redeemed by tough women, old friends, and science-fiction novels, but he’s certainly one of the most charming. HIs spirit is large and he's not close to done yet.
“Catch Colt,” by Sidner J. Larson. (University of Nebraska Press, American Indian Lives Series; 1995. ISBN 0-8032-2908-9)
“Sacagawea’s Child: the Life and Times of Jean-Baptiste (Pomp) Charbonneau” by Susan M. Colby
Those who were intrigued by the little snippet about Pomp in the essay about Holterman, will be happy to hear of the publication of this book by The Arthur H. Clark Co. (PO Box 14707, Spokane, WA 99214-0707. 800-842-9286 Email: info@ahclark.com. Website at www.ahclark.com) The flyer includes the painting that Holterman described, “Camp of the Kansas Indians at the Blue River, on the 3rd July 1823. Chiefs Wakan-zie and Sa-ba-no-sche, by Duke Paul of Wurttemberg.” Dr. Susan Colby (Ph.D. in anthro from UCLA) is a distant cousin of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.
“Nat Lit” is a whole spectrum of kinds of writing, not just from poetry to fiction to non-fiction, but from simple narrative to historical reconstruction to autobiography to post-modern criticism, about which I knew nothing. In fact, I usually can barely follow the latter and when it fades over into Native American studies, I am sometimes alarmed by the ferocity of the rhetoric. Most people think of Indian fiction as jolly stories like “Stay Away, Joe.” They remember the jokes, and let the rest go. This cannot happen with NA Studies which is usually insurgecy-based.
Driving down to the Eugene campus daily during the conference introduced me to the actual authors, which was entirely different than reading their books. I’d think about them all the way home up the freeway in the dark and still not get it figured out. Sid Larson, the organizer, seemed to revel in the excitement, the rivalries, the insights and goofiness. He bounded around in very white tennis shoes, remembering everyone’s name, joking, pulling people over to sit by him during the few times he rested. He was so irresistible that this shy person (me) was motivated to keep in touch over the ten years or more since. Now that I’m back on the High-Line I can even share gossip.
His cousin, Jimmie Welch, was and is a famous writer, especially in France where they bring the highest theories to bear on his strong painful stories. Jimmie’s father, also Jimmie, was Bob Scriver’s best friend when they were kids, and I guess I thought that meant I was entitled to be a friend, though the listserv people thought I was being far too familiar to say “Jimmie.” Neither Jimmie nor Sid objected.
The name of Sid’s autobiography is “Catch Colt,” a humorous slang term for a baby born to an unmarried woman. Not that he lacked for family. He has cousins, aunts, uncles, everywhere along the High-Line of Montana. Most of all, he belonged to the Human Family and knew how to hustle. He went to school, bought a bar and made a success of it, went to the University of Nebraska Law School but was crippled in his practice since he had a conscience and stood up for Indians, and finally landed as a professor of English and Native American Literature and Studies. At Shelby High his senior year English teacher, Terry Radcliffe, probably had something to do with this. Radcliffe also taught Sid what he calls “the Zen of running” which is probably why Sid is still sane.
Right now he is in Iowa and feeling the “long withdrawing roar” of universities running out of money and throwing overboard all the minority studies and special humanities programs they so recently were proud to invent. What now? Will Indian professors retreat to the tribal colleges? Will they move into government jobs? I predict unforeseen consequences.
”Catch Colt” would be an inspiration to any High Line kid -- any color -- whose family has struggled with the patchy economics and the over-extended family, but I worry a little that he makes the drinking seem too attractive. (I’m being sarcastic -- he never misses a chance to show how defeating and stupid it is.) Exactly ten years have passed since this book was published and a lot more living has flown by. He speaks of writing a new revised version, now that many folks have “gone on ahead” to wait for the rest of us. I hope like heck he does it. For one thing he breaks up stereotypes right and left, cheerfully trampling over romantic notions and then handing you a little ball of fat that has a curled up bit of bone in it which, when the fat has melted in your stomach, will spring out and pierce you.
Sid and Jimmie were related through their mothers, who both belonged to Fort Belknap Gros Ventre people. Though Welch is usually represented as Blackfeet, he spent very little time in Browning. Sid is writing a “high theory” book about Jimmie’s writing. I hope I’ll be able to read it with understanding, but I trust that a lawyer’s logic and a barkeep’s story-telling will probably come together into something pretty special. Athlete’s endurance and raunchy stories, cowboy men and Indian women, ceremonial protocol and a vision quest fortified by a lot of book-reading -- it’s a mix that makes “Stay Away, Joe” look, well, pale. He’s not the only Indian to be redeemed by tough women, old friends, and science-fiction novels, but he’s certainly one of the most charming. HIs spirit is large and he's not close to done yet.
“Catch Colt,” by Sidner J. Larson. (University of Nebraska Press, American Indian Lives Series; 1995. ISBN 0-8032-2908-9)
“Sacagawea’s Child: the Life and Times of Jean-Baptiste (Pomp) Charbonneau” by Susan M. Colby
Those who were intrigued by the little snippet about Pomp in the essay about Holterman, will be happy to hear of the publication of this book by The Arthur H. Clark Co. (PO Box 14707, Spokane, WA 99214-0707. 800-842-9286 Email: info@ahclark.com. Website at www.ahclark.com) The flyer includes the painting that Holterman described, “Camp of the Kansas Indians at the Blue River, on the 3rd July 1823. Chiefs Wakan-zie and Sa-ba-no-sche, by Duke Paul of Wurttemberg.” Dr. Susan Colby (Ph.D. in anthro from UCLA) is a distant cousin of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Jack Holterman
Some people sneer at “local” and “regional” writers or writing. What they really mean is that the writing is not dominated by New York. It's “out there in the provinces.” In other words, of no matter to such aristocrats as we in the center of the world. But I relish the idiosyncratic and often authoritative -- to say nothing of relevant -- writing of locals. The great irony is that they are often world citizens. Exhibit A: Jack Holterman, who came to Browning to teach in the one-room reservation schools after WWII and who now lives in West Glacier in summer and New Zealand in winter.
He has been a diligent, if sometimes contentious, member of the Glacier Natural History Association and I don’t know where to buy his books except at their shop in the old Great Northern depot in West Glacier, MT (59936). On this last foray over the Rockies I willingly went into debt to acquire two new reference works. One is a much-hoped-for re-issue of “Place Names of the Glacier National Park” -- now entitled “Let the Mountains Sing: Place Names of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park,” it is “expanded, corrected and updated” and sports a glamorous snowy aerial portrait of Glacier Park. I’ve just about worn out my old copy, which was smaller and plainer but vitally helpful. One small paragraph of explanation could illumine a whole cultural or historical point of view.
The other book is called ‘Who Was Who in Glacier Land” and offers brief biographies of characters who appear again and again in the history of the West. Holterman includes Canadians, Americans, Spanish, French and many tribes of Indians, not hesitating to put in an opinion now and then -- always on the side of the raised consciousness -- and not leaving out any of the alternative versions of many stories. For instance, there are two accounts of Sacajawea’s life after she left the L&C expedition and, likewise, more than two accounts of her son’s life. The trouble is partly that people felt free to call themselves whatever name fit the situation and partly that the facts can only be inferred from financial records and personal letters, often so idiosyncratically spelled as to be impenetrable even to “sounding out.”
Holterman’s story of Pomp begins with a painting by Baldwin Mollhausen, now hanging in an old hall in Stuttgart, showing an immense forest with a clearing in which lounge naked Indian young men and Prince Wilhelm of Wurttembert, son of Duke Eugene. One of the Indians is Pomp AKA Jean Baptiste, AKA Pampi and so on. From this we realize that this young man had connections, though we don’t learn much about his wardrobe.
By contrast, the story of Helen Clarke begins with a photo of her in an elaborate satin Victorian gown with high band collar and huge puffed sleeves. She is the daughter of Malcolm Clarke, victim of the murder which provided the excuse for the so-called Baker Massacre. Educated at ladies’ academies in the cities of the Midwest, she was for a while an actress in Europe who traveled with Sarah Bernhardt, receiving accolades especially for her unusual deep voice.
Then she became a school teacher and the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Much admired and trusted, she nevertheless was asked to participate in the allotment of land that was the Dawes Act, specifically BECAUSE she was trusted. She was also instrumental in bringing the Sherburne family to the Blackfeet Reservation. Her own land allotment, next to Horace’s in East Glacier, was the location of the Big Hotel and in summer she managed the equivalent of a salon, entertaining many famous artists. She is buried in the family cemetary near the Big Hotel and her headstone is the tallest and most Victorian of all.
I count 74 of these absorbing tales, many of them with strands that wind around the planet. For instance, Alexander Culbertson --the powerful fur trader who was married to Natawista -- had a brother who participated in an amazing journey up the Yangtze River of China at a time when China was hardly penetrated by whites. The 19th century was the original paradigm for Star Trek with intrepid assortments of hardy characters setting out in all directions. Those who survived had tales to tell and few of the ones with connections to the Blackfeet or Glacier Park have escaped Jack Holterman.
Jack’s cabin in St. Mary was next to ours, so we always knew him or so it seemed to me, and yet he has managed to be rather elusive. A linguist, he was an early scholar of the Blackfeet language and worked out many of the materials now used by the Piegan Institute. An early Californian, born in San Francisco in 1915, he has not imported that life but has remained open to other ways. When I pressed him for adventures while teaching in the one-room school houses, he offered, “Well, once we had a fire.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”
“The children and I put the fire out.” No fuss. Do what is necessary.
Holterman is always complaining that, for instance, “one of my best pieces has been snatched off my hands and reprinted by the American Museum of Natural History.” I don’t doubt it. This local material is as rich as beaver pelts, so naturally those who scorn the regional and local must still occasionally stage a raid for new stories. How are they going to get them without stealing them from those who ARE local and regional?
But I have to say that for a ninety-year-old trapper, a library is a better locale than a beaver dam. He says, “I love cats, wolves, and elephants cordially, humans theologically, and computers not at all.” Maybe he’ll feel better about computers when he knows that by “blogging” they can leap over Manhattan publishers.
He has been a diligent, if sometimes contentious, member of the Glacier Natural History Association and I don’t know where to buy his books except at their shop in the old Great Northern depot in West Glacier, MT (59936). On this last foray over the Rockies I willingly went into debt to acquire two new reference works. One is a much-hoped-for re-issue of “Place Names of the Glacier National Park” -- now entitled “Let the Mountains Sing: Place Names of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park,” it is “expanded, corrected and updated” and sports a glamorous snowy aerial portrait of Glacier Park. I’ve just about worn out my old copy, which was smaller and plainer but vitally helpful. One small paragraph of explanation could illumine a whole cultural or historical point of view.
The other book is called ‘Who Was Who in Glacier Land” and offers brief biographies of characters who appear again and again in the history of the West. Holterman includes Canadians, Americans, Spanish, French and many tribes of Indians, not hesitating to put in an opinion now and then -- always on the side of the raised consciousness -- and not leaving out any of the alternative versions of many stories. For instance, there are two accounts of Sacajawea’s life after she left the L&C expedition and, likewise, more than two accounts of her son’s life. The trouble is partly that people felt free to call themselves whatever name fit the situation and partly that the facts can only be inferred from financial records and personal letters, often so idiosyncratically spelled as to be impenetrable even to “sounding out.”
Holterman’s story of Pomp begins with a painting by Baldwin Mollhausen, now hanging in an old hall in Stuttgart, showing an immense forest with a clearing in which lounge naked Indian young men and Prince Wilhelm of Wurttembert, son of Duke Eugene. One of the Indians is Pomp AKA Jean Baptiste, AKA Pampi and so on. From this we realize that this young man had connections, though we don’t learn much about his wardrobe.
By contrast, the story of Helen Clarke begins with a photo of her in an elaborate satin Victorian gown with high band collar and huge puffed sleeves. She is the daughter of Malcolm Clarke, victim of the murder which provided the excuse for the so-called Baker Massacre. Educated at ladies’ academies in the cities of the Midwest, she was for a while an actress in Europe who traveled with Sarah Bernhardt, receiving accolades especially for her unusual deep voice.
Then she became a school teacher and the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Much admired and trusted, she nevertheless was asked to participate in the allotment of land that was the Dawes Act, specifically BECAUSE she was trusted. She was also instrumental in bringing the Sherburne family to the Blackfeet Reservation. Her own land allotment, next to Horace’s in East Glacier, was the location of the Big Hotel and in summer she managed the equivalent of a salon, entertaining many famous artists. She is buried in the family cemetary near the Big Hotel and her headstone is the tallest and most Victorian of all.
I count 74 of these absorbing tales, many of them with strands that wind around the planet. For instance, Alexander Culbertson --the powerful fur trader who was married to Natawista -- had a brother who participated in an amazing journey up the Yangtze River of China at a time when China was hardly penetrated by whites. The 19th century was the original paradigm for Star Trek with intrepid assortments of hardy characters setting out in all directions. Those who survived had tales to tell and few of the ones with connections to the Blackfeet or Glacier Park have escaped Jack Holterman.
Jack’s cabin in St. Mary was next to ours, so we always knew him or so it seemed to me, and yet he has managed to be rather elusive. A linguist, he was an early scholar of the Blackfeet language and worked out many of the materials now used by the Piegan Institute. An early Californian, born in San Francisco in 1915, he has not imported that life but has remained open to other ways. When I pressed him for adventures while teaching in the one-room school houses, he offered, “Well, once we had a fire.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”
“The children and I put the fire out.” No fuss. Do what is necessary.
Holterman is always complaining that, for instance, “one of my best pieces has been snatched off my hands and reprinted by the American Museum of Natural History.” I don’t doubt it. This local material is as rich as beaver pelts, so naturally those who scorn the regional and local must still occasionally stage a raid for new stories. How are they going to get them without stealing them from those who ARE local and regional?
But I have to say that for a ninety-year-old trapper, a library is a better locale than a beaver dam. He says, “I love cats, wolves, and elephants cordially, humans theologically, and computers not at all.” Maybe he’ll feel better about computers when he knows that by “blogging” they can leap over Manhattan publishers.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Winold Reiss
On Friday, June 10, 2005, a small art show in the Hockaday Art Museum of Kalispell, Montana, exhibited many paintings by Winold Reiss. (Pronounced VEE-nold Rice.) Several worlds were overlapping here.
Reiss was the painter whose portraits of Blackfeet became as associated with the Great Northern Railway as their trademark mountain goat silhouette on the boxcars. He and his older brother both emigrated from Germany between World Wars because they were pacifists. The older brother went to Lapland and Sweden, but Winold chose America because he so loved American Indians and assumed he would step off the boat onto streets stalked by (ironically) warriors. But he learned that he would have to continue on to Montana. In a few years he boarded a train to do just that.
So, the overlaps: a finely educated New York City artist and his family; the Great Northern Railway and its sponsored destination, Glacier National Park; and the Blackfeet tribe, located on both sides of the Canadian border. The Hockaday Art Museum is in the old Carnegie library, now gracefully converted. The event of the show, which will continue all summer, was introduced by an inspired Power Point presentation by Scott Tanner, Vice-President of the Great Northern Historical Society. (After giving us the facts, Scott let us look at one of the hundreds of brilliant, warm portraits after another, while playing a soundtrack of Jack Gladstone, popular Blackfeet musician.)
In attendance were the family of Reiss: Winold is gone and so is his son, Tjark (who was the same age as Bob Scriver, born in 1914.) But Tjark’s second wife, Renate, her son by her previous marriage, and Tjark’s son by his earlier marriage were present. They continue to live in the family home in rural New York, Tjark’s son in the house and Renate in the barn, which has undergone one of those marvelous remodels. (Henry Field, Renate’s son, is a contractor in Santa Fe.) Anyway, she needs the space as she manages Tjark’s estate, which includes Winold’s estate. A small, lively, pretty, white-haired woman, Renate looks as though she could hike across Glacier Park in a day.
Renate has organized a website (http://winold-reiss.org) which for the first time summarizes the basics of Winold’s extraordinary life. An appreciation by Ned Jacob sketches the artistic accomplishments, which include mosaics in railway stations, Art Deco murals in Manhattan restaurants, graphic design, portraits of Harlem blacks with the same intensity as the Blackfeet portraits, and many other contexts. He was a man who threw out his arms to the world and then showed us what he saw.
No huge crowd of sequined art buyers were present -- very few of Reiss’ paintings are on the market and those that are have healthy price tags, though one can buy a little portfolio of the Great Northern portraits for a few dollars. This art is entirely outside the familiar stampede of Charlie Russell clones. Few would have the skill to imitate this style, though Russell knew these people and also portrayed them.
The archetypal Reiss story is about him arriving on the train in Browning in the midst of a blizzard. The hotel was full up, and he had to beg and insist to be allowed space in a bed already occupied by a cowboy. He never met the man, who left before Reiss awoke, but no doubt both were grateful for human warmth.
Reiss bounded out to the street where he met a giant Indian, a genuine old-time, buffalo-culture man with long hair and hooded eyes. Feeling that he knew all about such folks and just what proper etiquette might be, he slapped the man on the back and said, “How!” The Indian was astounded. Too surprised to take offense. They were friends from then on and Reiss portrayed him many times.
The Great Northern was intent on building a customer base around the major national parks and, though the fabulous alpine scenery of Glacier was really the goal, they discovered that the Blackfeet from whom the mountains had been bought were better advertising material on their calendars. At the time the elders were accustomed to dressing up in parade duds and meeting the trains bringing tourists. They put up their lodges on the lawn in front of the huge log structure and sang and danced. In return they received a bit of pay, the right to sell their crafts, and whatever food was left in the kitchen after everyone else had eaten.
