1976 September: Ray, Irma, Gordon, Edith

We were adopted by the Gone family very early on. As I noted previously, Ray and Irma took us into their family and protected and cared for us as they would their own. Their generosity was remarkable. They were so kind and sweet to us. They were old enough to be Susie’s and my parents. And as I also noted, Ray reminded me so much of my own father; incredibly thoughtful and smart. Edith and Ray were siblings. Edith was younger. She and Gordon also took us into their lives in such kind and caring ways. Our relationships with Ray and Irma were like children; our relationships with Gordon and Edith were like siblings. By September, we were spending so much of our free time with their two families. As there were lots of brothers and sisters and children, we became very close with the entire Gone clan before the end of September. 

The Gone Family

Ray, Irma, Gordon, and Edith are in this photograph from a Gone Family reunion. They are standing in the middle of the first row behind their mother who is sitting in the middle of the photograph. The photograph was taken a year or two before Susie and I arrived in Hays. Mary is surrounded by their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Fred passed away before 1976. Quite a few family members are missing from this photograph. There are a lot of Gones.

Almost everyone we engaged with on the reservation had a wonderful sense of humor. People loved to tease and to tell jokes. I was often the butt of many jokes, and particularly from people who enjoyed sharing outrageous stories with the resident anthropologist. Teasing and making the anthropologist look foolish became a favorite hobby. And I enjoyed it as much as they did.

Irma had a wonderful sense of humor and laughed and smiled a lot. But when I had my camera out, I got the infamous Irma scowl. Everyone who knew Irma also knew the scowl I am describing, and it was not to be ignored. Thus, I have only a few photographs of Irma, and I don’t believe that she is smiling in any of them. She was not an outlier at all in this regard. Irma was not yet an elder when we lived in Hays, but she was aging in that direction. Many people in her generation and the elders rarely looked at the camera when a photograph was taken of them. If they did look at the camera, they rarely smiled. 

We learned so much from them. In many ways, my listening to Ray talk about the history of his people and his and Irma’s lives made me think about how my Zadie (grandfather in Yiddish) spoke to me about his shtetl in Russia (what is now Ukraine). I loved listening to the stories of my Zadie’s life in the village. The stories were fascinating to me. I would listen to my Zadie tell these stories from the time I was very young until he passed away while I was in my mid-twenties. He actually died during the time Susie and I were living in Hays.

There was a time in human history when listening to the stories of old people was a critical element of a person learning their way of life. This was true before written language when people learned from oral tradition, and it was also the case for centuries after there were written languages. Culture change always occurred, but the changes were usually very slow and gradual. Culture was so much more stable, consistent and predictable than it is today. Thus, the knowledge and experience possessed by the elderly was so important to learning everything about a way of life, from how to perform rituals, to how to acquire a spirit helper, to how to plant crops to the meaning of kinship terms to how to identify plants that would cure a headache and how to prepare those plants. Our elders received great respect and listening to their wisdom was a critical part of learning how to become a member of a society.

As cultures began to change rapidly with accelerated developments in technology … and everything else, the value placed on the wisdom of elders has declined. Change has in fact become so rapid and dramatic that we can’t possibly predict with any kind of certainty what culture and society our children and grandchildren are going to live in. When I did my research with the Gros Ventre, there were no computers, there was no internet, cameras only used film, and a mobile phone wasn’t a thing. What value is there to listening to the wisdom of elders when they cannot predict the way of life I am going to have as an adult? It’s a complicated question with even more complicated answers. If I start to address all of this, I’m going to have a book … not a blog. So, suffice it to say, I have always felt and known the value of the elder’s wisdom. I knew it as a child. I knew it as an anthropologist among the Gros Ventre. And I know it today.

In spite of this decline in the value of our elder’s wisdom, I was always interested in listening to these stories. It is likely one of the features of my personality and values (besides my Judaism which I discussed in my first blog of this series) that drew me into cultural anthropology. My Zadie loved telling me his stories because I loved to listen to them, and he could tell that was the case. And so it was that Ray and Irma, and Vernie Perry, and Frank Cuts the Rope, and Gordon and Edith, and John Stiffarm and Beatrice and Jim Stiffarm loved to share their stories with me, because they knew and felt my genuine interest and my great respect for them.