The great-great-grandchildren of these dignified persons are not pleased by what looks to them like disrespect, but the Indians there at the time were happy to be eating. In those years some folks died of starvation, both reservation old-timers and High-Line dry-land farmers, also brought by the railroad to homestead.
Reiss started a summer art school in the St. Marys chalet, a complex of log buildings created by Great Northern, and that in itself became a tourist attraction. Reiss was always careful to include some young Blackfeet artists. (He invited Bob Scriver, whose mother wouldn’t let him attend because she considered them a Bohemian and reckless bunch -- no doubt they were!) Among the young men who became noted artists were Gerald Tailfeathers, Victor Pepion, and Albert Racine. (There were also many white women, for instance, Elizabeth Lochrie.)
I was pleased that Shirlee Crowshoe and her husband Darrell attended the lecture and show. Shirlee is one of the teachers at the Piegan Institute Blackfeet Language School (she is a Blackfeet speaker) and a museum consultant. She’s always had an interest in Reiss and has accumulated many prints to hang in the school. We talked about what an effective counter-force Reiss’ work is in a world that can tell Indians they are dirty losers. These paintings thrill with nobility and humor.
For several years the Great Northern sent Christmas cards featuring Winold Reiss portraits of Blackfeet babies in cradle boards who are supposed to be saying, “Come to Glacier Park -- I did!” If the Bush administration eliminates Amtrak, you won’t be able to make the trip by train. All things pass, except maybe the inspiration of really fine art.
Reiss was the painter whose portraits of Blackfeet became as associated with the Great Northern Railway as their trademark mountain goat silhouette on the boxcars. He and his older brother both emigrated from Germany between World Wars because they were pacifists. The older brother went to Lapland and Sweden, but Winold chose America because he so loved American Indians and assumed he would step off the boat onto streets stalked by (ironically) warriors. But he learned that he would have to continue on to Montana. In a few years he boarded a train to do just that.
So, the overlaps: a finely educated New York City artist and his family; the Great Northern Railway and its sponsored destination, Glacier National Park; and the Blackfeet tribe, located on both sides of the Canadian border. The Hockaday Art Museum is in the old Carnegie library, now gracefully converted. The event of the show, which will continue all summer, was introduced by an inspired Power Point presentation by Scott Tanner, Vice-President of the Great Northern Historical Society. (After giving us the facts, Scott let us look at one of the hundreds of brilliant, warm portraits after another, while playing a soundtrack of Jack Gladstone, popular Blackfeet musician.)
In attendance were the family of Reiss: Winold is gone and so is his son, Tjark (who was the same age as Bob Scriver, born in 1914.) But Tjark’s second wife, Renate, her son by her previous marriage, and Tjark’s son by his earlier marriage were present. They continue to live in the family home in rural New York, Tjark’s son in the house and Renate in the barn, which has undergone one of those marvelous remodels. (Henry Field, Renate’s son, is a contractor in Santa Fe.) Anyway, she needs the space as she manages Tjark’s estate, which includes Winold’s estate. A small, lively, pretty, white-haired woman, Renate looks as though she could hike across Glacier Park in a day.
Renate has organized a website (http://winold-reiss.org) which for the first time summarizes the basics of Winold’s extraordinary life. An appreciation by Ned Jacob sketches the artistic accomplishments, which include mosaics in railway stations, Art Deco murals in Manhattan restaurants, graphic design, portraits of Harlem blacks with the same intensity as the Blackfeet portraits, and many other contexts. He was a man who threw out his arms to the world and then showed us what he saw.
No huge crowd of sequined art buyers were present -- very few of Reiss’ paintings are on the market and those that are have healthy price tags, though one can buy a little portfolio of the Great Northern portraits for a few dollars. This art is entirely outside the familiar stampede of Charlie Russell clones. Few would have the skill to imitate this style, though Russell knew these people and also portrayed them.
The archetypal Reiss story is about him arriving on the train in Browning in the midst of a blizzard. The hotel was full up, and he had to beg and insist to be allowed space in a bed already occupied by a cowboy. He never met the man, who left before Reiss awoke, but no doubt both were grateful for human warmth.
Reiss bounded out to the street where he met a giant Indian, a genuine old-time, buffalo-culture man with long hair and hooded eyes. Feeling that he knew all about such folks and just what proper etiquette might be, he slapped the man on the back and said, “How!” The Indian was astounded. Too surprised to take offense. They were friends from then on and Reiss portrayed him many times.
The Great Northern was intent on building a customer base around the major national parks and, though the fabulous alpine scenery of Glacier was really the goal, they discovered that the Blackfeet from whom the mountains had been bought were better advertising material on their calendars. At the time the elders were accustomed to dressing up in parade duds and meeting the trains bringing tourists. They put up their lodges on the lawn in front of the huge log structure and sang and danced. In return they received a bit of pay, the right to sell their crafts, and whatever food was left in the kitchen after everyone else had eaten.
The great-great-grandchildren of these dignified persons are not pleased by what looks to them like disrespect, but the Indians there at the time were happy to be eating. In those years some folks died of starvation, both reservation old-timers and High-Line dry-land farmers, also brought by the railroad to homestead.
Reiss started a summer art school in the St. Marys chalet, a complex of log buildings created by Great Northern, and that in itself became a tourist attraction. Reiss was always careful to include some young Blackfeet artists. (He invited Bob Scriver, whose mother wouldn’t let him attend because she considered them a Bohemian and reckless bunch -- no doubt they were!) Among the young men who became noted artists were Gerald Tailfeathers, Victor Pepion, and Albert Racine. (There were also many white women, for instance, Elizabeth Lochrie.)
I was pleased that Shirlee Crowshoe and her husband Darrell attended the lecture and show. Shirlee is one of the teachers at the Piegan Institute Blackfeet Language School (she is a Blackfeet speaker) and a museum consultant. She’s always had an interest in Reiss and has accumulated many prints to hang in the school. We talked about what an effective counter-force Reiss’ work is in a world that can tell Indians they are dirty losers. These paintings thrill with nobility and humor.
For several years the Great Northern sent Christmas cards featuring Winold Reiss portraits of Blackfeet babies in cradle boards who are supposed to be saying, “Come to Glacier Park -- I did!” If the Bush administration eliminates Amtrak, you won’t be able to make the trip by train. All things pass, except maybe the inspiration of really fine art.
Friday, June 10, 2005
"Modern Blackfeet" by Malcolm McFee
“Modern Blackfeet: Montanans on a Reservation” by Malcolm McFee is a nifty little pocket history of the Blackfeet with some excellent ideas in it. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc; copyright 1972. ISBN 0-03-085768-6) The only trouble is that it’s out of print, though one can sometimes find it on Abebooks.com or Alibris.com.
Malcolm McFee’s first occupation was as a plumber which means he has a good sense of structure and flow and a strong grip on what’s really important. He’s dead now. He was here in Browning in the years that I was a newcomer, so his version of the reservation is the same as mine. There have been many other accounts in the thirty years since, but no new book as good and none with so clear an attitude. This is typical of McFee: “A major message I want to communicate to all is that the men, women and children who live on this Indian reservation are individuals who differ greatly in personality, aspirations, attitudes, opinions, beliefs and behavior.” He believed in uniqueness and the right to self-determnation.
One of his major insights was that though one could sort out rez folks according to their blood quantums: Indian on this side, white on that side -- uh, what do we do with this guy? -- one could also sort them by their, um, “lifestyles.” Then it would suddenly be obvious that this full-blood Indian was looking and acting like a white man (white-oriented) and that white man was looking and acting like a full-blood Indian (Indian-oriented).
Even MORE important was that some people managed somehow to combine the best of both worlds, creating what McFee called the 150% man. (This was before Feminism. If McFee had known about that, I’m sure he would have tried to be gender-inclusive.) At the time it was assumed that a half-breed specifically had to make a choice between one side or the other and novels were written about what that choice did to people. The notion of a 150% man was a door slowly creaking open and has given this slender book an impact beyond what McFee could guess.
In the convention of the time (late 50’s, early 60’s), McFee disguised all the people he studied, but they are easy enough for locals to recognize. The oldest people are gone now. There is a young, frisky, intelligent batch of youngsters who are unlike anybody anyone has seen before. They have both skills and confidence -- economics is the problem and they’re learning to get past that. They are not in this book because they didn’t exist yet.
“Albert Buffalo Heart” (1878-1964) is an old timer, a ceremonialist, an elder, a tourist greeter, a son of a chief and warrior, and a good Catholic. “John Arrowhead” is in his fifties, a street wino but a willing worker, a repository of traditional knowledge who is not entitled to lead, a man with no future. “Roy Conrad” is nearly seventy, ranches with his sons, is mildly interested in old-time things, but much more interested in what the Tribal Council is up to with the resources of the tribe. All are full-bloods. McFee goes on, drawing word pictures of men quite different from each other but all classified together. (He hardly mentions women except to say they made nice homes.) In accumulation, he has assembled something like characters in a novel.
This is pre-Indian Empowerment. He feels comfortable saying that “An Indian is a person defined as such by law. But the law has been built over time from decisions made in individual cases, so that it is difficult to write an all-inclusive definition. In general a person can be defined as an Indian if he qualifies on two counts: ‘(a) that some of his ancestors lived in America before its discovery by the Europeans, and (b) that the individual is considered an ‘Indian’ by the community in which he lives.’ (Federal Indian Law 1958:60) ”
Membership in the Blackfeet Tribe is more stringent. The Constitution stipulates persons “of Indian blood whose names appear on the official census roll of he tribe as of January 1, 1935...[and] all children born to any blood member... maintaining a legal residence within the territory of the reservation at the time of such birth. (Blackfeet Consitution 1936:1).” No limitation was imposed by a necessary degree of Blackfeet descent or “blood” until 1962 when the tribal constitution was amended to require 1/4 or more blood quantum for membership thereafter.”
In the reservation world, belonging is a big concern and people conform to the values and behaviors of the groups to which they would like to belong. This works well when the parents of a young person are clear about who they are and how to proceed, but if they are not or if they are missing, a young person has a hard time finding role models or even places to be that they can manage to fit. When McFee was doing his studies, the new president, John F. Kennedy, was just pushing for better housing through various programs. A flood in 1964 made emergency housing a high priority. McFee had left before the results could be worked out. Some of the buildings in his photos are gone now and far more impressive ones exist, but he shows none of the housing projects that became problematic.
McFee confronts racism directly, describing how even high-achieving people could be punished for looking “Indian.” In fact, they resented the slights more than low-status low-achievers who sort of felt they deserved to be put down. This would all change in the next ten years.
George and Louise Spindler, who edited this series (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology), are aged but were still active when I corresponded with them ten or fifteen years ago. The publisher no longer exists. I don’t know what would be necsssary to put this book back into print, at least locally, but it would be an excellent idea. Still, those most opposed to such a thing would be those most accurately described. Such straightforward confrontation is not always comfortable, even when some of the issues have been successfully resolved, and even when it is done with this much kindness.
Malcolm McFee’s first occupation was as a plumber which means he has a good sense of structure and flow and a strong grip on what’s really important. He’s dead now. He was here in Browning in the years that I was a newcomer, so his version of the reservation is the same as mine. There have been many other accounts in the thirty years since, but no new book as good and none with so clear an attitude. This is typical of McFee: “A major message I want to communicate to all is that the men, women and children who live on this Indian reservation are individuals who differ greatly in personality, aspirations, attitudes, opinions, beliefs and behavior.” He believed in uniqueness and the right to self-determnation.
One of his major insights was that though one could sort out rez folks according to their blood quantums: Indian on this side, white on that side -- uh, what do we do with this guy? -- one could also sort them by their, um, “lifestyles.” Then it would suddenly be obvious that this full-blood Indian was looking and acting like a white man (white-oriented) and that white man was looking and acting like a full-blood Indian (Indian-oriented).
Even MORE important was that some people managed somehow to combine the best of both worlds, creating what McFee called the 150% man. (This was before Feminism. If McFee had known about that, I’m sure he would have tried to be gender-inclusive.) At the time it was assumed that a half-breed specifically had to make a choice between one side or the other and novels were written about what that choice did to people. The notion of a 150% man was a door slowly creaking open and has given this slender book an impact beyond what McFee could guess.
In the convention of the time (late 50’s, early 60’s), McFee disguised all the people he studied, but they are easy enough for locals to recognize. The oldest people are gone now. There is a young, frisky, intelligent batch of youngsters who are unlike anybody anyone has seen before. They have both skills and confidence -- economics is the problem and they’re learning to get past that. They are not in this book because they didn’t exist yet.
“Albert Buffalo Heart” (1878-1964) is an old timer, a ceremonialist, an elder, a tourist greeter, a son of a chief and warrior, and a good Catholic. “John Arrowhead” is in his fifties, a street wino but a willing worker, a repository of traditional knowledge who is not entitled to lead, a man with no future. “Roy Conrad” is nearly seventy, ranches with his sons, is mildly interested in old-time things, but much more interested in what the Tribal Council is up to with the resources of the tribe. All are full-bloods. McFee goes on, drawing word pictures of men quite different from each other but all classified together. (He hardly mentions women except to say they made nice homes.) In accumulation, he has assembled something like characters in a novel.
This is pre-Indian Empowerment. He feels comfortable saying that “An Indian is a person defined as such by law. But the law has been built over time from decisions made in individual cases, so that it is difficult to write an all-inclusive definition. In general a person can be defined as an Indian if he qualifies on two counts: ‘(a) that some of his ancestors lived in America before its discovery by the Europeans, and (b) that the individual is considered an ‘Indian’ by the community in which he lives.’ (Federal Indian Law 1958:60) ”
Membership in the Blackfeet Tribe is more stringent. The Constitution stipulates persons “of Indian blood whose names appear on the official census roll of he tribe as of January 1, 1935...[and] all children born to any blood member... maintaining a legal residence within the territory of the reservation at the time of such birth. (Blackfeet Consitution 1936:1).” No limitation was imposed by a necessary degree of Blackfeet descent or “blood” until 1962 when the tribal constitution was amended to require 1/4 or more blood quantum for membership thereafter.”
In the reservation world, belonging is a big concern and people conform to the values and behaviors of the groups to which they would like to belong. This works well when the parents of a young person are clear about who they are and how to proceed, but if they are not or if they are missing, a young person has a hard time finding role models or even places to be that they can manage to fit. When McFee was doing his studies, the new president, John F. Kennedy, was just pushing for better housing through various programs. A flood in 1964 made emergency housing a high priority. McFee had left before the results could be worked out. Some of the buildings in his photos are gone now and far more impressive ones exist, but he shows none of the housing projects that became problematic.
McFee confronts racism directly, describing how even high-achieving people could be punished for looking “Indian.” In fact, they resented the slights more than low-status low-achievers who sort of felt they deserved to be put down. This would all change in the next ten years.
George and Louise Spindler, who edited this series (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology), are aged but were still active when I corresponded with them ten or fifteen years ago. The publisher no longer exists. I don’t know what would be necsssary to put this book back into print, at least locally, but it would be an excellent idea. Still, those most opposed to such a thing would be those most accurately described. Such straightforward confrontation is not always comfortable, even when some of the issues have been successfully resolved, and even when it is done with this much kindness.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
"Firewater" by Hugh Dempsey
A successful Browning businessman recommended that I read “Firewater: the Impact of he Whisky Trade on the Blackfoot Nation,” by Hugh A. Dempsey. (Fifth House Ltd., 1511-1800 4 Street SW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2S 255. Copyright 2002. ISBN 1-894004-96-5) For him and for me many of the stories in this book have the status and electricity of gossip. Many of the names are familiar, belonging to people we know. They are generations beyond whiskey-trading now, or even any kind of drug dealings, though methamphetamine is doing much the same thing now as “firewater” did in the 19th century.
What is hard to grasp is that such destructive substances don’t get their power to destroy from the action of the substance itself -- though obviously the persons who use drugs and alcohol are soon destroyed -- but rather from the economic and political situations that make them uncontrollable. In this case Dempsey is explaining and describing the impact on the western Canadian plains just after the Hudson’s Bay Company pulled out -- in part because the area was stripped of the beaver they were after, in part because beaver hats went out of fashion anyway, and in part because their grip on trade depended on pushing a constant oversupply of alcohol. It wasn’t even always alcohol -- often diluted with nasty and poisonous substances, the same as modern cocaine is cut with baby powder and marijuana is mixed with catnip. To test alcohol content, the Blackfeet held a match to the liquid -- if it burned, it passed. Intoxication flambee.
The vacuum of law and order created by Hudsons Bay closing up shop was not immediately addressed by the new nation of Canada. Labeled Assiniboia, it was one of those “here be dragons” parts of the continent. It didn’t take long for the entrepreneurs and dubious characters pushing their way up the Missouri into the heart of Blackfeet country to realize that this was an opportunity.
Traders on the Montana side had not been reluctant to depend upon alcohol-based trade in spite of laws -- depending upon the subverting of judges and juries, playing off the territory of Montana against the federal government, and moving the reservation boundary around until no one was really very sure where it was. Since arrests depended on whether the traders were in Indian country, this was an easy out for juries.
The real point of the story is that there was finally a bad enough incident of murderous violence, called the Cypress Hills Massacre, that political pressure forced the Canadians to grasp the nettle. They convened the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police, gave them the power to arrest, sentence and detain traders -- to guarantee it would really happen -- and to impound trade goods in payment for fines imposed. (The first thing that had to be impounded was enough buffalo robes to make coats and moccasins so the Mounties wouldn’t freeze. The second thing was hay for the horses.)
Mounties always look wonderful in images, their red coats and neat hats made elegant with braid and buttons. The design changed somewhat over time. (Part of the Scriver artifacts bought by the Edmonton Provincial Museum consisted of a collection of Mountie uniforms, which are included in Scriver’s book, “The Blackfeet: Artists of the Northern Plains.”) The men themselves are always presented as young, vigorous, competent and impressively mustachioed. No doubt it was a little harder to look that way when they were struggling through hip-deep snow against a blinding wind, unsure of where they were headed -- some vague description of a whiskey fort. But they were up to the job and soon the whiskey traders were pushed back down the Whoop Up Trail where they fizzled a little while more and then caved in to the inevitable.
The Conrads were involved, though mostly in the background -- they were rich enough to sub-contract the risky stuff. Hazlett’s descendents show up again in Rosier’s notes. Weatherwax descendents turn out to have a flair for words -- Marvin teaches Blackfeet at Blackfeet Community College. Joe Kipp’s namesakes one way or another include Woody Kipp, the journalist, and Darrell Kipp, founder of the Piegan Institute as well as dozens of other industrious, talented Kipps.
Dempsey does not spare the reader the gory details of one shooting, knifing, exploding, strychnine-poisoning, freezing, and drowning after another, because that’s the legacy of the substance. When I came to Browning in 1961, it was going on, and when I returned in 1990, it was going on. I won’t live long enough to read the stories of the Napi Bar, the Businessman’s Club or Minyards, much less the Town Pump. The main difference from the stories in “Firewater” is that a horse could get a drunk home safely, but a car doesn’t always. Innocents were killed -- women, children, old folks -- then and now.
Only in the last decades has the tide begun to turn against drunkenness with dry-out programs, AA meetings, and mental health support. Now the “rum runners” are much fewer. No doubt that’s part of the reason this book can be published to the approval of a Browning businessman who is a tribal member. The tribal council now has enough support to close down liquor sales during Indian Days and other key events. The grounds are closed to alcohol, even if it means searching cars.
What haunted me all through this book was the ghosts of all the gifted young people I’ve taught who died of alcohol-related causes. And even more vividly (if less painfully) than that, the heart-breaking performance of the great Canadian actor Graham Greene in “Skins,” the powerful movie based on the book by Adrian Louis. For once we could see the heartbreak under the jokes and clowning around.
My paternal grandmother was a devoted member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union because she lost a brother to alcoholism. It’s not limited to Indians by any means. For a while it was a devil’s partnership enabled by a vacuum in law and order and and an excess of simple commercial greed that still probably haven’t really been addressed.
What is hard to grasp is that such destructive substances don’t get their power to destroy from the action of the substance itself -- though obviously the persons who use drugs and alcohol are soon destroyed -- but rather from the economic and political situations that make them uncontrollable. In this case Dempsey is explaining and describing the impact on the western Canadian plains just after the Hudson’s Bay Company pulled out -- in part because the area was stripped of the beaver they were after, in part because beaver hats went out of fashion anyway, and in part because their grip on trade depended on pushing a constant oversupply of alcohol. It wasn’t even always alcohol -- often diluted with nasty and poisonous substances, the same as modern cocaine is cut with baby powder and marijuana is mixed with catnip. To test alcohol content, the Blackfeet held a match to the liquid -- if it burned, it passed. Intoxication flambee.
The vacuum of law and order created by Hudsons Bay closing up shop was not immediately addressed by the new nation of Canada. Labeled Assiniboia, it was one of those “here be dragons” parts of the continent. It didn’t take long for the entrepreneurs and dubious characters pushing their way up the Missouri into the heart of Blackfeet country to realize that this was an opportunity.
Traders on the Montana side had not been reluctant to depend upon alcohol-based trade in spite of laws -- depending upon the subverting of judges and juries, playing off the territory of Montana against the federal government, and moving the reservation boundary around until no one was really very sure where it was. Since arrests depended on whether the traders were in Indian country, this was an easy out for juries.
The real point of the story is that there was finally a bad enough incident of murderous violence, called the Cypress Hills Massacre, that political pressure forced the Canadians to grasp the nettle. They convened the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police, gave them the power to arrest, sentence and detain traders -- to guarantee it would really happen -- and to impound trade goods in payment for fines imposed. (The first thing that had to be impounded was enough buffalo robes to make coats and moccasins so the Mounties wouldn’t freeze. The second thing was hay for the horses.)
Mounties always look wonderful in images, their red coats and neat hats made elegant with braid and buttons. The design changed somewhat over time. (Part of the Scriver artifacts bought by the Edmonton Provincial Museum consisted of a collection of Mountie uniforms, which are included in Scriver’s book, “The Blackfeet: Artists of the Northern Plains.”) The men themselves are always presented as young, vigorous, competent and impressively mustachioed. No doubt it was a little harder to look that way when they were struggling through hip-deep snow against a blinding wind, unsure of where they were headed -- some vague description of a whiskey fort. But they were up to the job and soon the whiskey traders were pushed back down the Whoop Up Trail where they fizzled a little while more and then caved in to the inevitable.
The Conrads were involved, though mostly in the background -- they were rich enough to sub-contract the risky stuff. Hazlett’s descendents show up again in Rosier’s notes. Weatherwax descendents turn out to have a flair for words -- Marvin teaches Blackfeet at Blackfeet Community College. Joe Kipp’s namesakes one way or another include Woody Kipp, the journalist, and Darrell Kipp, founder of the Piegan Institute as well as dozens of other industrious, talented Kipps.
Dempsey does not spare the reader the gory details of one shooting, knifing, exploding, strychnine-poisoning, freezing, and drowning after another, because that’s the legacy of the substance. When I came to Browning in 1961, it was going on, and when I returned in 1990, it was going on. I won’t live long enough to read the stories of the Napi Bar, the Businessman’s Club or Minyards, much less the Town Pump. The main difference from the stories in “Firewater” is that a horse could get a drunk home safely, but a car doesn’t always. Innocents were killed -- women, children, old folks -- then and now.
Only in the last decades has the tide begun to turn against drunkenness with dry-out programs, AA meetings, and mental health support. Now the “rum runners” are much fewer. No doubt that’s part of the reason this book can be published to the approval of a Browning businessman who is a tribal member. The tribal council now has enough support to close down liquor sales during Indian Days and other key events. The grounds are closed to alcohol, even if it means searching cars.
What haunted me all through this book was the ghosts of all the gifted young people I’ve taught who died of alcohol-related causes. And even more vividly (if less painfully) than that, the heart-breaking performance of the great Canadian actor Graham Greene in “Skins,” the powerful movie based on the book by Adrian Louis. For once we could see the heartbreak under the jokes and clowning around.
My paternal grandmother was a devoted member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union because she lost a brother to alcoholism. It’s not limited to Indians by any means. For a while it was a devil’s partnership enabled by a vacuum in law and order and and an excess of simple commercial greed that still probably haven’t really been addressed.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
"Common and Contested Ground" by Ted Binnema
Those who have been following the Lewis & Clark journals day-by-day across the prairie are aware of how crucial maps can be. When the Mandan drawings are accurate, the company is elated -- when rivers appear where they are not noted, the company has to spend days trying to figure out river sources and relationships.
For the past several years, Piegan Institute has been sponsoring an August history conference called Aakawattop’a. In 2001 the theme was Apatohs--ohsokoi, “The Old North Trail.” One of the presenters was Ted Binnema, a professor at the University of Northern British Columbia. His doctoral thesis had been developed into a book called “Common and Contested Ground: a human and environmental study of the northwestern plains.” (University of Oklahoma Press, copyright 2001. ISBN 0-8061-3361-9)) I’ve been recommending it ever since I read it.
If you think I’m just easily impressed, here’s Dan Flores’ blurb from the dusk jacket: “Ted Binnema’s ethnohistory of the Northern Plains before Lewis & Clark is one of the most stunning new studies I have read. This model new approach for writing Indian environmental history makes possible a contextual analysis of band, and even individual, motivations in an altogether fresh way. Events that had been murky in cause emerge with a new clarity. A very impressive book.”
We seem to have made a generational transition as well as a brave bridging of disciplines that have been separate in the past. Some of the data is new: weather information, for instance, is highly relevant since snow depth, temperature and winds directly affected the survival of horses through the winter. Did you know that the strongest El Nino events ever known were in the early 1790’s? This meant warm, snowless winters which meant drought which meant fires. Historical events.
What Ted actually presented at the conference was a pair of maps dating to 1801-02. One is called “Old Swan’s Map” and the other is by an unidentified Gros Ventre cartographer. They are from Hudson’s Bay archives in Winnipeg and are reproduced in the book.
It’s famously said that “the map is not the territory” -- otherwise the map of the United States would be 3,000 miles wide, same as the continent! Of course things have to be left out of every map. What one chooses to leave out is determined by one’s objectives in making the map, one’s assumptions based on experience, and the conventions of cartography, like the little compass rose in the corner that always indicates north.
This map of Old Swan’s looks like a candleabra: there is a broad band across the top where the candle flames would line up, a main straight line perpendicular in the middle, and a lot of arms. It’s a little inscrutable at first. The first major insight is that north is to the right side of the page -- that band across the top is the Rocky Mountains. The other map is similarly oriented, so this must have been a “convention” in map drawing. Each of the “candleabra arms” is drawn to a landmark of some kind -- a peak, a valley, a strange rock formation. A list of the landmarks is written at the top and other notations on the arms of the candleabra.
This is where Ted was particularly brilliant. He took his map to the territory. The rest of his presentation was slides he had taken of the actual landmarks indicated on Old Swan’s map. It wasn’t easy, mostly because towns, fences, ranches and roads had been created since then, sometimes nearly preventing access, but the landmarks were major enough to persist and certainly recognizable after one figured out about how much ground an Indian band on horseback might cover in a day’s travel. Just as the previous landmark disappeared in the rearview mirror, the new one appeared through the windshield.
It’s interesting that though Old Swan was a Blackfeet, the map is written in Gros Ventre words. Binnema thinks this may be because the Blackfeet are pressing increasingly farther south and using the Gros Ventre names.
A journalist who shall remain nameless (He’s a nice guy!) remarked to me that the Indians never named the peaks in the Rocky Mountains. HIS map had the names given the mountains by Grinnell, Schultz, et al. Mostly famous people who would enhance the national significance of the Park and maybe help fund it. But clearly (as he realized) the Indians DID name the peaks -- they used descriptive phrases that would help a person find the way along the mountains. Thus, “Chief” mountain -- the one that sticks up out there alone. “Heart” butte -- the one shaped like an animal heart.
When things are not expected by us, they don’t appear on our maps. We give them other people’s names or have to invent new names for our own reasons. Bob Scriver and I called one hill along Highway 89 “the Japanese hill,” because it looked like a Japanese sketch of a high twisted conifer. No one else could find it using that name, but we always looked for it and were rewarded by the sight.
Binnema’s chapter epigraphs are relevant. For the introductory chapter he quotes Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., in “The White Man’s Indian.” “For most Whites throughout the past five centuries, the Indian [and we might say Indian terrain] of imagination and ideology has been as real, perhaps more real, than the Native American of actual existence and contact... Although modern artists and writers assume their own imagery to be more in line with ‘reality’ than that of their predecessors, they employ the imagery for much the same reasons and often with the same results as those persons of the past they so often scorn as uninformed, fanciful, or hypocritical.”
Francois-Antoine Laroque took these notes in 1805. “A few of [the Crows] assembled and draughted on a dressed skin, I believe a very good map of their Country, and the[y] showed me the place where at different seasons they were to be found.
“They told me that in winter they were always to be found at a Park [bison pound or jump] by the foot of the Mountain a few miles from this or thereabouts. In the spring and Fall they are upon this [Yellowstone] River and in the summer upon the Tongue and Horses River.”
For the past several years, Piegan Institute has been sponsoring an August history conference called Aakawattop’a. In 2001 the theme was Apatohs--ohsokoi, “The Old North Trail.” One of the presenters was Ted Binnema, a professor at the University of Northern British Columbia. His doctoral thesis had been developed into a book called “Common and Contested Ground: a human and environmental study of the northwestern plains.” (University of Oklahoma Press, copyright 2001. ISBN 0-8061-3361-9)) I’ve been recommending it ever since I read it.
If you think I’m just easily impressed, here’s Dan Flores’ blurb from the dusk jacket: “Ted Binnema’s ethnohistory of the Northern Plains before Lewis & Clark is one of the most stunning new studies I have read. This model new approach for writing Indian environmental history makes possible a contextual analysis of band, and even individual, motivations in an altogether fresh way. Events that had been murky in cause emerge with a new clarity. A very impressive book.”
We seem to have made a generational transition as well as a brave bridging of disciplines that have been separate in the past. Some of the data is new: weather information, for instance, is highly relevant since snow depth, temperature and winds directly affected the survival of horses through the winter. Did you know that the strongest El Nino events ever known were in the early 1790’s? This meant warm, snowless winters which meant drought which meant fires. Historical events.
What Ted actually presented at the conference was a pair of maps dating to 1801-02. One is called “Old Swan’s Map” and the other is by an unidentified Gros Ventre cartographer. They are from Hudson’s Bay archives in Winnipeg and are reproduced in the book.
It’s famously said that “the map is not the territory” -- otherwise the map of the United States would be 3,000 miles wide, same as the continent! Of course things have to be left out of every map. What one chooses to leave out is determined by one’s objectives in making the map, one’s assumptions based on experience, and the conventions of cartography, like the little compass rose in the corner that always indicates north.
This map of Old Swan’s looks like a candleabra: there is a broad band across the top where the candle flames would line up, a main straight line perpendicular in the middle, and a lot of arms. It’s a little inscrutable at first. The first major insight is that north is to the right side of the page -- that band across the top is the Rocky Mountains. The other map is similarly oriented, so this must have been a “convention” in map drawing. Each of the “candleabra arms” is drawn to a landmark of some kind -- a peak, a valley, a strange rock formation. A list of the landmarks is written at the top and other notations on the arms of the candleabra.
This is where Ted was particularly brilliant. He took his map to the territory. The rest of his presentation was slides he had taken of the actual landmarks indicated on Old Swan’s map. It wasn’t easy, mostly because towns, fences, ranches and roads had been created since then, sometimes nearly preventing access, but the landmarks were major enough to persist and certainly recognizable after one figured out about how much ground an Indian band on horseback might cover in a day’s travel. Just as the previous landmark disappeared in the rearview mirror, the new one appeared through the windshield.
It’s interesting that though Old Swan was a Blackfeet, the map is written in Gros Ventre words. Binnema thinks this may be because the Blackfeet are pressing increasingly farther south and using the Gros Ventre names.
A journalist who shall remain nameless (He’s a nice guy!) remarked to me that the Indians never named the peaks in the Rocky Mountains. HIS map had the names given the mountains by Grinnell, Schultz, et al. Mostly famous people who would enhance the national significance of the Park and maybe help fund it. But clearly (as he realized) the Indians DID name the peaks -- they used descriptive phrases that would help a person find the way along the mountains. Thus, “Chief” mountain -- the one that sticks up out there alone. “Heart” butte -- the one shaped like an animal heart.
When things are not expected by us, they don’t appear on our maps. We give them other people’s names or have to invent new names for our own reasons. Bob Scriver and I called one hill along Highway 89 “the Japanese hill,” because it looked like a Japanese sketch of a high twisted conifer. No one else could find it using that name, but we always looked for it and were rewarded by the sight.
Binnema’s chapter epigraphs are relevant. For the introductory chapter he quotes Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., in “The White Man’s Indian.” “For most Whites throughout the past five centuries, the Indian [and we might say Indian terrain] of imagination and ideology has been as real, perhaps more real, than the Native American of actual existence and contact... Although modern artists and writers assume their own imagery to be more in line with ‘reality’ than that of their predecessors, they employ the imagery for much the same reasons and often with the same results as those persons of the past they so often scorn as uninformed, fanciful, or hypocritical.”
Francois-Antoine Laroque took these notes in 1805. “A few of [the Crows] assembled and draughted on a dressed skin, I believe a very good map of their Country, and the[y] showed me the place where at different seasons they were to be found.
“They told me that in winter they were always to be found at a Park [bison pound or jump] by the foot of the Mountain a few miles from this or thereabouts. In the spring and Fall they are upon this [Yellowstone] River and in the summer upon the Tongue and Horses River.”
Monday, June 06, 2005
Blackfeet Clothing
The most beautiful Indian dress I ever saw had been collected by a priest (maybe Father LaPoint?) in the very early days and shipped off to Europe. It was on loan to a museum along with art work. The dress was white buckskin embellished with porcupine quills. They were not dyed, but careful attention had been given to their natural black-then-white coloring so that they formed an intricate pattern across the top of the dress.
When Bob Scriver’s collection of artifacts first went to the Edmonton Provincial Museum in 1990, the objects were displayed and a catalogue of essays was prepared, as is the custom. One of the essays, by Richard Conn, was about “Blackfoot Clothing Style” and how it has evolved over the years. Much of what follows was in that article.
There is not much clothing from pre-contact days because it was worn out, used up, recycled. The earliest clothes were based on the shapes of the materials used -- deer, elk, or mountain sheep hides. (Bison hides, except for calves, would be much too heavy.) In warm climates the women wrapped one hide for a skirt -- and another hide over the shoulders if it were chilly. That one might be put aside or dropped down to hang off the belt with the skirt if necessary. No one in Montana dressed like that.
Farther north women used one hide for the front and one hide for the back, with straps over the shoulders. They were cut to be flat for ease in folding and packing. One thinks of kimonos in Asia. There might be sleeves that tied on for winter and maybe leggings. Clothes were as likely to be attached with ties as to be sewn together. Armpits were left open, like fancy athletic clothes today.