Ray was never confused that he was speaking to an anthropologist who was interested in learning the Gros Ventre history and their contemporary way of life. He felt my genuine interest, and he wanted to be sure the anthropologist was getting an honest and candid image of this history and way of life. Ray was incredibly smart, thoughtful and insightful. He wanted to be sure that what I was learning was as much the truth as possible. I know that Ray realized in doing so that he was taking on such an important responsibility. He was willing to do so because he was such a good man who so loved his people.

The stories I am going to recount in this blog are primarily from the conversations we had with Ray and Irma and Gordon and Edith in just the month of September. When I can, I will use their words. When I can’t, I will do my best to paraphrase what they shared with us.

Susie and I were visiting Ray and Irma. Ray’s younger brother, Fred, was there. Fred was married to a Crow woman and lived on the Crow Reservation. Ray told us that he was an acculturated Gros Ventre. He said that their name, Gone, used to be Gone to War, but it was shortened. Irma told us that she was both Assiniboine and Chippewa Cree.

Ray recounted that other anthropologists had done studies on the Gros Ventre. He told us that Dr. John Cooper had been on Fort Belknap and conducted interviews with the great Indian philosopher, The Boy. When they were done with the interviews, Dr. Cooper asked whether he now had everything. The Boy responded through an interpreter that he only had the trunk of the tree and that he did not and could not tell him about all the branches of the tree.

This led Ray and Fred to talking about the problems with passing down knowledge through the oral tradition. Things get lost in the telling, sometimes the most important parts, and things get distorted.   

I had known about both Dr. Cooper and his student, Regina Flannery, from my literature review. As noted in a previous blog, I was in touch with Dr. Flannery both before I left for the reservation and while we lived in Hays. Both she and Dr. Cooper spent time in Hays interviewing people about the traditional culture. They published two books from their fieldwork research:

The Gros Ventre of Montana: Part I Social Life, Regina Flannery, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington D.C. 1953

The Gros Ventre of Montana: Part II Religion and Ritual, John M. Cooper, Edited by Regina Flannery, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington D.C. 1957

And because the world is such a small and complicated place, my advisor in the Ohio State University anthropology department was Dr. Daniel Hughes, a former Jesuit priest who went through graduate school in anthropology at Catholic University. His advisor was Dr. Regina Flannery.

If you read the books published by Drs. Cooper and Flannery about the traditional Gros Ventre culture, the way of life described looks almost nothing like the contemporary life. In many ways, they learned about a culture through interviews that, for the most part, no longer exists.

Fred said that the mission brainwashed his parents (and their generation) into believing that Indian culture was savage and to give it up. They would not teach their children the language, and now it will be lost because it is a very difficult language to learn. The mission also forced Christianity and western culture on the people. Now the people are caught between two cultures. They are not in Indian culture because they do not know enough of it, and they are not a part of white culture. 

Fred told me that I picked the wrong reservation to do my research, because they have lost most of the traditions and culture.  Other reservations are more traditional than this one.  He warned that I shouldn’t tell people what others have told me about the culture, because they will be afraid that they do not know or will contradict what I was told by others. They want the older people to teach the culture and language but cannot convince them that it is worth teaching and that they have something important to teach. More is known of the Assiniboine language than Gros Ventre. Ray said that for many Indian culture means music and dancing. They do not know Indian culture. They want to know how to dance and sing, but do not even know that. 

According to Ray, the Indians are caught between two cultures. They have to learn the Indian culture, what is left of it, so that they can be proud of themselves and their heritage, and to have integrity. But they cannot go back to life in the past. If they are going to go back to live in tipis, he said he would also take electricity and an oven with him. Once you have those things you get used to them and cannot turn back to the past. They have to learn the non-Indian ways to survive. Self-determination is the goal, not termination. To put the Indian out with the white man to compete, the Indian would be lost. They need to learn the skills, like a bank account and saving money, paying rent and bills.