Clothes changed when horses arrived. The flat “slip dresses” weren’t suitable for riding, so the women went to a variation of the man’s long shirt. Men wore long shirts with leggings but no breech cloths until horses -- then the shirts got shorter because they didn’t have to cover bottoms. Men wore their shirts with the animal legs and tails dangling down as a fancy hem -- then they were decorated with long fringes of buckskin (in a pinch one could jerk off one sliver of fringe to tie something), fur, scalps, feathers, elk teeth, and painted designs, often a figure that looks like a polywog. No one knows what they were really supposed to be. Surely not sperm, but that’s what they look like!
Women made their shirt-like dresses with the deers’ tails at the top and flipped over to the outside under their chins and napes. If the hides weren’t quite big enough to do that, they might add a kind of yoke that lay over the shoulders and arms. When beads were available, they were used to follow the wavy edges of the shirts and the lines of the folded-over top. Later, when using heavy cloth like velvet, the same pattern was beaded -- straight stripes out the arms and a dip under the chin -- so familiar it seemed natural. Maybe bells or thimbles would be added.
For men, horseback riding meant adding a breechcloth, but the Blackft breechcloth had a sleeve in the back at the waist. The actual cloth went between the legs and then hung over the belt in the front, but in the back it ended AT the belt, which was threaded through the sleeve. A much more secure attachment for someone in a saddle. The women put a blanket on the horse, got into the saddle, then folded the blanket around their legs for warmth and modesty.
To a modern eye, the later “dress up” outfits are appealing because shirts, leggings, cuffed gloves, headdress band, and so on are all matched in the same beading pattern, but in the earlier times, one legging might be one pattern and the other one different. The white buckskin was maintained with white clay -- kaolin, the basis for china -- which is in massive deposits around here, most famously at Medicine Hat where the clay is used for porcelain. There was one time period when shirts were painted yellow all over and then painted decorations were added on top. (A yellow lodgeskin is always remarked.)
In more modern times, when women had access to cloth instead of buckskin, the dresses changed again. They had a sleeved bodice with a skirt gathered on, rather conventional except that they could be pretty big. Properly, a woman wore a wide harness-leather belt, either beaded or studded with brass tacks. I love those belts and always think I’m going to make one, but they aren’t as good if they haven’t been worn a long time. Queen Victoria had dresses in two-pieces, or really three -- a skirt and two separate tops: one for daytime and the other for dressed-up supper. (I saw one belonging to Victoria in Calgary at the Glenbow and there were still soup stains on the evening top!) Victoria’s beadwork on her evening top were all jet. Indian women learned to do their fancy beading on a separate shawl or yoke that could be fitted over a plain colored dress, maybe of stroud cloth which was a sort of coarse wool woven in Stroud, England, often bright red.
The bodice, sleeves and gathered skirt style, often gathered into a waist so high that it was nearly “Empire,” was a way of using calico for a summer dress. Such a relief to wear in warm weather instead of buckskin! The decorations might be shiny ribbons in the patterns previously traced in beads -- even with that funny little dip under the chin where the deer’s tail used to be. Of course, eventually the soft woolen shawl with long fringe was added for dancing with Pendleton blankets for me. Jewelry in the old times was never silver, but rather brass or copper -- often wire twisted into a bracelet or necklace.
For men, calico became the basis of “ribbon shirts” worn with jeans. The actual pattern for the shirt might be either plain or fancy with an inset pleated front. It was a ribbon shirt because it was decorated with sewn-on ribbons with their long tails flying loose. Even more inventive is the “jingle dress” which is covered with little cones made from the tin lids of round snoose (chewing tobacco) cans -- those things that make worn circles on the hip pockets of cowboys. A good jingle dancer makes those little cones dance and sing.
Blackfeet clothes, in any time period, are always meant to be distinctive -- not like another tribe’s clothing and yet not TOO different. Once I was chaperoning the prom at Heart Butte and wanted something suitable for a big fat lady (me) to wear that would suggest such a person could be glamorous. I already had a plain black dress so I made a black jacket with stripes of glittery colored sequins across the front and out the arms -- with that little dip under the chin. One of the girls, not suitable for pink fluff, fell in love with that jacket. “Give it to me,” she asked. I didn’t. I should have. It would have been the Blackft thing to do.
When Bob Scriver’s collection of artifacts first went to the Edmonton Provincial Museum in 1990, the objects were displayed and a catalogue of essays was prepared, as is the custom. One of the essays, by Richard Conn, was about “Blackfoot Clothing Style” and how it has evolved over the years. Much of what follows was in that article.
There is not much clothing from pre-contact days because it was worn out, used up, recycled. The earliest clothes were based on the shapes of the materials used -- deer, elk, or mountain sheep hides. (Bison hides, except for calves, would be much too heavy.) In warm climates the women wrapped one hide for a skirt -- and another hide over the shoulders if it were chilly. That one might be put aside or dropped down to hang off the belt with the skirt if necessary. No one in Montana dressed like that.
Farther north women used one hide for the front and one hide for the back, with straps over the shoulders. They were cut to be flat for ease in folding and packing. One thinks of kimonos in Asia. There might be sleeves that tied on for winter and maybe leggings. Clothes were as likely to be attached with ties as to be sewn together. Armpits were left open, like fancy athletic clothes today.
Clothes changed when horses arrived. The flat “slip dresses” weren’t suitable for riding, so the women went to a variation of the man’s long shirt. Men wore long shirts with leggings but no breech cloths until horses -- then the shirts got shorter because they didn’t have to cover bottoms. Men wore their shirts with the animal legs and tails dangling down as a fancy hem -- then they were decorated with long fringes of buckskin (in a pinch one could jerk off one sliver of fringe to tie something), fur, scalps, feathers, elk teeth, and painted designs, often a figure that looks like a polywog. No one knows what they were really supposed to be. Surely not sperm, but that’s what they look like!
Women made their shirt-like dresses with the deers’ tails at the top and flipped over to the outside under their chins and napes. If the hides weren’t quite big enough to do that, they might add a kind of yoke that lay over the shoulders and arms. When beads were available, they were used to follow the wavy edges of the shirts and the lines of the folded-over top. Later, when using heavy cloth like velvet, the same pattern was beaded -- straight stripes out the arms and a dip under the chin -- so familiar it seemed natural. Maybe bells or thimbles would be added.
For men, horseback riding meant adding a breechcloth, but the Blackft breechcloth had a sleeve in the back at the waist. The actual cloth went between the legs and then hung over the belt in the front, but in the back it ended AT the belt, which was threaded through the sleeve. A much more secure attachment for someone in a saddle. The women put a blanket on the horse, got into the saddle, then folded the blanket around their legs for warmth and modesty.
To a modern eye, the later “dress up” outfits are appealing because shirts, leggings, cuffed gloves, headdress band, and so on are all matched in the same beading pattern, but in the earlier times, one legging might be one pattern and the other one different. The white buckskin was maintained with white clay -- kaolin, the basis for china -- which is in massive deposits around here, most famously at Medicine Hat where the clay is used for porcelain. There was one time period when shirts were painted yellow all over and then painted decorations were added on top. (A yellow lodgeskin is always remarked.)
In more modern times, when women had access to cloth instead of buckskin, the dresses changed again. They had a sleeved bodice with a skirt gathered on, rather conventional except that they could be pretty big. Properly, a woman wore a wide harness-leather belt, either beaded or studded with brass tacks. I love those belts and always think I’m going to make one, but they aren’t as good if they haven’t been worn a long time. Queen Victoria had dresses in two-pieces, or really three -- a skirt and two separate tops: one for daytime and the other for dressed-up supper. (I saw one belonging to Victoria in Calgary at the Glenbow and there were still soup stains on the evening top!) Victoria’s beadwork on her evening top were all jet. Indian women learned to do their fancy beading on a separate shawl or yoke that could be fitted over a plain colored dress, maybe of stroud cloth which was a sort of coarse wool woven in Stroud, England, often bright red.
The bodice, sleeves and gathered skirt style, often gathered into a waist so high that it was nearly “Empire,” was a way of using calico for a summer dress. Such a relief to wear in warm weather instead of buckskin! The decorations might be shiny ribbons in the patterns previously traced in beads -- even with that funny little dip under the chin where the deer’s tail used to be. Of course, eventually the soft woolen shawl with long fringe was added for dancing with Pendleton blankets for me. Jewelry in the old times was never silver, but rather brass or copper -- often wire twisted into a bracelet or necklace.
For men, calico became the basis of “ribbon shirts” worn with jeans. The actual pattern for the shirt might be either plain or fancy with an inset pleated front. It was a ribbon shirt because it was decorated with sewn-on ribbons with their long tails flying loose. Even more inventive is the “jingle dress” which is covered with little cones made from the tin lids of round snoose (chewing tobacco) cans -- those things that make worn circles on the hip pockets of cowboys. A good jingle dancer makes those little cones dance and sing.
Blackfeet clothes, in any time period, are always meant to be distinctive -- not like another tribe’s clothing and yet not TOO different. Once I was chaperoning the prom at Heart Butte and wanted something suitable for a big fat lady (me) to wear that would suggest such a person could be glamorous. I already had a plain black dress so I made a black jacket with stripes of glittery colored sequins across the front and out the arms -- with that little dip under the chin. One of the girls, not suitable for pink fluff, fell in love with that jacket. “Give it to me,” she asked. I didn’t. I should have. It would have been the Blackft thing to do.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
INDEX for Prairie Mary: May, 2005
May 1: “Birds of a Feathers” (Age-grouped societies)
May 2: Sweetgrass
May 3: Notes from Rosier’s “Blackft Rebirth” (First half of Chaper 1)
May 4: “The Fleeing Value of the Reservation” (10 kinds of value, 10 reasons people can’t get together)
May 5: Notes from Rosier’s “Rebirth of the Blackft” (Second half of Chapter 1)
May 6: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 2)
May 7: “The Formidable Descendents of James W. and Sara Brown.”
May 8: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 3)
May 9: Lucille Victoria Romsa McKay
May 10: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 4)
May 11: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 5)
May 12: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 6)
May 13: Notes from Rosier (Conclusion)
May 14: “An Unbroken Circle” (Everyday old-time organization)
May 15: “Nitziitapiisini” (A Glenbow exhibition and publication)
May 16: “School Draws to a Close” (Teacher comments on a class that appears in a photo in the William Farr photo book.)
May 17: Browning Newspaper Notes 1922
May 18: Browning Newspaper Notes 1922 - 23
May 19: Browning Newspaper Notes 1924 - 34
May 20: Browning Newspaper Notes 1934 - 37
May 21: Browning Newspaper Notes 1938 - 39
May 22: Browning Newspaper Notes 1939
May 23: Browning Newspaper Notes 1940-41
May 24: Browning Newspaper Notes 1942 - 45
May 25: Browning Newspaper Notes 1945 - 47
May 26: Browning Newspaper Notes 1947
May 27: Browning Newspaper Notes 1948 - 49
May 28: Browning Newspaper Notes 1950 - 51
May 29: Browning Newspaper Notes 1952 - 53
May 30: Browning Newspaper Notes 1953 - 56
May 31: Browning Newspaper Notes 1956 - 57
May 2: Sweetgrass
May 3: Notes from Rosier’s “Blackft Rebirth” (First half of Chaper 1)
May 4: “The Fleeing Value of the Reservation” (10 kinds of value, 10 reasons people can’t get together)
May 5: Notes from Rosier’s “Rebirth of the Blackft” (Second half of Chapter 1)
May 6: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 2)
May 7: “The Formidable Descendents of James W. and Sara Brown.”
May 8: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 3)
May 9: Lucille Victoria Romsa McKay
May 10: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 4)
May 11: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 5)
May 12: Notes from Rosier (Chapter 6)
May 13: Notes from Rosier (Conclusion)
May 14: “An Unbroken Circle” (Everyday old-time organization)
May 15: “Nitziitapiisini” (A Glenbow exhibition and publication)
May 16: “School Draws to a Close” (Teacher comments on a class that appears in a photo in the William Farr photo book.)
May 17: Browning Newspaper Notes 1922
May 18: Browning Newspaper Notes 1922 - 23
May 19: Browning Newspaper Notes 1924 - 34
May 20: Browning Newspaper Notes 1934 - 37
May 21: Browning Newspaper Notes 1938 - 39
May 22: Browning Newspaper Notes 1939
May 23: Browning Newspaper Notes 1940-41
May 24: Browning Newspaper Notes 1942 - 45
May 25: Browning Newspaper Notes 1945 - 47
May 26: Browning Newspaper Notes 1947
May 27: Browning Newspaper Notes 1948 - 49
May 28: Browning Newspaper Notes 1950 - 51
May 29: Browning Newspaper Notes 1952 - 53
May 30: Browning Newspaper Notes 1953 - 56
May 31: Browning Newspaper Notes 1956 - 57
Saturday, June 04, 2005
John Tatsey
The earliest Tatsey in the 1907-1908 “Blackfeet Heritage” genealogy book is Joseph Tatsey, at that time 43 years old. He was half-Blood (Canadian Blackfeet), a quarter Piegan. His father was a full-blood named “Not Real Good” or “Man of Massacre.” His mother was Susan Tatsey who took her allotment under the name of Susan Campbell. She was half Piegan through her mother. Her father was John Libby.
“Not Real Good” had a full sister named “Medicine Snake,” whom we know as Natawista. She is the heroine of several novels and was married to Alexander Culbertson, the fur-trader. At the point of this census, she is the widow of her second husband, Roberts, and lives in Cincinnati, while Culbertson lives in Fort Peck. She was exceptionally intelligent and beautiful so we can probably assume that her nephew, Joseph Tatsey, was similiarly endowed.
Joseph Tatsey’s sister was Louise, who married Robert Tingley. She is a half-sister, as her father is John Campbell.
Joseph Tatsey’s wife was Annie, 37 years old, half Piegan. They were married March 2, 1889, by “the” priest. Her father was “Pete,” a Frenchman raised by Louis Langley. Her mother was “Always Singing,” full Piegan. Annie’s half brother was Double Blaze Jackson (They shared “Always Singing” as mother.) Her half-sister was Louise Many Kills, wife of Charles Chouquette.
The children of Joseph Tatsey are:
Josephine, born March 29, 1890, at home.
Hattie Tatsey, born July 4, 1892, at the Mission.
John Tatsey, born January 26, 1894, at the Mission.
Joseph Tatsey, born June 6, 1986, at the Mission.
Elizabeth Tatsey, born July 24, 1899, at the Mission.
David Tatsey, born October 9, 1901, at home.
Irving Tatsey, born January 8, 1904, at home.
Mary Tatsey, born March 19, 1906, at home.
George Tatsey, born March 22, 1908.
The family lived on a ranch on Birch Creek, the southern boundary of the reservation. They have about a square mile under fence, but they are outside of the government fence.
Notice that there are some pretty important people on this list. If you made a list of Tatseys in today’s Blackfeet Reservation phone book, you would also come up with some pretty important people. But the one that everyone knows about was John Tatsey, who served the Heart Butte community as a policeman for decades and also wrote a column about the doin’s in that little foothill village for the Glacier Reporter.
John’s Indian name was supposed to be “Black Moccasin” so that was the title given to the paperback compilation of his columns that Paul T. DeVore made, illustrated by Albert Racine, with a foreword by Mike Mansfield, who occasionally read some of Tatsey’s columns into the Congressional Record. Mansfield says, “I especially treasure the writing of my old friend John Tatsey. His colorful accounts carry with them the true flavor of his time and place. The epic doings of Stoles Head Carrier and Tom Lame Bear assure me that no matter what becomes of the Federal budget or all of the problems of war and peace, life goes on at Heart Butte with all its everyday pleasures and follies and complications -- and above all, with the wry humor which the eyes of John Tatsey behold.
“Not long ago on the floor of the United States Senate, I had occasion to refer to John Tatsey as a modern day Will Rogers. So he is. For like Will Rogers, he reduces his observations to earthy commentaries that have a ring of truth for everyone. He pokes fun at life in general and makes us all chuckle a bit at our own absurdities. We are all better off for it.”
Actually, John’s father’s Indian name was “Weasel Necklace,” and John claimed that name himself. John’s only education was at a mission school. As a young man, he did farm work and in his early twenties operated a freighting business with horses. When machines replaced horses, he started a cattle ranch. In 1918 he married Belle Alveraz Racine, half-Sioux, whose maternal grandfather was a brother to Sitting Bull. Her father was a Spaniard and served as a cook on the steamboats that went up and down the Missouri between St. Louis and Fort Benton. The couple had two sons and a daughter. The older son was killed in the South Pacific during WWII. The pair also raised seven of Belle’s children by a former marriage.
Tatsey’s columns came out of his vocation as the tribal policeman in Heart Butte, a tiny village near the Rockies where old ways held on in spite of drunkenness and violence. His columns note a mixture of the two, more like Steinbeck’s “Tortilla Flats” than Will Rogers, if you ask me.
See what you think:
“Levi Aims Back was picked up Sunday night back of Geo. Wippert’s place where he was hung up by one leg on a barbed wire fence. More fences would help the police.”
“Stoles Head Carrier was put up in city jail Sunday night. The boys inside were watching Stoles being searched and nothing much. He picked a pint from the overlap of his belly.”
“There are some women around with patched faces and some colored. That’s because their husbands love them so much. That’s the way Indian makes love. He beats heck out of his wife.”
“The police force have no mercy. Last weekend the Heart Butte trapper went to town in his trapping clothes, gum boots, and late Saturday evening was wading down the main stream in Browning looking for beaver signs. When the paddy wagon came by and took him for no trapper permit. Something was wrong -- he did not know where he was till Monday morning before Judge Scriver.”
“Perry Spotted Eagle, the changeable man, something got into his mind and he went to church last Sunday. That was a good turn he made.”
“Tuesday Heart Butte school put on a party for the basketball team where they served a very nice lunch for the boys and parents and teachers. Mr. LaRue, teacher and coach, gave out the awards to the boys. Rev. Father Steinmetz from Valier made a very nice talk on sports and other games which the boys play. Heart Butte boys were sure interested. They heard some things they will keep in their minds.”
“Not Real Good” had a full sister named “Medicine Snake,” whom we know as Natawista. She is the heroine of several novels and was married to Alexander Culbertson, the fur-trader. At the point of this census, she is the widow of her second husband, Roberts, and lives in Cincinnati, while Culbertson lives in Fort Peck. She was exceptionally intelligent and beautiful so we can probably assume that her nephew, Joseph Tatsey, was similiarly endowed.
Joseph Tatsey’s sister was Louise, who married Robert Tingley. She is a half-sister, as her father is John Campbell.
Joseph Tatsey’s wife was Annie, 37 years old, half Piegan. They were married March 2, 1889, by “the” priest. Her father was “Pete,” a Frenchman raised by Louis Langley. Her mother was “Always Singing,” full Piegan. Annie’s half brother was Double Blaze Jackson (They shared “Always Singing” as mother.) Her half-sister was Louise Many Kills, wife of Charles Chouquette.
The children of Joseph Tatsey are:
Josephine, born March 29, 1890, at home.
Hattie Tatsey, born July 4, 1892, at the Mission.
John Tatsey, born January 26, 1894, at the Mission.
Joseph Tatsey, born June 6, 1986, at the Mission.
Elizabeth Tatsey, born July 24, 1899, at the Mission.
David Tatsey, born October 9, 1901, at home.
Irving Tatsey, born January 8, 1904, at home.
Mary Tatsey, born March 19, 1906, at home.
George Tatsey, born March 22, 1908.
The family lived on a ranch on Birch Creek, the southern boundary of the reservation. They have about a square mile under fence, but they are outside of the government fence.
Notice that there are some pretty important people on this list. If you made a list of Tatseys in today’s Blackfeet Reservation phone book, you would also come up with some pretty important people. But the one that everyone knows about was John Tatsey, who served the Heart Butte community as a policeman for decades and also wrote a column about the doin’s in that little foothill village for the Glacier Reporter.
John’s Indian name was supposed to be “Black Moccasin” so that was the title given to the paperback compilation of his columns that Paul T. DeVore made, illustrated by Albert Racine, with a foreword by Mike Mansfield, who occasionally read some of Tatsey’s columns into the Congressional Record. Mansfield says, “I especially treasure the writing of my old friend John Tatsey. His colorful accounts carry with them the true flavor of his time and place. The epic doings of Stoles Head Carrier and Tom Lame Bear assure me that no matter what becomes of the Federal budget or all of the problems of war and peace, life goes on at Heart Butte with all its everyday pleasures and follies and complications -- and above all, with the wry humor which the eyes of John Tatsey behold.
“Not long ago on the floor of the United States Senate, I had occasion to refer to John Tatsey as a modern day Will Rogers. So he is. For like Will Rogers, he reduces his observations to earthy commentaries that have a ring of truth for everyone. He pokes fun at life in general and makes us all chuckle a bit at our own absurdities. We are all better off for it.”
Actually, John’s father’s Indian name was “Weasel Necklace,” and John claimed that name himself. John’s only education was at a mission school. As a young man, he did farm work and in his early twenties operated a freighting business with horses. When machines replaced horses, he started a cattle ranch. In 1918 he married Belle Alveraz Racine, half-Sioux, whose maternal grandfather was a brother to Sitting Bull. Her father was a Spaniard and served as a cook on the steamboats that went up and down the Missouri between St. Louis and Fort Benton. The couple had two sons and a daughter. The older son was killed in the South Pacific during WWII. The pair also raised seven of Belle’s children by a former marriage.
Tatsey’s columns came out of his vocation as the tribal policeman in Heart Butte, a tiny village near the Rockies where old ways held on in spite of drunkenness and violence. His columns note a mixture of the two, more like Steinbeck’s “Tortilla Flats” than Will Rogers, if you ask me.
See what you think:
“Levi Aims Back was picked up Sunday night back of Geo. Wippert’s place where he was hung up by one leg on a barbed wire fence. More fences would help the police.”
“Stoles Head Carrier was put up in city jail Sunday night. The boys inside were watching Stoles being searched and nothing much. He picked a pint from the overlap of his belly.”
“There are some women around with patched faces and some colored. That’s because their husbands love them so much. That’s the way Indian makes love. He beats heck out of his wife.”
“The police force have no mercy. Last weekend the Heart Butte trapper went to town in his trapping clothes, gum boots, and late Saturday evening was wading down the main stream in Browning looking for beaver signs. When the paddy wagon came by and took him for no trapper permit. Something was wrong -- he did not know where he was till Monday morning before Judge Scriver.”
“Perry Spotted Eagle, the changeable man, something got into his mind and he went to church last Sunday. That was a good turn he made.”
“Tuesday Heart Butte school put on a party for the basketball team where they served a very nice lunch for the boys and parents and teachers. Mr. LaRue, teacher and coach, gave out the awards to the boys. Rev. Father Steinmetz from Valier made a very nice talk on sports and other games which the boys play. Heart Butte boys were sure interested. They heard some things they will keep in their minds.”
Friday, June 03, 2005
Blackfeet Rhetoric
In Japan right now there is a craze for the child’s game called “scissors, paper, rock.” The players stand together and simultaneously make hand signals for the three things (fingers scissoring, flat hand, fist). Scissors cut paper, paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors. The person who makes dominant hand sign wins. In Japan everybody’s doing it.
Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation ... of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art collection, worth more than $20 million, at ... auctions in New York. ... so he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world... "As both companies were equally good and I just could not choose one, I asked them to please decide between themselves and suggested to use ... rock, paper, scissors."
So they did. Nicholas Maclean, the international director of Christie's Impressionist and modern art department had to make the decision, so he sought consultants: his 11-year-old twins, Flora and Alice... They play the game at school, Alice said, "practically every day." "Everybody knows you always start with scissors," she added. "Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper." Flora piped in. "Since they were beginners, scissors was definitely the safest," she said, adding that if the other side were also to choose scissors and another round was required, the correct play would be to stick to scissors - because, as Alice explained, "Everybody expects you to choose rock."
American mainstream legal rhetoric is supposed to be based on facts, logic and precedents that add up to a conclusion. This strategy is based on years of European culture and must be learned but is not necessarily even valued by other cultures, much less taught. When I was in grad school at the University of Chicago, there was a lawyer who made his living by teaching the Euro method to women, people of color, and other non-Euro people who wished to succeed in law school He said it took two weeks to get them to see what logical, fact-based rhetoric was -- then they could spend the rest of their lives getting good at it. Without this enlightenment, they often flunked out. I had to learn it myself in order to pass theology classes, which are not about spirituality but, again, about logic and precedent.
What I call “Blackfeet rhetoric” is neither fact-based nor logical, but it is a mistake to underestimate this tradition, consider it childish, or to deny that it is there. Rather it would be wise to consider its power. In the pre-Euro days, the Nitsitahpi lived in small family-based groups who circulated around the prairie according to the seasons. Some decisions had to be made quickly -- often decided with emotional persuasion. Like “rock, paper, scissors,” some arguments were more powerful than others, but which were more powerful might be different on different occasions, depending on who was there.
The most persuasive speaker might use any of these arguments:
1. We are related. Our great-grandmothers were the same. We attend the same ceremonies.
2. The past is powerful. We have always done this. Remember those occasions when we prevailed.
3. You owe me. Remember when I fed you? Remember when we took in your whole family when they lost their lodge?
4. The gods smile on me: they have given me a dream and I am inspired. My gods are powerful and make me powerful. (Or, in modern times, “I’ve got good connections in Washington, D.C.”)
5. You know I am prosperous. I will teach you how I do it. We will have more than any of the others.
6. Don’t trust those other people. They are treacherous and steal from you, but I am conscientious and will restore order.
These rhetorical approaches might not win a debate team points at a speech meet, but they are often in letters to the reservation newspaper. As far as that goes, check out politicians of every culture -- though modern politicians feel obliged to add statistics like the unemployment rate or the gross national product -- not for logic, but for emotional effect.
When oldtime Blackfeet had time to move more slowly in their deliberations, they might not use “rock, paper, scissors” but rather choose two very ancient modes of thought: the story and the map. Some would argue that a story IS a map -- or maybe a “song-line” like the Australian aboriginal strategy made famous in Bruce Chatwin’s book. (The songs stood for distances and landmarks, much like what someone might have drawn in dirt or might now sketch on the back of an envelope.)
Darrell Kipp says that the oldest Napi stories were meant to be told in exactly the same ancient words every time, because they code an understanding of the universe and how to be in it, a map. Starting in such a place would be a good strategy for people with time for discussion and reflection as is common in religious contexts.
If the Siksika had had time to mull over the meaning of the wave of white people coming from the East, the culture rooted in the northern prairie would not have been so shattered. But there was very little time -- a couple of hundred years. (Something like the time we’ve had to recognize, analyze and respond to global warming -- that world-changing and deniable.) I am saying that this is a valuable and under-used kind of rhetoric, not to be lightly discarded.
To be anchored in story/myth/narrative as well as maps of relationship across the land, suggests ways of disciplining one’s own behavior -- until those stories are broken, those relationships are torn. When one believes that one’s behavior affects everything in the cosmos and the cosmos has turned chaotic, then one is paralyzed from trying to understand what wrong action caused this trouble and from the impossibility of choosing what to do next for fear of more consequences.
This confused time has nearly passed for the Blackft, even as it has become more and more challenging for the rest of the world. As the Siksika find a new story and learn Euro ways, they acquire skills. Rock, paper, scissors: cooperation, corporation, or gambling?
Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation ... of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art collection, worth more than $20 million, at ... auctions in New York. ... so he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world... "As both companies were equally good and I just could not choose one, I asked them to please decide between themselves and suggested to use ... rock, paper, scissors."
So they did. Nicholas Maclean, the international director of Christie's Impressionist and modern art department had to make the decision, so he sought consultants: his 11-year-old twins, Flora and Alice... They play the game at school, Alice said, "practically every day." "Everybody knows you always start with scissors," she added. "Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper." Flora piped in. "Since they were beginners, scissors was definitely the safest," she said, adding that if the other side were also to choose scissors and another round was required, the correct play would be to stick to scissors - because, as Alice explained, "Everybody expects you to choose rock."
American mainstream legal rhetoric is supposed to be based on facts, logic and precedents that add up to a conclusion. This strategy is based on years of European culture and must be learned but is not necessarily even valued by other cultures, much less taught. When I was in grad school at the University of Chicago, there was a lawyer who made his living by teaching the Euro method to women, people of color, and other non-Euro people who wished to succeed in law school He said it took two weeks to get them to see what logical, fact-based rhetoric was -- then they could spend the rest of their lives getting good at it. Without this enlightenment, they often flunked out. I had to learn it myself in order to pass theology classes, which are not about spirituality but, again, about logic and precedent.
What I call “Blackfeet rhetoric” is neither fact-based nor logical, but it is a mistake to underestimate this tradition, consider it childish, or to deny that it is there. Rather it would be wise to consider its power. In the pre-Euro days, the Nitsitahpi lived in small family-based groups who circulated around the prairie according to the seasons. Some decisions had to be made quickly -- often decided with emotional persuasion. Like “rock, paper, scissors,” some arguments were more powerful than others, but which were more powerful might be different on different occasions, depending on who was there.
The most persuasive speaker might use any of these arguments:
1. We are related. Our great-grandmothers were the same. We attend the same ceremonies.
2. The past is powerful. We have always done this. Remember those occasions when we prevailed.
3. You owe me. Remember when I fed you? Remember when we took in your whole family when they lost their lodge?
4. The gods smile on me: they have given me a dream and I am inspired. My gods are powerful and make me powerful. (Or, in modern times, “I’ve got good connections in Washington, D.C.”)
5. You know I am prosperous. I will teach you how I do it. We will have more than any of the others.
6. Don’t trust those other people. They are treacherous and steal from you, but I am conscientious and will restore order.
These rhetorical approaches might not win a debate team points at a speech meet, but they are often in letters to the reservation newspaper. As far as that goes, check out politicians of every culture -- though modern politicians feel obliged to add statistics like the unemployment rate or the gross national product -- not for logic, but for emotional effect.
When oldtime Blackfeet had time to move more slowly in their deliberations, they might not use “rock, paper, scissors” but rather choose two very ancient modes of thought: the story and the map. Some would argue that a story IS a map -- or maybe a “song-line” like the Australian aboriginal strategy made famous in Bruce Chatwin’s book. (The songs stood for distances and landmarks, much like what someone might have drawn in dirt or might now sketch on the back of an envelope.)
Darrell Kipp says that the oldest Napi stories were meant to be told in exactly the same ancient words every time, because they code an understanding of the universe and how to be in it, a map. Starting in such a place would be a good strategy for people with time for discussion and reflection as is common in religious contexts.
If the Siksika had had time to mull over the meaning of the wave of white people coming from the East, the culture rooted in the northern prairie would not have been so shattered. But there was very little time -- a couple of hundred years. (Something like the time we’ve had to recognize, analyze and respond to global warming -- that world-changing and deniable.) I am saying that this is a valuable and under-used kind of rhetoric, not to be lightly discarded.
To be anchored in story/myth/narrative as well as maps of relationship across the land, suggests ways of disciplining one’s own behavior -- until those stories are broken, those relationships are torn. When one believes that one’s behavior affects everything in the cosmos and the cosmos has turned chaotic, then one is paralyzed from trying to understand what wrong action caused this trouble and from the impossibility of choosing what to do next for fear of more consequences.
This confused time has nearly passed for the Blackft, even as it has become more and more challenging for the rest of the world. As the Siksika find a new story and learn Euro ways, they acquire skills. Rock, paper, scissors: cooperation, corporation, or gambling?
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Browning Newspaper Notes 1960 - 1961
1960
Financial scandal in School District #9 began in 1952. Cloke destroyed all financial records from 6/28/52 to 3/27/59 and all school minutes from 9/15/54 to 2/25/58. County superintendent noted “no problem.” $113,924.35 unaccounted for.
Jan 14
Ned Jacobs, who has been visiting the past few months in New Jersey and Denver, CO, returned to Browning Tuesday.
Jan 28
War Mothers and Legion to Sponsor War Memorial. RMS advisor -- estimates for statues on top, either a soldier or an Indian in a warbonnet.
Ole Jacob Overdahl dies. Born Sept. 17, 1884, Hitra, Norway. Married Alemena Daranger in 1913.
April 14
Lillian Cook was showing the new field nurse, Inez Nelson, around the neighborhood Monday.
April 21
Bison Creek Dude Ranch burned.
War Mothers say the cost of the war memorial is too much.
Black Lodge will give a dance in Starr School. Joe Old Chief and Darrell Blackman will be in charge.
May 19
Darrell Blackman is the valedictorian at BHS.
May 26
Sister Mary Augustine OP, the former Margaret Still Smoking, Dominican Sisters in Kettle Falls, WA
Threats to abandon #49, Looking Glass.
Leslie B. Davis is the assistant curator at the Museum of the Plains Indian.
June 30
Helen West did a story about Starvation Winter, 1883-84.
July 7
George Montgomery filmed Indian Days.
Cloke can’t be prosecuted for missing money -- no evidence, says Welch.
July 28
Sarno arrested -- he’s actually Kenneth Norton, an escapee from Washington.
Aug. 11
The O.A. Telleferos, accompanied by their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Dodd of Everglades National Park, and Mr. and Mrs. Thad Scriver, drove to Kalispell Monday on their 50th Wedding Anniversary. The Telleferos were married in Kalispell fifty years ago.
Sept. 8
Tribal Council fires John Tatsey as “the law” in Heart Butte.`
Nov. 10
Theodore Last Star dies.
1961
Jan 5
Blackfoot schoolhouse burned.
Feb. 2
Photo of Big Medicine on first page.
Big Medicine, the famous albino buffalo that used to roam the range at Moiese National Bison Rance and who thrilled millions of visitors during his lifetime will soon take his place in the state historical museum. the contract and honor of mounting this huge animal was awarded to local taxidermist Bob Scriver whose exceptional talents are nationally recognized. The tanning, molding and mounting process takes about two years and is now in its last stage. The hide was in such poor condition that the job took much longer than usual. The crew of six shown putting the hide on and sewing it are Carl Cree Medicine, James Scriver, Sam Cut Finger, Bob Scriver, Henry Guardipee, and Arlene Lightfield. Albino buffaloes have light blue eyes which Bob had to make.
Joyce Turvey had an open house for John Clarke on his 80th birthday.
Californians Sponsor Modeling Exhibit
“I just got fed up with teaching and decided to do what I had always wanted to ever since I was a kid. I never really liked teaching and had always puttered around mounting small birds and animals as a hobby.” That was how Bob Scriver of Browning became one of America’s top taxidermists, if not one of the best known and recognized on the continent. “I was making a pretty good living teaching music, first at Malta, then Browning,” he added, “And having a lot of fun besides, making a few extra dollars playing one-night stands three or four times a week with a little get-together band, but I always dreamed of having a business of my own.
“While attending my local art display last friday, Vert Munt recalled the time I made up my mind to set up shop. We were playing a dance and I guess I wasn’t exactly with it when Vern leaned over and asked me what was wrong.
“How do you think a novelty and taxidermy business would do in Browning? ‘ I asked.
“Vern shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and replied, ‘You never will know until you try.’
That was in 1950 and I went to work the next day. I took down my Master’s Degree and hung up my taxidermy sign.” Since then Bob has come a long way. Not only is he a top man in the art of taxidermy, he does a mighty fine job of painting and is well on his way to recognition as a Western sculptor.