Irma told us that the Ft. Belknap Reservation is one of the only reservations in North America where the community health reservation representative does not have to be bilingual.  On other reservations, they need to know the native language to converse with many of the people.  But here so few people speak the native language or do not speak English. Irma is the community Health Representative on the reservation. 

Ray and Irma came to our trailer for a visit one evening. They brought over deer steaks and a whole ice chest filled with government commodity food. They said that Susie and I should take it, and it was the Indian way to share with friends when you have something. They said that we have to take it. Ray also brought over his 22 rifle for me to use.  He had been over the night before and we heard a bob cat outside the trailer.   

On a previous visit to their home, Irma offered us fry bread while we were drinking coffee. Susie and I had just eaten dinner, and we refused. Later in the evening while we were talking about the Indian values, Irma told us that we made a mistake.  When offered something by an Indian, such as food, never refuse it. This offends the giver and is a great insult. The offer shows the individual’s generosity, which is very important. And when you turn down the offer you are not letting them show their generosity.  You do not even have to eat the food at the person’s home but can take it home or even throw it out when you leave, but never refuse it. At the Powwows, people take home gunny sacks full of food because so much food and gifts are given away at the giveaways that it cannot all be eaten. 

Generosity in the A’aniiih culture is something very different than its meaning in the greater American Culture. It is the strongest value in this society or at the least, one of the strongest values. There are some important rules associated with generosity, and these rules are well understood, and they are followed. This value very much ‘felt’ as though it originated in the traditional culture and made its way into the contemporary way of life. There were not a lot of cultural elements that found their way so strongly from the traditional culture into contemporary society. There are other elements that are understood. What made the value of generosity different was that it wasn’t just understood, it was also practiced.

One of the rules involved when something was offered to you. You always graciously accept it. To refuse it, regardless of the reason, is a personal insult, as in, I’m too good for you to accept your generosity. Another interesting aspect of this value was that if you admired something that another person owned, they were obliged to give it to you. Thus, we learned quickly that if we didn’t want someone to give you something of value (that would have been embarrassing to accept), do not admire it.

As this value was strong and so pervasive in their way of life, I gave a great deal of thought to how this value might have functioned in the traditional society as a healthy adaptation to their physical and social environment. I also gave a lot of thought as to why this value remained intact in the contemporary way of life when so many other behaviors, rituals and beliefs were either no longer practiced or barely remembered.

Before contact with whites and before their culture experienced such dramatic change, the A’aniiih were hunters and gatherers. The men hunted buffalo and other game, such as deer, elk and smaller mammals, and the women gathered many different types of plants and berries. The division of labor was well defined. Men brought home the raw materials, and the women processed these materials – they made hides for clothing and tipi coverings. Besides food, many tools were made from the buffalo. The people used every square inch of the buffalo. If a man was a great hunter, he might have more than one wife because he could produce more raw materials than one woman could process into the final products. The A’aniiih practiced polygamy and often a man would marry sisters, because they might get along better as co-wives.

It all worked great when there was an abundance of food. Today, we understand that we only have so much control over the environment. There are droughts or hotter than normal temperatures or colder than normal temperatures. And these people who had a much less sophisticated technology than we have today had far less control over their environment. Thus, there were going to be lean times. These could have happened to the entire group when for whatever reason hunting wasn’t good during a particular season. Or it could happen to people on the individual level, if for instance a women lost her husband from an accident or in warfare.

I should also add that hunting and gathering peoples are ordinarily genetically very healthy people. Natural selection tends to remove deleterious genes in a rather efficient way because there aren’t medical interventions that work to keep ‘bad’ genes around in the gene pool. As an example, if you are born with genes that cause horrible eyesight, you aren’t going to be able to see well enough to hunt. Thus, your chances of survival aren’t good. These people weren’t getting all the variety of diseases that we have in our gene pool today. Diabetes, coronary artery disease … any disorders that are caused, in part, by a genetic predisposition for that disease, are not as likely to be passed down to the next generation, because people who become sick are not kept alive (without medical intervention that did not yet exist) and those people are less likely to live to reproductive age.