The original one-room two-story Scriver Taxidermy Studio where he first set up shop in 1950 has grown with the increasing orders and Bob’s reputation. In 1959 a 30X40 foot display room was added as a west wing, but as the specimens became more numerous and because his sculptured pieces attracted attention, still another wing was necessary so another wing was added to the west wing, giving birth to the new 3-room Museum of Montana Wildlife. “A real dream come true,” Bob mused as he leafed through the thick registration book contianing many great names from all walks of life.
His first serious attempt at sculpturing came when in 1957 the Charlie Russell contest was announced. Prior to this time he had made hundreds of miniature animal and wildlife statues which he molded, painted and sold in his wildlife museum, a high successful and expanding institute constructed after many notable art personalities had offered suggestions and encouragement. “I really got my ears pinned back in the Russell contest,” he grinned. “But maybe that was a good thing, because it made me more determined than ever to do some serious and original sculpturing...I always liked animals -- guess that’s really why I turned to taxidermy -- so I went to work modeling from my mounted trophies and after studying a few books. I even bought a horse to use as a model.”
Asked where all his inspiration come from, he replied, “I don’t always know. Sometimes I just sit down to watch TV and pretty soon I pick up a handful of clay, and when the show is over I have something started -- so, I really go to work on it.”
It was three years ago that two prominient California collectors and lovers of art came through Browning and stopped at Bob’s Museum of Montana Wildlife, then a two room structure. Dr. and Mrs. C.L. Roberts of Glendale, CA, collectors of Remington and Russell works, and Dr. and Mrs. B. Hill of Northridge, CA., who are collectors and admirers of Indian arts, were so impressed with Bob’s work and displays that they later wrote him, offering to sponsor a private showing if he would bring his displays to CA.
“I was certainly surprised,” Bob admitted, “Although I had received many fine compliments from high-rated artists, sculptors, and collectors, I just didn’t feel I was ready for that step, and then, too, I wanted to do some larger and more complicated pieces.” After several more invitations form the doctors and after having completed the pieces he had in mind, this year Bob accepted the invitation and left Sunday with his son, Jim, taking 29 pieces which will be displayed at two private showings March 16 through 19. Attendance is by invitation only and many collectors and notables are expected to attend.
“It’s the first big step, so they tell me,” Bob commented with a shrug -- “But I don’t know.”
“How do you feel about it? Are you nervous?” the reporter asked.
“Well, naturally I’m happy and excited, but we’ll just have to wait and see. This is all new to me.”
Modest and reluctant to discuss the quality of his sculpturing or his success as a taxidermist, Bob always manages to evade any conversation that might tend to sound like a self-styled compliment or an admission of a job well-done. he has a shy knack of switching the praise of his work to a comparison with long recognized artists, and makes a big point of details he has been unable to accomplish in his own works. He will point to some blend of paints or some molded gesture in the better known works and end the conversation with “See what I mean? I wish I had that.”
Bob’s recognition in taxidermy is not accident; nor is his turn to sculpturing just by chance. To build the mannequin properly for naturalness, a taxidermist must have a gift for modeling and certainly Bob has it. His success as a taxidermist has brought him many special assignments from coat to coast and as far away as Alaska. His most prized assignment was the contract to moun the famous white buffalo, “Big Medicine,” who attracted thousands of visitors to the National Bison Range at at Moiese piror to his death two years ago. Big Medicine was the only albino buffalo in the US. “He had the poorest hide I ever worked with, “Bob stated. “But we did a good job considering.” This contract came from the State Historical Society where Big Medicine will be displayed.
Other assignments came from the San Francisco Museum at which time Scriver was chosen to mount a rare desert ram and an almost extinct black-tailed jackrabbit. he has done several special assignments for the Montana Fish and Game Commission and the museum at Fort Benton.
Changing the subject back to sculpturing, Bob remarked with a grin, “So far I haven’t made any money at sculpturing. Actually, I have had to rely on my taxidermy and make bear rugs to pay for the modeling clay.”
A perfectionist for detail, Bob uses all live models for his human works, live or mounted models for animals and birds. So detailed are some of his works that if one looks closely at the “Hunting Party,” they will see a tiny bird sitting on a bush and a little chipmunk partially concealed on a grass-covered log.
To achieve authenticality of his Indian sculptured pieces, Bob invited criticism from authorities such as Dr. Claude E. Schauffer, curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian, and Dr. John C. Ewers of the Smithsonian Institute. “They certainly were a big help,” Bob compliments, “and they pointed out a good many details in dress and other details I would never have thought of.”
Bob was accepted as a member of the exclusive National Society of American Artists which membership alone gives him national recognition.
Immediately upon entering Bob’s house, one knows it could be the residence of none other than an artist and sculptor. He and his son Jim call it their bachelor headquarters. Paintings done by nationally known artists cover the walls, ranging in size from 4” by 6” to 4’ by 8’. Some of Bob’s own oils and watercolors are not unnoticeable beside the better knowns.
Sculptured models occupy every corner, shelf, flat space, and even the chairs. “Just a minute and I’ll move this,” Bob says as he picks up a freshly started piece. “I started this last night and didn’t finish it. Maybe we can find room to sit down.”
As we sat down for a chat “Kitty #2” jumps up into Bob’s lap and takes her place around the back of Bob’s neck, looking much like a gray and white spotted neckpiece.
“Our housekeeper,” Bob laughs. “Now what were we talking about...”
Thus concludes the notes I have in my files. These notes were made from Montana Historical Society microfilms for the purpose of writing a biography of Bob Scriver. I stopped at the point where I arrived on the scene in Browning. In posting this material I’ve dropped out a lot of items, partly because there was an overabundance of detail about Bob Scriver. I also omitted a few bits of news that were unhappy for some folks and didn’t bear repeating.
Financial scandal in School District #9 began in 1952. Cloke destroyed all financial records from 6/28/52 to 3/27/59 and all school minutes from 9/15/54 to 2/25/58. County superintendent noted “no problem.” $113,924.35 unaccounted for.
Jan 14
Ned Jacobs, who has been visiting the past few months in New Jersey and Denver, CO, returned to Browning Tuesday.
Jan 28
War Mothers and Legion to Sponsor War Memorial. RMS advisor -- estimates for statues on top, either a soldier or an Indian in a warbonnet.
Ole Jacob Overdahl dies. Born Sept. 17, 1884, Hitra, Norway. Married Alemena Daranger in 1913.
April 14
Lillian Cook was showing the new field nurse, Inez Nelson, around the neighborhood Monday.
April 21
Bison Creek Dude Ranch burned.
War Mothers say the cost of the war memorial is too much.
Black Lodge will give a dance in Starr School. Joe Old Chief and Darrell Blackman will be in charge.
May 19
Darrell Blackman is the valedictorian at BHS.
May 26
Sister Mary Augustine OP, the former Margaret Still Smoking, Dominican Sisters in Kettle Falls, WA
Threats to abandon #49, Looking Glass.
Leslie B. Davis is the assistant curator at the Museum of the Plains Indian.
June 30
Helen West did a story about Starvation Winter, 1883-84.
July 7
George Montgomery filmed Indian Days.
Cloke can’t be prosecuted for missing money -- no evidence, says Welch.
July 28
Sarno arrested -- he’s actually Kenneth Norton, an escapee from Washington.
Aug. 11
The O.A. Telleferos, accompanied by their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Dodd of Everglades National Park, and Mr. and Mrs. Thad Scriver, drove to Kalispell Monday on their 50th Wedding Anniversary. The Telleferos were married in Kalispell fifty years ago.
Sept. 8
Tribal Council fires John Tatsey as “the law” in Heart Butte.`
Nov. 10
Theodore Last Star dies.
1961
Jan 5
Blackfoot schoolhouse burned.
Feb. 2
Photo of Big Medicine on first page.
Big Medicine, the famous albino buffalo that used to roam the range at Moiese National Bison Rance and who thrilled millions of visitors during his lifetime will soon take his place in the state historical museum. the contract and honor of mounting this huge animal was awarded to local taxidermist Bob Scriver whose exceptional talents are nationally recognized. The tanning, molding and mounting process takes about two years and is now in its last stage. The hide was in such poor condition that the job took much longer than usual. The crew of six shown putting the hide on and sewing it are Carl Cree Medicine, James Scriver, Sam Cut Finger, Bob Scriver, Henry Guardipee, and Arlene Lightfield. Albino buffaloes have light blue eyes which Bob had to make.
Joyce Turvey had an open house for John Clarke on his 80th birthday.
Californians Sponsor Modeling Exhibit
“I just got fed up with teaching and decided to do what I had always wanted to ever since I was a kid. I never really liked teaching and had always puttered around mounting small birds and animals as a hobby.” That was how Bob Scriver of Browning became one of America’s top taxidermists, if not one of the best known and recognized on the continent. “I was making a pretty good living teaching music, first at Malta, then Browning,” he added, “And having a lot of fun besides, making a few extra dollars playing one-night stands three or four times a week with a little get-together band, but I always dreamed of having a business of my own.
“While attending my local art display last friday, Vert Munt recalled the time I made up my mind to set up shop. We were playing a dance and I guess I wasn’t exactly with it when Vern leaned over and asked me what was wrong.
“How do you think a novelty and taxidermy business would do in Browning? ‘ I asked.
“Vern shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and replied, ‘You never will know until you try.’
That was in 1950 and I went to work the next day. I took down my Master’s Degree and hung up my taxidermy sign.” Since then Bob has come a long way. Not only is he a top man in the art of taxidermy, he does a mighty fine job of painting and is well on his way to recognition as a Western sculptor.
The original one-room two-story Scriver Taxidermy Studio where he first set up shop in 1950 has grown with the increasing orders and Bob’s reputation. In 1959 a 30X40 foot display room was added as a west wing, but as the specimens became more numerous and because his sculptured pieces attracted attention, still another wing was necessary so another wing was added to the west wing, giving birth to the new 3-room Museum of Montana Wildlife. “A real dream come true,” Bob mused as he leafed through the thick registration book contianing many great names from all walks of life.
His first serious attempt at sculpturing came when in 1957 the Charlie Russell contest was announced. Prior to this time he had made hundreds of miniature animal and wildlife statues which he molded, painted and sold in his wildlife museum, a high successful and expanding institute constructed after many notable art personalities had offered suggestions and encouragement. “I really got my ears pinned back in the Russell contest,” he grinned. “But maybe that was a good thing, because it made me more determined than ever to do some serious and original sculpturing...I always liked animals -- guess that’s really why I turned to taxidermy -- so I went to work modeling from my mounted trophies and after studying a few books. I even bought a horse to use as a model.”
Asked where all his inspiration come from, he replied, “I don’t always know. Sometimes I just sit down to watch TV and pretty soon I pick up a handful of clay, and when the show is over I have something started -- so, I really go to work on it.”
It was three years ago that two prominient California collectors and lovers of art came through Browning and stopped at Bob’s Museum of Montana Wildlife, then a two room structure. Dr. and Mrs. C.L. Roberts of Glendale, CA, collectors of Remington and Russell works, and Dr. and Mrs. B. Hill of Northridge, CA., who are collectors and admirers of Indian arts, were so impressed with Bob’s work and displays that they later wrote him, offering to sponsor a private showing if he would bring his displays to CA.
“I was certainly surprised,” Bob admitted, “Although I had received many fine compliments from high-rated artists, sculptors, and collectors, I just didn’t feel I was ready for that step, and then, too, I wanted to do some larger and more complicated pieces.” After several more invitations form the doctors and after having completed the pieces he had in mind, this year Bob accepted the invitation and left Sunday with his son, Jim, taking 29 pieces which will be displayed at two private showings March 16 through 19. Attendance is by invitation only and many collectors and notables are expected to attend.
“It’s the first big step, so they tell me,” Bob commented with a shrug -- “But I don’t know.”
“How do you feel about it? Are you nervous?” the reporter asked.
“Well, naturally I’m happy and excited, but we’ll just have to wait and see. This is all new to me.”
Modest and reluctant to discuss the quality of his sculpturing or his success as a taxidermist, Bob always manages to evade any conversation that might tend to sound like a self-styled compliment or an admission of a job well-done. he has a shy knack of switching the praise of his work to a comparison with long recognized artists, and makes a big point of details he has been unable to accomplish in his own works. He will point to some blend of paints or some molded gesture in the better known works and end the conversation with “See what I mean? I wish I had that.”
Bob’s recognition in taxidermy is not accident; nor is his turn to sculpturing just by chance. To build the mannequin properly for naturalness, a taxidermist must have a gift for modeling and certainly Bob has it. His success as a taxidermist has brought him many special assignments from coat to coast and as far away as Alaska. His most prized assignment was the contract to moun the famous white buffalo, “Big Medicine,” who attracted thousands of visitors to the National Bison Range at at Moiese piror to his death two years ago. Big Medicine was the only albino buffalo in the US. “He had the poorest hide I ever worked with, “Bob stated. “But we did a good job considering.” This contract came from the State Historical Society where Big Medicine will be displayed.
Other assignments came from the San Francisco Museum at which time Scriver was chosen to mount a rare desert ram and an almost extinct black-tailed jackrabbit. he has done several special assignments for the Montana Fish and Game Commission and the museum at Fort Benton.
Changing the subject back to sculpturing, Bob remarked with a grin, “So far I haven’t made any money at sculpturing. Actually, I have had to rely on my taxidermy and make bear rugs to pay for the modeling clay.”
A perfectionist for detail, Bob uses all live models for his human works, live or mounted models for animals and birds. So detailed are some of his works that if one looks closely at the “Hunting Party,” they will see a tiny bird sitting on a bush and a little chipmunk partially concealed on a grass-covered log.
To achieve authenticality of his Indian sculptured pieces, Bob invited criticism from authorities such as Dr. Claude E. Schauffer, curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian, and Dr. John C. Ewers of the Smithsonian Institute. “They certainly were a big help,” Bob compliments, “and they pointed out a good many details in dress and other details I would never have thought of.”
Bob was accepted as a member of the exclusive National Society of American Artists which membership alone gives him national recognition.
Immediately upon entering Bob’s house, one knows it could be the residence of none other than an artist and sculptor. He and his son Jim call it their bachelor headquarters. Paintings done by nationally known artists cover the walls, ranging in size from 4” by 6” to 4’ by 8’. Some of Bob’s own oils and watercolors are not unnoticeable beside the better knowns.
Sculptured models occupy every corner, shelf, flat space, and even the chairs. “Just a minute and I’ll move this,” Bob says as he picks up a freshly started piece. “I started this last night and didn’t finish it. Maybe we can find room to sit down.”
As we sat down for a chat “Kitty #2” jumps up into Bob’s lap and takes her place around the back of Bob’s neck, looking much like a gray and white spotted neckpiece.
“Our housekeeper,” Bob laughs. “Now what were we talking about...”
Thus concludes the notes I have in my files. These notes were made from Montana Historical Society microfilms for the purpose of writing a biography of Bob Scriver. I stopped at the point where I arrived on the scene in Browning. In posting this material I’ve dropped out a lot of items, partly because there was an overabundance of detail about Bob Scriver. I also omitted a few bits of news that were unhappy for some folks and didn’t bear repeating.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Browning Newspaper Notes 1957 - 1959
Oct. 31
Flood control project underway in Browning.
Nov. 28
Surveying #2 Highway reroute around Browning.
Dec. 12
Albert Vaile Jr. Bags Huge Mountain Lion
1958
Jan. 16
Bernie Wilson is chief of police
Jan 21
Newspaper is serializing “North of Fort Bridger” by Renshaw.
Jay Franklin (Wilma’s husband) is very ill.
Feb. 6
Theodore Last Star and Cecile, with Audra Pambrun as medical support, taken to Great Falls with a bad heart.
Marion Garrow starts as school clerk.
Feb. 13
Among Browningites attending the Glacier County Wildlife Association meetings in Cut Bank were Harold Douglas, Bob Scriver, and Fred DesRosier.
March 6
Barney Weasel Head climbs the water tower.
March 27
Bill Riddle is in Browning.
May 29
Last Star chair of Indian Days
July 10
Vaccinations for polio
Multiple slide show at the Indian Museum.
July 17
Tom Kehoe, Ph.D. at Harvard. Donald Miles Kehoe, born in Boston. Sam, the Blackfeet Indian dog
MAJOR POLIO CAMPAIGN No Indian Days because of epidemic
July 31
Spitzer (anthro) back.
Aug 7, 1958
Eddie Big Beaver Services Set for Saturday Morning
Funeral services have been set for Saturday, August 9, at 10Am in Little Flower Catholic Church for Eddie James Big Beaver, Sr., 79, whose body was found in an irrigation ditch between Yakima and Toppenish, WA, early this week. Authorities believe his body had been in the ditch about six days before discovery. Big Beaver was a full-blood Blackfeet Indian who spoke excellent English and was regarded as a competent game-keeper, experienced in the handling of all kinds of animals and an experienced show man, having done this type of work in different sections of the US. In 1931, during his employment with South Park, a director for the Bureau of Parks described him as a “picturesque full-blood Blackfeet.” During his lifetime his activities were many and varied. In 1935 he and four other Blackfeet Indians were employed by Ringling Bros. Circus. He was also a one-time game warden at Pittsburg. In 1936 Big Beaver was requested to participate in the Natioinal Folk Festival at the Texas Centennial, an educational and cultural organization that brought together different Indian groups from many regions of the US In 1939 he was employed by the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in the motion picture “Susannah of the Mounties.” Survivors include sons, Sam Wolverine, Eddie Big Beaver Jr. & Lynus; Daughters, Joyce Boy and Margaret Boy and 11 grandchildren. [Death was due to a fractured skull from a blow on the head.].
Aug 21
Ned Jacob and Ace Powell of Hungry Horse were Browning visitors Tuesday of last week.
Sept. 4
50% Increase in Juvenile Delinquency
Nov 6
Hunting in the Teton Canyon area Sunday were Don Watson, Harold Scriver and party, the Oscar Doane and MK Fields families.
Nov 13
New Renshaw novel: “Among Sun’s People.”
Nov. 27
No more Reiss Great Northern calendars.
1959
Jan 29
Conducting Art Classes
Ned Jacob is conducting free art classes in the Agency Barracks every Saturday at 1 PM for persons who are 13 years of age or over. The purpose of the classes is to discover and develop the artistic talent of the local youngsters and the response to the project will determine whether or not financial sponsorship will be available in the future.
Feb. 5
Victor Pepion Dies in Great Falls
Word has been received here Wednesday of the death of Victor Pepion, 59, who passed away in the Columbus Hospital in Great Falls at 8:30 AM, a victim of cancer from which he had suffered for the past year. Mr. Pepion had been a native of Dupuyer all his life and had worked on various large cattle ranches throughout the state. Funeral arrangements at this time have not been completed but Mass will be held in the Mission Church and Burial will take place in the Robaire Cemetary near Birch Creek. Survivors include his widow, Daisy; a daughter Mildred Vielle of South Gate, CA; Stepson Vernon of Browning; 3 brothers, John, Tom and Frank, also of Browning; 3 sisters Mary Clark, Josephine Bull Calf Jr. of Browning and Louise Rutherford of Hana, Germany. Several grandchildren also mourn his passing.
March 19
Letter from behind Iron Curtain.
April 9
Train wreck in CB
May 14
Phil Ward is superintendent.
June 4
Tom Kehoe goes to Regina: Provincial Archeologist & Curator of Archeology and Ethnology at the new Museum of Natural History
July 2
Sun Lodge
July 9
Dorothy Johnson named by Charlie Reevis: “Princess Kills Both Places”. Milo Fields named “Chief Running Rabbit” by Dan Bull Plume
Rev. Jim Bell is here as the Methodist minister.
July 16
Photos of Sun Lodge
Aug 20
Jack Holterman and Bobby Salabye of Kearns Canyon, AZ, are spending two weeks at the Holterman cabin at St. Mary Lake.
Sept. 17
Browning Taxidermist Asks for Transfer of Alaskan Albino Buffalo
Bob Scriver, Browning taxidermist and Western sculptor, has requested that Senator Mansfield use his influence in getting one of Alaska’s two albino bison transferred to Montana. “Big Medicine,” Montana’s only albino buffalo, died Aug 25 of this year, leaving the state minus a popular tourist attraction. The two albino biosn in Alaska are descendents of “Big Medicine,” Scriver thinks, as the Big Delta herd was stocked from the Moiese herd of Montana. White buffalo were at one time a sacred animal to the Indians and it was considered an extremely lucky omen to even sight one.
Sept.24
Ace Powell and Ned Jacob of Hungry Horse were Browning visitors Monday. Ned has been wrangling horses at Lake McDonald during the tourist season.
Oct 8
Al Racine is carving a memorial plaque.
Isabelle McKay’s death.
School funds scandal.
Oct 15
“All the Young Men” filmed in Many Glacier.
Oct 8
Al Racine is carving a memorial plaque.
Isabelle McKay’s death.
Oct 15
“All the Young Men” filmed in Many Glacier.
October 22
Earthquake
Oct 29
Dr. GA Matson of U of Minn is taking blood samples.
Dr. Schaffer returns to the Museum of the Plains Indian.
Dec. 3
Mrs. Margaret Starr returned from a visit with nephews and nieces in Alberta. She has been away for several weeks but a nephew, Mr. Caldwell, who works at the Browning Mercantile Co., drove up during the holidays and brought her back.
Dec. 10
Word comes from Alaska that both albino calves are dead.
Flood control project underway in Browning.
Nov. 28
Surveying #2 Highway reroute around Browning.
Dec. 12
Albert Vaile Jr. Bags Huge Mountain Lion
1958
Jan. 16
Bernie Wilson is chief of police
Jan 21
Newspaper is serializing “North of Fort Bridger” by Renshaw.
Jay Franklin (Wilma’s husband) is very ill.
Feb. 6
Theodore Last Star and Cecile, with Audra Pambrun as medical support, taken to Great Falls with a bad heart.
Marion Garrow starts as school clerk.
Feb. 13
Among Browningites attending the Glacier County Wildlife Association meetings in Cut Bank were Harold Douglas, Bob Scriver, and Fred DesRosier.
March 6
Barney Weasel Head climbs the water tower.
March 27
Bill Riddle is in Browning.
May 29
Last Star chair of Indian Days
July 10
Vaccinations for polio
Multiple slide show at the Indian Museum.
July 17
Tom Kehoe, Ph.D. at Harvard. Donald Miles Kehoe, born in Boston. Sam, the Blackfeet Indian dog
MAJOR POLIO CAMPAIGN No Indian Days because of epidemic
July 31
Spitzer (anthro) back.
Aug 7, 1958
Eddie Big Beaver Services Set for Saturday Morning
Funeral services have been set for Saturday, August 9, at 10Am in Little Flower Catholic Church for Eddie James Big Beaver, Sr., 79, whose body was found in an irrigation ditch between Yakima and Toppenish, WA, early this week. Authorities believe his body had been in the ditch about six days before discovery. Big Beaver was a full-blood Blackfeet Indian who spoke excellent English and was regarded as a competent game-keeper, experienced in the handling of all kinds of animals and an experienced show man, having done this type of work in different sections of the US. In 1931, during his employment with South Park, a director for the Bureau of Parks described him as a “picturesque full-blood Blackfeet.” During his lifetime his activities were many and varied. In 1935 he and four other Blackfeet Indians were employed by Ringling Bros. Circus. He was also a one-time game warden at Pittsburg. In 1936 Big Beaver was requested to participate in the Natioinal Folk Festival at the Texas Centennial, an educational and cultural organization that brought together different Indian groups from many regions of the US In 1939 he was employed by the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in the motion picture “Susannah of the Mounties.” Survivors include sons, Sam Wolverine, Eddie Big Beaver Jr. & Lynus; Daughters, Joyce Boy and Margaret Boy and 11 grandchildren. [Death was due to a fractured skull from a blow on the head.].
Aug 21
Ned Jacob and Ace Powell of Hungry Horse were Browning visitors Tuesday of last week.
Sept. 4
50% Increase in Juvenile Delinquency
Nov 6
Hunting in the Teton Canyon area Sunday were Don Watson, Harold Scriver and party, the Oscar Doane and MK Fields families.
Nov 13
New Renshaw novel: “Among Sun’s People.”
Nov. 27
No more Reiss Great Northern calendars.
1959
Jan 29
Conducting Art Classes
Ned Jacob is conducting free art classes in the Agency Barracks every Saturday at 1 PM for persons who are 13 years of age or over. The purpose of the classes is to discover and develop the artistic talent of the local youngsters and the response to the project will determine whether or not financial sponsorship will be available in the future.
Feb. 5
Victor Pepion Dies in Great Falls
Word has been received here Wednesday of the death of Victor Pepion, 59, who passed away in the Columbus Hospital in Great Falls at 8:30 AM, a victim of cancer from which he had suffered for the past year. Mr. Pepion had been a native of Dupuyer all his life and had worked on various large cattle ranches throughout the state. Funeral arrangements at this time have not been completed but Mass will be held in the Mission Church and Burial will take place in the Robaire Cemetary near Birch Creek. Survivors include his widow, Daisy; a daughter Mildred Vielle of South Gate, CA; Stepson Vernon of Browning; 3 brothers, John, Tom and Frank, also of Browning; 3 sisters Mary Clark, Josephine Bull Calf Jr. of Browning and Louise Rutherford of Hana, Germany. Several grandchildren also mourn his passing.
March 19
Letter from behind Iron Curtain.
April 9
Train wreck in CB
May 14
Phil Ward is superintendent.
June 4
Tom Kehoe goes to Regina: Provincial Archeologist & Curator of Archeology and Ethnology at the new Museum of Natural History
July 2
Sun Lodge
July 9
Dorothy Johnson named by Charlie Reevis: “Princess Kills Both Places”. Milo Fields named “Chief Running Rabbit” by Dan Bull Plume
Rev. Jim Bell is here as the Methodist minister.
July 16
Photos of Sun Lodge
Aug 20
Jack Holterman and Bobby Salabye of Kearns Canyon, AZ, are spending two weeks at the Holterman cabin at St. Mary Lake.
Sept. 17
Browning Taxidermist Asks for Transfer of Alaskan Albino Buffalo
Bob Scriver, Browning taxidermist and Western sculptor, has requested that Senator Mansfield use his influence in getting one of Alaska’s two albino bison transferred to Montana. “Big Medicine,” Montana’s only albino buffalo, died Aug 25 of this year, leaving the state minus a popular tourist attraction. The two albino biosn in Alaska are descendents of “Big Medicine,” Scriver thinks, as the Big Delta herd was stocked from the Moiese herd of Montana. White buffalo were at one time a sacred animal to the Indians and it was considered an extremely lucky omen to even sight one.
Sept.24
Ace Powell and Ned Jacob of Hungry Horse were Browning visitors Monday. Ned has been wrangling horses at Lake McDonald during the tourist season.
Oct 8
Al Racine is carving a memorial plaque.
Isabelle McKay’s death.
School funds scandal.
Oct 15
“All the Young Men” filmed in Many Glacier.
Oct 8
Al Racine is carving a memorial plaque.
Isabelle McKay’s death.
Oct 15
“All the Young Men” filmed in Many Glacier.
October 22
Earthquake
Oct 29
Dr. GA Matson of U of Minn is taking blood samples.
Dr. Schaffer returns to the Museum of the Plains Indian.
Dec. 3
Mrs. Margaret Starr returned from a visit with nephews and nieces in Alberta. She has been away for several weeks but a nephew, Mr. Caldwell, who works at the Browning Mercantile Co., drove up during the holidays and brought her back.
Dec. 10
Word comes from Alaska that both albino calves are dead.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Browning Newspaper Notes 1956 - 1957
August 16, 1956
Harold Boyd married Marjorie Upham. Their daughter is Jerri Ann.
October 4, 1956
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Kehoe are home from Alberta after nine week’s motor trip to points of historic interest. They visited the Blood Indian Reservation where he did research concerning Indian archeology. Thomas F. Kehoe and Miss Alice Beck were married at 7 PM on Sept. 18 in the Museum Cottage by Robert Scriver, Justice of the Peace. Dr. and Mrs. George Raymond were witnesses for the couple. Guests: Mr.and Mrs. Roman Beck of Hartsdale, NY, parents of the bride; Mrs. Scriver; Mr. and Mrs. George Andren; Mrs. Georgia Hyde; Mrs. Dorothy Overdahl; Mrs. Nora Spanish; Mrs. Katie Croff; Miss Lillian Cook; Mrs. Catharine Williams; Mrs. Helen Chattin; Miss Catherine Williams; Miss Helen Chattin; Charles Burns; Master Edward Hyde; Miss Janice Raymond; Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Big Springs and young Bill.
Oct 11
Artists To Do Series of Blackfeet Paintings
Ace Powell & Morris Blake, painters and photographers from Hungry Horse, are spending a few days in this area in quest of suitable subjects depicting the tue Old Time Blackfeet Indian and the modern Indian of today. They plan to do a series of paintings depicting the transition of fullbloods and whites into a common race.
October 25, 1956
Committee Directing Waiver to Make Changes
Dan Whetstone on committee.
Nov. 8, 1956
LT Aubrey to Attend Fine Arts Meeting at Helena
LT Aubrey will attend a meeting of the Montana Fine Arts Club in Helena on Saturday, Nov. 24 at which time various artists and sculptors throughout the state will be recommended to submit models of a Charles Russell Statue. From this group of entries the committee is expected to pick the one to be used in making the life-sized statue of the state’s famous artist to be placed in the National Statuary Hall of Fame in Washington DC. At the meeting Aubrey will nominate Evelyn Cole of Chinook as one of the competitors for modeling the statue. While in Browning he visited Bob Scriver, whom he is trying to persuade to submit a model.
Wilma Franklin and husband take over Todd’s Steakhouse
Nove. 13, 1956
Dump fire consumed Fred Cobell ranch, also Frank Trombley’s barn and hay.
Averill teachiing art.
November 23
Talbott & Betsey Jennings sold a script for a Western. [They were major league screenwriters. Probably the height of their achievements was the script for “The Good Earth.”]
December 13
Relocation underway. [This was part of the plan for ending reservations: send everyone to the city where they would learn to weld or something. Because the planning and funding was inadequate, the real result was the creation of Indian ghettoes in Western cities, which then bloomed into the empowerment movement most people know as AIM -- the American Indian Movement.]
1957
January 3, 1957
GPCo dumps being closed in hopes of clearing bears away from tourist centers. [The actual unforeseen consequence was increased dangers as hungry bears roamed in search of food instead of growing fat on garbage.]
Jan 17
The doings of “Miss Cook” or “Cookie.” [A public health nurse, Cookie waded into all sorts of dubious situations, scrubbing chldren and rescuing animals. She was an old-fashioned interfering visiting nurse and many loved her for it.]
Jan 28,
Now Herman Lucke is president of the Wildlife Club and Earl Eastwood is the head of the Chamber of Commerce.
Feb. 14
New Cut Bank County library
Highway 2 closed by slides.
April 4, 1957
Photo of Bob’s Portrayal of CMR
Sponsored by the Browning Chamber of Commerce. Like a great many other state artists, Bob was interested in the contest from the start but the controversy and political bickering which developed soon disgusted him and he had all but give up the idea of finishing the small two-foot model shown above but friends who were famliar with his talents urged him to continue with the Chamber of Commerce as sponsor. Casts of the two foot model are $25.
School District 7 is 25 by 35 miles along 2 Med and Big Badger. [This is a loosely coherent community with its roots in the Old Agency.]
April 11, 1957
Mr. Shannon died. Widow is Aline Shannon, son Mac in San Fernando, CA, Ruth (Mrs. Anthony Nace) in Santa Barbara, CA. [Mrs. Shannon later married Jim Ledbetter.]
May 2
Blanket beaver is one over 66 inches.
Proposed Indian Museum and Visitor’s Center at St. Mary.
May 23
Gambles building finished.
Mrs. Irene Little Dog died.
Word has been received of the illness of Hart M. Schultz of Greer, AZ, who would appreciate hearing from friends and relatives in Browning. Mr. Schultz has been hospitalized during the past six weeks.
June 13
Russell Memorial Museum Approves Scriver’s Model
Word has been received from the C.M.R. Memorial Museum of Great Falls that they have accepted Bob Scriver’s model statue of Russell for exhibition and will also handle the sale of the two foot high models in that area. The board of directors paid high tribute to Scriver’s talent and ability as a sculptor, expressing their opinion that Bob’s statue was the most natural and life-like work they had yet seen. ...from all indications it would be adjudged that the contest is not entirely flawless and is a much muddled up affair giving cause to much disgust and suspicion.
June 20
Word had been received that Hart Schultz of Greer, AZ, who has been hospitalized for the past two months has been released from the hospital and is recovering at home, showing daily improvement.
June 27
Judges Named to Select Best Statue of Charlie
Charlie Beil. sculptor from Banff, Alberta
John K. Shermon, art critic for the Minneapolis Tribune
Alex Ettle, president of Sculpture House (art supply co.)
Aug 1
Tom Many Guns brings Margaret back from Canada to be his wife. [She told me once that she much preferred Tom to her first husband, who had a tendency to beat her because he was old-fashioned. )
Aug 15
Phil Ward gets his master’s in Oklahoma.
Aug. 22
Keith Seele visiting. Chewing Black Bone names him “Sits in the Middle.” Ish-tut-sick-taupi.
Sept. 19
Gary Cooper inducted into the tribe. Name: “Chief Eagle Cloud.”
Oct. 3
“Kindergarten Hill” leveled.
Oct. 17
Standpipe fell out of the watertank!
The marriage of Mrs. Lexipar Arias to John Bird Earrings was solemnized by Judge Robert Scriver last Friday evening. The newlyweds will motor to Alberta next week to spend their honeymoon. [Lexipar, who was much younger than her bridegroom, only died recently. To say she was a character would be to understate the case, but she was firmly convinced she was an Indian princess despite the obviously opposite facts.]
Harold Boyd married Marjorie Upham. Their daughter is Jerri Ann.
October 4, 1956
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Kehoe are home from Alberta after nine week’s motor trip to points of historic interest. They visited the Blood Indian Reservation where he did research concerning Indian archeology. Thomas F. Kehoe and Miss Alice Beck were married at 7 PM on Sept. 18 in the Museum Cottage by Robert Scriver, Justice of the Peace. Dr. and Mrs. George Raymond were witnesses for the couple. Guests: Mr.and Mrs. Roman Beck of Hartsdale, NY, parents of the bride; Mrs. Scriver; Mr. and Mrs. George Andren; Mrs. Georgia Hyde; Mrs. Dorothy Overdahl; Mrs. Nora Spanish; Mrs. Katie Croff; Miss Lillian Cook; Mrs. Catharine Williams; Mrs. Helen Chattin; Miss Catherine Williams; Miss Helen Chattin; Charles Burns; Master Edward Hyde; Miss Janice Raymond; Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Big Springs and young Bill.
Oct 11
Artists To Do Series of Blackfeet Paintings
Ace Powell & Morris Blake, painters and photographers from Hungry Horse, are spending a few days in this area in quest of suitable subjects depicting the tue Old Time Blackfeet Indian and the modern Indian of today. They plan to do a series of paintings depicting the transition of fullbloods and whites into a common race.
October 25, 1956
Committee Directing Waiver to Make Changes
Dan Whetstone on committee.