And interestingly, these people had all sorts of native cures for minor illnesses like a headache or a rash or stomachache. They knew plants that could be used for these purposes and how to process those plants.

Medicine men weren’t involved in curing stomach aches. These specialists were curing disorders that more often had supernatural causes and required more supernatural tools and skills.

Whoa … getting back on track.

There were going to be lean times for people or for the whole group. Survival of the group required this mutual dependence, and the sharing of whatever resources were available. Stinginess would have been far more than just bad manners. Hording resources could mean the very threatening of survival of a family or the whole group. You share what you have with the understanding that in the future, you could be the one or the ones in need. Expectations of reciprocity increased the chances that people would be able to survive shortages of resources.

The tribes were about communalism and sharing, as opposed to the independence and self-reliance that are hallmark values in American culture. The tribal structure and these tribal values were an important and critical adaptation to a way of life that evolved with much less control over natural resources required for their survival.

So, why might this value have made its way so strongly into the contemporary way of life? In thinking through this issue, this is what I’ve come up with. The most generous people I know are not the wealthy in our society … it is people who are poor. Don’t look at the gross amount of what a person gives … look at the proportion of what is given to what the person has. The billionaire who gives a million dollars to a cause isn’t risking their survival by donating this money. They still have plenty and how much does a person really need to survive … what are they sacrificing by giving away this money? And the wealthy have already worked the rules of our economy such that they can make these donations into a financial benefit for themselves (because money also means power – and they basically write the tax code).

The real generosity I observe in our society comes from the poor. Their generosity is often motivated by their own life experiences. They’ve lived through lean times, and they know how it feels to need the help from others even for their own survival or the survival of their families. They give with an implicit understanding that this generosity will be reciprocated if they find themselves in these same times of need. And the value of that generosity is so much more than what you see among the rich. If you have a few deer steaks in your freezer and you share half of them with a neighbor who is in need, it is possible that you might also be without any meat next week … but you give what you have with the understanding and expectation that you are going to receive help from people in the community when times are tough for you.

The A’aniiih went almost immediately from being efficient and successful hunters and gatherers to dependence and destitute poverty. We effectively and purposely killed off their food supply and then forced them onto reservations where they lost their ability to be mobile and to find new or different resources. We then totally baked in destitute poverty through our negligence and ineptitude in helping them to acquire a different adaptation for survival. Literally overnight, we created a demoralized group that was entirely destitute and dependent on the government for their very survival. And it has remained that way for generations. We’ve locked them onto a place and we don’t offer them the ability to earn a decent living. And before you tell me that they can move to a place where there is employment, I’ll remind you that we owe them a decent way of life by virtue of our stealing their land and their way of life, and because of our treaty obligations.

Additionally, the most effective way to maintain their A’aniiih identity is on the reservation. A culture is shared and requires a community. People who leave the reservation to find employment can maintain their identity for only so long. They may engage in activities with people in urban areas who belong to other tribes, and over time, their Indian identity can become strong. It is hard to remain A’aniiih away from the reservation. People who live close to the reservation do so by returning for powwows and other rituals and to visit family. If they move further away, it becomes more difficult.

Thus, the people who elevated the value of generosity in their culture as a survival mechanism merely transferred this adaptation to their new circumstances … endemic, destitute poverty. Generosity remains a very adaptive value. The circumstances causing mutual dependence have changed but the adaptation which reinforces the critical need for this value has not. People are highly dependent on each other.

In my two years in Hays, I didn’t see anyone living in the streets or in their car. I didn’t see any orphans without a home. I didn’t see anyone go hungry. I can’t say the same for what I’ve observed yesterday in Columbus, Ohio.

In a conversation I had with an Assiniboine gentleman, he said that don’t be like a white man was an expression he heard often. We were taught to share, and we learned that white people can be stingy. Our values are different from white society.