Nov. 8, 1956
LT Aubrey to Attend Fine Arts Meeting at Helena
LT Aubrey will attend a meeting of the Montana Fine Arts Club in Helena on Saturday, Nov. 24 at which time various artists and sculptors throughout the state will be recommended to submit models of a Charles Russell Statue. From this group of entries the committee is expected to pick the one to be used in making the life-sized statue of the state’s famous artist to be placed in the National Statuary Hall of Fame in Washington DC. At the meeting Aubrey will nominate Evelyn Cole of Chinook as one of the competitors for modeling the statue. While in Browning he visited Bob Scriver, whom he is trying to persuade to submit a model.
Wilma Franklin and husband take over Todd’s Steakhouse
Nove. 13, 1956
Dump fire consumed Fred Cobell ranch, also Frank Trombley’s barn and hay.
Averill teachiing art.
November 23
Talbott & Betsey Jennings sold a script for a Western. [They were major league screenwriters. Probably the height of their achievements was the script for “The Good Earth.”]
December 13
Relocation underway. [This was part of the plan for ending reservations: send everyone to the city where they would learn to weld or something. Because the planning and funding was inadequate, the real result was the creation of Indian ghettoes in Western cities, which then bloomed into the empowerment movement most people know as AIM -- the American Indian Movement.]
1957
January 3, 1957
GPCo dumps being closed in hopes of clearing bears away from tourist centers. [The actual unforeseen consequence was increased dangers as hungry bears roamed in search of food instead of growing fat on garbage.]
Jan 17
The doings of “Miss Cook” or “Cookie.” [A public health nurse, Cookie waded into all sorts of dubious situations, scrubbing chldren and rescuing animals. She was an old-fashioned interfering visiting nurse and many loved her for it.]
Jan 28,
Now Herman Lucke is president of the Wildlife Club and Earl Eastwood is the head of the Chamber of Commerce.
Feb. 14
New Cut Bank County library
Highway 2 closed by slides.
April 4, 1957
Photo of Bob’s Portrayal of CMR
Sponsored by the Browning Chamber of Commerce. Like a great many other state artists, Bob was interested in the contest from the start but the controversy and political bickering which developed soon disgusted him and he had all but give up the idea of finishing the small two-foot model shown above but friends who were famliar with his talents urged him to continue with the Chamber of Commerce as sponsor. Casts of the two foot model are $25.
School District 7 is 25 by 35 miles along 2 Med and Big Badger. [This is a loosely coherent community with its roots in the Old Agency.]
April 11, 1957
Mr. Shannon died. Widow is Aline Shannon, son Mac in San Fernando, CA, Ruth (Mrs. Anthony Nace) in Santa Barbara, CA. [Mrs. Shannon later married Jim Ledbetter.]
May 2
Blanket beaver is one over 66 inches.
Proposed Indian Museum and Visitor’s Center at St. Mary.
May 23
Gambles building finished.
Mrs. Irene Little Dog died.
Word has been received of the illness of Hart M. Schultz of Greer, AZ, who would appreciate hearing from friends and relatives in Browning. Mr. Schultz has been hospitalized during the past six weeks.
June 13
Russell Memorial Museum Approves Scriver’s Model
Word has been received from the C.M.R. Memorial Museum of Great Falls that they have accepted Bob Scriver’s model statue of Russell for exhibition and will also handle the sale of the two foot high models in that area. The board of directors paid high tribute to Scriver’s talent and ability as a sculptor, expressing their opinion that Bob’s statue was the most natural and life-like work they had yet seen. ...from all indications it would be adjudged that the contest is not entirely flawless and is a much muddled up affair giving cause to much disgust and suspicion.
June 20
Word had been received that Hart Schultz of Greer, AZ, who has been hospitalized for the past two months has been released from the hospital and is recovering at home, showing daily improvement.
June 27
Judges Named to Select Best Statue of Charlie
Charlie Beil. sculptor from Banff, Alberta
John K. Shermon, art critic for the Minneapolis Tribune
Alex Ettle, president of Sculpture House (art supply co.)
Aug 1
Tom Many Guns brings Margaret back from Canada to be his wife. [She told me once that she much preferred Tom to her first husband, who had a tendency to beat her because he was old-fashioned. )
Aug 15
Phil Ward gets his master’s in Oklahoma.
Aug. 22
Keith Seele visiting. Chewing Black Bone names him “Sits in the Middle.” Ish-tut-sick-taupi.
Sept. 19
Gary Cooper inducted into the tribe. Name: “Chief Eagle Cloud.”
Oct. 3
“Kindergarten Hill” leveled.
Oct. 17
Standpipe fell out of the watertank!
The marriage of Mrs. Lexipar Arias to John Bird Earrings was solemnized by Judge Robert Scriver last Friday evening. The newlyweds will motor to Alberta next week to spend their honeymoon. [Lexipar, who was much younger than her bridegroom, only died recently. To say she was a character would be to understate the case, but she was firmly convinced she was an Indian princess despite the obviously opposite facts.]
Monday, May 30, 2005
Browning Newspaper Notes 1953 - 1956
Oct. 30, 1953
First TV sets arrive in Browning.
1954
January 1, 1954
(Tom Busey, Publisher)
One individual, believed to have been heated up with wine, sought entrance to the Thad Scriver home through the front door. Kicking out the lower panes of a four-pane glass door, the intruder immediately awakend Mr. Scriver. Hearing the crashing of glass, Mr. Scriver came rushing in his pajamas, a shiny loaded revolver in hand. Within five feet of the intruder, who had one foot on the inside of the doorway, Scriver pulled the trigger. But for the fact that the shell “jammed” there would have been either a seriously wounded or dead intruder. Running to the side of the building where Mrs. Scriver from another vantage point could see him peeking through the window, where he hesitated for a moment and then disappeared down an alley.
Janury 8, 1954
Julia Wades-in-the-Water dies. Nora Spanish is her daughter. Mike Madman is her nephew.
February 12, 1954
Albert Mad Plume dies.
February 19, 1954
Termination talk. [Eisenhower was much in favor of closing down all reservations.]
March 26, 1954
KFBB comes online but though many gather at Fitzgerald’s in front of a TV set, there is only the faintest reception.
Talk of the high way bypass again.
April 2, 1954
Joe McCarthy now on his way out -- much scoffing.
Janet Boyd’s sixth birthday party.
May 7, 1954
Bad fire at Fitzgeralds in the pharmacy dept. Suspicious. Insured.
June 4, 1954
Winold Reiss’ ashes scattered on Red Blanket Hill just off highway 89, 2 -3 miles north of Kiowa. Often medicine lodges here. [relationship to the Sweet Pine Methodist church?]
June 11, 1954
Fitzgerald Drug reopens with much hoopla.
Tom Kehoe advanced to curator.
Talk of closing the boarding school, but where would kids stay?
June 18, 1954
First planning for KW Bergan school. (Baby boomers are beginning to hit first grade.)
Eddie Big Beaver Sr. has a baby pet badger which he’s feeding with an eye dropper.
July 2, 1954
Article by Howard Hays about how the Museum of the Plains Indian came about.
August 13, 1954
Last Star is in “The Big Sky,” the movie made from the A.B. Guthrie, Jr. book.
August 20, 1954
John Self buys the Glacier Reporter.
Noted Artists Visit at Local Art Studio
John Clymer & Bob Lougheed, noted commercial illustrators of NYC. spent two delightful days at Scriver’s Taxidermy Art Studio last week. Both artists found Bob’s work much to their iinterest and spent their two days visit sketching and painting his scale model animal figurines and taxicermy work for future reference in their illustrations. Mr. Clymer has done many of the covers for the Saturday Evening Post and Redbook magazine. Mr. Lougheed’s latest illustration can be seen on the cover of the August Reader’s Digest. Before leaving Mr. Clymer gave Bob and Jeanette an 8X10 oil painting of Jim Whitecalf and a pony and Mr. Lougheed gave the Scrivers a black and white sketch of a black bear’s head. Mr. Scriver is very honored and pleased that such famed artists should go out of their way to visit him and his work.
October 8, 1954
Joan Kennerly working at Browning Merc.
October 15, 1954
Move Studio to East Glacier
The building which formerly housed the Scriver Studio was moved this week to its fourth location in about as many years. It seems the studio was originally built at St. Marys. The following year it was moved to Browning next to G.V. Johnson’s. Then in about a year it took up residence between Teeples Market and Todd’s Steak House. This week it was on the road again -- the Scrivers declare this is positively the last tiime -- when it was moved to East Glacier, across from the Mountain Pine Motel. The Scrivers plan to operate it next spring as well as their studio here.
December 3, 1954
Renshaws’s “West of North” published.
Dec. 17, 1954
Big prairie fire east of town.
1956
January 6, 1956
Overview of ‘55
JL Sherburne died.
Morning Gun well.
June 14: Norman Halseth dies.
June 13: Margaret Starr retires from Browning Merc after 25 years.
Both Morning Gun and Mittens (HB) oil wells plugged.
Mary Ground: has her entire family to supper, a thirty-pound turkey. Mrs. Angeline Heavyrunner was a special guest
Fitzgeralds sell to Frank Greco of Lewistown.
Aug. 19: William Kipp dies.
Julia Wades-in-the-Water dies.
Sept. 9: Kehoe announces discovery of artifacts
Sept. 16: Dr. King opens clinic
Jan 20
Les Aubert’s gas station burns.
Marriage license to Eddie Costel and Stella Whitegrass
Mrs. Mamie Hinkel Burns : 280 acres on rez, NW of Babb brought bid of 91,000. Her son is Ted. Parents were Geo & Rosie Candlaur Hinkel. Geo Hinkel was a Union soldier and a POW at Salesburg, SC. He, Liver-Eatin’ Johnson and 2 others came upon a mortally hurt Indian boy and killed him to spare him further pain. Rosie, when not quite 13, rode from Deep Creek to Fort Benton to warn of the Nez Perce coming. Mamie’s stepfather was Joe Cobell. Wanted Bobbie to be a school teacher.
Feb. 10
John Tatsey column begins.
Feb. 24
Joe Boussie, 19, struck and killed by Dr. and Mrs. King. (Three were walking at the edge of the road. Doc King honked. Two jumped off the road, Joe jumped towards the middle. King swerved but hit him anyway. It was night and icy. The doctor tried to save him but couldn’t.)
Town library to be built.
March 9
Victor Pepion (47) dies in house fire at Harvey Pepion home in Cut Bank on March 4. Gas stove exploded. Father: John Pepion; Wife: Lucy Goes in Center (Sioux); bros: LeRoy, Willard, Alfred, Daniel and Harvey, Herbert in Chicago. Sis: Mrs. Geneva Fisher, Mrs. Laura Powell, Coleen Pepion. Buried at Holy Family. Studied for two years with Winold Reiss. Another two years at Art Institute in LA. Murals at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning; Oglala Boarding School in Pine Ridge, SD; His master’s thesis was a wall mural in a ballroom at Highland University in Las Vegas: “Dances of All Nations.”
Blizzards, high winds, 15 slides by the goat lick!
March 16
City buys a paddywagon (used).
March 30
TV relay finally works.
Work started to overhaul city water system.
June Tatsey teaching at MadPlume School (District 7, Created in 1931)
April 27
Mrs. Ina Childers -- Browning Art Group sponsor. Dan BullPlume #2, Howard Pepion and Gary Schildt.
May 4, 1956
Ernest Gray running for JP.
First TV sets arrive in Browning.
1954
January 1, 1954
(Tom Busey, Publisher)
One individual, believed to have been heated up with wine, sought entrance to the Thad Scriver home through the front door. Kicking out the lower panes of a four-pane glass door, the intruder immediately awakend Mr. Scriver. Hearing the crashing of glass, Mr. Scriver came rushing in his pajamas, a shiny loaded revolver in hand. Within five feet of the intruder, who had one foot on the inside of the doorway, Scriver pulled the trigger. But for the fact that the shell “jammed” there would have been either a seriously wounded or dead intruder. Running to the side of the building where Mrs. Scriver from another vantage point could see him peeking through the window, where he hesitated for a moment and then disappeared down an alley.
Janury 8, 1954
Julia Wades-in-the-Water dies. Nora Spanish is her daughter. Mike Madman is her nephew.
February 12, 1954
Albert Mad Plume dies.
February 19, 1954
Termination talk. [Eisenhower was much in favor of closing down all reservations.]
March 26, 1954
KFBB comes online but though many gather at Fitzgerald’s in front of a TV set, there is only the faintest reception.
Talk of the high way bypass again.
April 2, 1954
Joe McCarthy now on his way out -- much scoffing.
Janet Boyd’s sixth birthday party.
May 7, 1954
Bad fire at Fitzgeralds in the pharmacy dept. Suspicious. Insured.
June 4, 1954
Winold Reiss’ ashes scattered on Red Blanket Hill just off highway 89, 2 -3 miles north of Kiowa. Often medicine lodges here. [relationship to the Sweet Pine Methodist church?]
June 11, 1954
Fitzgerald Drug reopens with much hoopla.
Tom Kehoe advanced to curator.
Talk of closing the boarding school, but where would kids stay?
June 18, 1954
First planning for KW Bergan school. (Baby boomers are beginning to hit first grade.)
Eddie Big Beaver Sr. has a baby pet badger which he’s feeding with an eye dropper.
July 2, 1954
Article by Howard Hays about how the Museum of the Plains Indian came about.
August 13, 1954
Last Star is in “The Big Sky,” the movie made from the A.B. Guthrie, Jr. book.
August 20, 1954
John Self buys the Glacier Reporter.
Noted Artists Visit at Local Art Studio
John Clymer & Bob Lougheed, noted commercial illustrators of NYC. spent two delightful days at Scriver’s Taxidermy Art Studio last week. Both artists found Bob’s work much to their iinterest and spent their two days visit sketching and painting his scale model animal figurines and taxicermy work for future reference in their illustrations. Mr. Clymer has done many of the covers for the Saturday Evening Post and Redbook magazine. Mr. Lougheed’s latest illustration can be seen on the cover of the August Reader’s Digest. Before leaving Mr. Clymer gave Bob and Jeanette an 8X10 oil painting of Jim Whitecalf and a pony and Mr. Lougheed gave the Scrivers a black and white sketch of a black bear’s head. Mr. Scriver is very honored and pleased that such famed artists should go out of their way to visit him and his work.
October 8, 1954
Joan Kennerly working at Browning Merc.
October 15, 1954
Move Studio to East Glacier
The building which formerly housed the Scriver Studio was moved this week to its fourth location in about as many years. It seems the studio was originally built at St. Marys. The following year it was moved to Browning next to G.V. Johnson’s. Then in about a year it took up residence between Teeples Market and Todd’s Steak House. This week it was on the road again -- the Scrivers declare this is positively the last tiime -- when it was moved to East Glacier, across from the Mountain Pine Motel. The Scrivers plan to operate it next spring as well as their studio here.
December 3, 1954
Renshaws’s “West of North” published.
Dec. 17, 1954
Big prairie fire east of town.
1956
January 6, 1956
Overview of ‘55
JL Sherburne died.
Morning Gun well.
June 14: Norman Halseth dies.
June 13: Margaret Starr retires from Browning Merc after 25 years.
Both Morning Gun and Mittens (HB) oil wells plugged.
Mary Ground: has her entire family to supper, a thirty-pound turkey. Mrs. Angeline Heavyrunner was a special guest
Fitzgeralds sell to Frank Greco of Lewistown.
Aug. 19: William Kipp dies.
Julia Wades-in-the-Water dies.
Sept. 9: Kehoe announces discovery of artifacts
Sept. 16: Dr. King opens clinic
Jan 20
Les Aubert’s gas station burns.
Marriage license to Eddie Costel and Stella Whitegrass
Mrs. Mamie Hinkel Burns : 280 acres on rez, NW of Babb brought bid of 91,000. Her son is Ted. Parents were Geo & Rosie Candlaur Hinkel. Geo Hinkel was a Union soldier and a POW at Salesburg, SC. He, Liver-Eatin’ Johnson and 2 others came upon a mortally hurt Indian boy and killed him to spare him further pain. Rosie, when not quite 13, rode from Deep Creek to Fort Benton to warn of the Nez Perce coming. Mamie’s stepfather was Joe Cobell. Wanted Bobbie to be a school teacher.
Feb. 10
John Tatsey column begins.
Feb. 24
Joe Boussie, 19, struck and killed by Dr. and Mrs. King. (Three were walking at the edge of the road. Doc King honked. Two jumped off the road, Joe jumped towards the middle. King swerved but hit him anyway. It was night and icy. The doctor tried to save him but couldn’t.)
Town library to be built.
March 9
Victor Pepion (47) dies in house fire at Harvey Pepion home in Cut Bank on March 4. Gas stove exploded. Father: John Pepion; Wife: Lucy Goes in Center (Sioux); bros: LeRoy, Willard, Alfred, Daniel and Harvey, Herbert in Chicago. Sis: Mrs. Geneva Fisher, Mrs. Laura Powell, Coleen Pepion. Buried at Holy Family. Studied for two years with Winold Reiss. Another two years at Art Institute in LA. Murals at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning; Oglala Boarding School in Pine Ridge, SD; His master’s thesis was a wall mural in a ballroom at Highland University in Las Vegas: “Dances of All Nations.”
Blizzards, high winds, 15 slides by the goat lick!
March 16
City buys a paddywagon (used).
March 30
TV relay finally works.
Work started to overhaul city water system.
June Tatsey teaching at MadPlume School (District 7, Created in 1931)
April 27
Mrs. Ina Childers -- Browning Art Group sponsor. Dan BullPlume #2, Howard Pepion and Gary Schildt.
May 4, 1956
Ernest Gray running for JP.
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