Another very important value in A’aniiih society, and in most Plains Indian cultures, is bravery. In the traditional culture, there were many opportunities for men to demonstrate their bravery, from stealing horses to warfare. The buffalo hunt was an extremely dangerous activity. If you’ve never seen buffalo up close and personal, they are huge animals who don’t readily accept victimhood. And the men hunted large herds of buffalo. The strategies for capturing these herds, as well as the actual killing was incredibly dangerous for all involved and required great bravery. These male roles were critically important in the traditional culture and the value of bravery was infused in all these activities.

As with the value of generosity, the value of bravery found its way readily into the contemporary culture. The most obvious manifestation of this value was the proportionately large numbers of A’aniiih who have served in our military, both men and women. They continue to serve in the military in large numbers. They demonstrated great acts of bravery during WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the more recent wars in the middle east (Iraq and Afghanistan).

I have previously discussed the incredible irony of this service given the history of the relationship between the tribes in North America and the United States, and specifically their relationship to our Army, that forced them onto reservations. In spite of this challenging history, the A’aniiih were very patriotic and love our country enough to serve in our military – the same military that forced them onto reservations, helped to kill off the buffalo and enforced many of the government’s policies that resulted in the killing of many innocent women and children, i.e., the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee.

A slightly less obvious but no less important manifestation of bravery were the chances I observed older teens and young adults take that could have caused them great physical harm. I would often observe this risky behavior and be thinking that there was no way I would be willing to accept risking that level of harm in my own life.

The following is my favorite example of this kind of behavior that could be a demonstration of the value of bravery.

I was asked to go out hunting with a group of young men from Hays with whom I was good friends. There were three men sitting in the cab of the truck, and there were three of us in the back. We headed south toward the Missouri Breaks where deer hunting is popular in the fall. There were spare tires in the back of the truck that the three of us were sitting on. I was the only one of the six of us who did not bring a rifle. We left the highway and headed onto the prairie through an open gate. As we headed south, we saw a small herd of antelope. The driver sped up a bit, and the herd stopped moving. Quickly, the herd decided to get away from the truck and the driver hit the gas. We got closer to the herd that was on the driver’s side of the truck and just in front of us.

The spare tires that we had been sitting on were not chained to the truck. As we sped up on the prairie, the tires started to bounce up and down all over the place. The person sitting in the middle seat in the cab of the truck leaned across the driver and started to shoot out of the window. The two guys in the back of the truck with me had their rifles out, and when they weren’t being bounced into the air, they were also firing at the antelope. I had positioned myself as low to the bed of the truck as I could get myself while the wildly bouncing spare tires were beating the crap out of me.

If you’ve never seen antelope run out in the wild, it is really something. As they take off from a standstill, they first lower themselves slightly toward the ground. It is almost shocking as to how quickly they reach such great speeds. As the driver was having a difficult time maintaining high speed on the prairie, the herd quickly outraced us to safety. The odds that any of these bouncing hunters were going to hit anything (besides each other) was not great. But that fact didn’t deter anyone from emptying their rifles.

Okay … that was exhilarating in the most incredibly dangerous manner. Let’s not do that again. Bravery – taking risks – that’s what I’m talking about. I saw a lot of that kind of thing. And it almost always involved young men (the ones most engaged in horse stealing, warfare and buffalo hunting).

Ray explained to us how the Gros Ventre got their name. They were also known as the Atsina which was a Piegan (one of the Blackfeet peoples) term for the group. The name Gros Ventre came from French traders. The Gros Ventre often stayed separated from other Indian tribes. They were seen by a group of fur traders who were with Indians from a different tribe. The traders asked the Indians who those people were by the waterfalls. The Indians responded in sign language, motioning the waterfalls people. The Indians motioned a waterfall in front of their bodies – out and down with both hands (Ray imitated the motion) and the fur traders misunderstood the motion as Big Belly. The French translation was Gros Ventre. Ray said that the people called themselves the White Clay People or A’aniiih in their own language.   

Ray said that many people wear eagle feather bonnets today who do not really deserve to wear them. In the past, a person had to earn the right to wear one by doing good deeds and counting coups. He said that one of the fathers wore a bonnet to a school function and that was inappropriate. He explained that coups could be good deeds and not just war deeds. Ray said that scalping was introduced by the English to pay bounties for Indians that were killed; so many pounds for each scalp. 

Ray was talking about the oral tradition and the stories concerning the origins of the Indian people and the Gros Ventre. He said that his people remembered back only as far as the great flood. One man was on a raft and that was when the Great Spirit gave the man the pipe. He said that this was one of their origin stories. Ray said that he thought that the Gros Ventre came from across the Bering Straits. He noted that many Native Americans look like Asians with little body and facial hair.   

Fred said that he was going to try to set up a sweat lodge. The sweat lodge involves a ceremony whose purpose is prayer to the Great Spirit. The sweat lodge is not used on the Ft. Belknap Reservation, but Fred lives on the Crow Reservation, which is far more traditional. He has invited me to attend. He said that a lodge is built of twigs, branches and grass, and hot rocks are placed in it. Then cold water is poured over the rocks and the steam is so thick it is hard to breathe. Then after prayer in the lodge the men go out to a cold stream and jump in.

Fred told me that there was an anthropologist on the Crow Reservation who was a Hebrew. This anthropologist was an atheist, which Fred and Ray thought was rather disgusting. The anthropologist went into the sweat lodge and after a while began to speak a funny language (Hebrew). When Fred asked him what he said, the anthropologist answered that he was praying, praying to get the hell out of all that hot steam. Fred said, while laughing, that after a short time in the sweat lodge the man was converted.

Ray said that the Indian prays all the time.  In the past a man would wake up in the morning and light his pipe. Then he would lift it up and share the smoke with the Great Spirit and pray. Men did not smoke for pleasure then. Then his ‘Mrs.’ would get up and start the fire and cook meat. The man would first cut off a small piece to share with the Great Spirit and pray. There are no holy men on the reservation, but Irma was in line to by a holy woman. She did not become one however because there were strict rules and practices that must be followed and if a person does not follow them correctly, great harm and danger can be brought to the person. So, it is better not to practice at all than to risk the possible harm to the person. They were not willing to practice because during acculturation so much was lost of the traditions.

Ray and Fred explained that non-Indians misunderstand the reasons why Indians would pray to the sun or a tree or a rock. It is not that they are really praying to these objects but rather that the Great Spirit is so great and powerful that sometimes an intermediary in prayer is necessary and these objects act as an intermediary to the Great Spirit.

They felt rather skeptical about the nature of Jesus. They said that there were many Jesus’ that came to the Indians, many great teachers and holy men. A person became a holy man or woman through a vision, or it could be inherited as was the case with Irma – she was in the line.

They felt that praying in church at the mass was not a good place or way to pray. That building expensive churches and temples was ridiculous. The Indians prayed in a small sweat lodge – the Indian way is simple. Praying in church is distracting, but being alone (as on Eagle Child) is the best way to pray to the Great Spirit. Many people go to church on the reservation because their neighbors go to church.  

They were very bitter about the mission and the Sisters and felt they were partly responsible for the loss of Indian culture on the reservation. They brainwashed the older people into believing that the Indian culture was savage and to give up the traditions and the language so that they did not pass it on to their children.

Ray said that he is happy to see younger people getting into mission work, because they are more empathetic to the Indian problems. He said that what is wanted is understanding, and not pity.

Ray, Fred, Edith and their brothers and sister all went to the mission grade school and high school. 

Ray explained that just after Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce was captured near the reservation, an Indian woman with a party came to the home of Irma’s grandmother. The Indian woman was the wife of General Miles, and she gave Irma’s grandmother her wedding ring to show to General Miles when he came by the area to let him know she was alright. General Miles did not want her to come close to the fighting. When General Miles came through that area, the woman showed him the wedding ring, and the General cried. 

Ray and Irma were telling us about some of the great holy (medicine) men of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine. Bull Head was one of the great Gros Ventre medicine men. One day, Ray’s sister was very sick. His mother sent two other sisters (one was a cousin and Ray said that she was an Indian sister) to get Bull Head.  When they got to his house, he came to the door and said that he knew they were coming. As was the custom, they gave him a pipe to smoke and they then left to go back home. After walking for a little while they turned around and saw a man following them. They thought that it was Bull Head and stopped to let him catch up. It was late at night in a cold snowy winter, and they were glad to have the company of a man when they walked. The man stopped, and so they walked on, and he kept a distance behind. When they reached home, Bull Head did not come in for a while. When he did finally get there, they asked him if he had followed them home and he said no, that he had sent a ghost to follow them home to protect them. He went to Ray’s sick sister and put a black handkerchief over her chest and sucked on it. Then he held up a white handkerchief and blew on it. Nothing showed on it. He did this three times, and nothing happened. He said that she was very sick and that if nothing happened on this fourth time, that she was going to die. He then sucked and a spot showed on the handkerchief like a nicotine stain. He said that now she would get well and she did. Then Bull Head went into the room where Ray’s mother and other relatives were. He said that there were always those that didn’t believe in his powers, so he asked Ray’s mother to go outside and pick choke cherries off the bush from the side of the house. She thought that was crazy because it was the middle of winter, but she knew that you never question the orders of these older powerful men. She went out and there was a bush full of choke cherries, so she brought them in, and everyone had one. 

Ray said that every medicine man had a special thing that they did to show the unbelievers that they had power. Also, each medicine man had his special cure and herbs and medicines that they used. They were like today’s specialists. He said that the medical world today uses over 100 of these medicines only they call them something different. I asked him where these people got their power and he said that some people inherited it, but you could also get it from a quest, but you had to dream about it first three times before you could go on a quest. Irma was going to inherit the powers and become a medicine woman. She didn’t have the right instruction though and was afraid to practice. The older people were assimilating and didn’t teach the kids about it. If you practice this medicine but do not follow all the rules, it can be very dangerous for the person and bring bad luck. Irma was supposed to inherit a red bell and rock which were her power, but her uncle felt that it was too dangerous, and it was given instead to her cousin or brother who is now on the Crow Reservation, and now it is lost. Ray believes that her uncle was buried with the bell and rock. As the Indians became more assimilated, he said that people were buried with their powerful objects rather than pass it on to the person who was supposed to inherit it. This was because the instruction and training associated with becoming a medicine man or woman could no longer be done, and it was too dangerous to practice without these.

Jim Stiffarm’s father was a medicine man and his special object to show people he had power was the skin of an animal like a weasel. The skin would crawl across the floor and go to the person who was sick and start to chew until there was a bloody spot where the skin had been chewed. There were never any strings found pulling the skin across the floor. This man performed surgery with a quill. He removed gall stones and told people to bury them back in the ground because that is where they came from. Also, he removed an appendix. If a person had a migraine headache, he would snip the blood vessels around the temples to relieve the pressure and that cured the person. If a person had arthritis or another ailment like that, he would snip the blood vessels near that area to relieve the pressure and the person would get better. 

Gordon’s great grandfather was a great medicine man. When his brother died, he cut off the last joint of his baby finger and kept this in a medicine pouch and used this for his power object. He used a strong rope (like nylon) for his object to prove that he had power to the unbelievers. He would go behind a curtain and have someone tie him up tight behind the curtain. Within a couple of seconds, they would see the rope flying out in a ball and he would walk out from behind the curtain.

Irma’s grandmother was a great medicine woman. Her name was Holy Tree after the center pole in the medicine lodge. Women passed their objects and power on to only women and a man inherited it from only another man. Irma’s great grandfather was half white and still became a great medicine man.

One of the medicines used was to cause abortions. It started as a medicine to clean out a woman after she had a baby, and then they learned that it also could be used for abortion. Irma learned about it because between her two oldest children she had a miscarriage, and she was given this medicine by her uncle. She was afraid to take it. Her mother told her that it was alright to take the medicine and not to be afraid. Irma said that when they got the ten commandments (from the missionaries) that the old people added a commandment against abortions. 

Ray said that Eagle Child was a place where the Gros Ventre went for a vision quest. They could go up there to seek any kind of vocation, including a medicine man. If it was for a medicine man, he had to dream about it first three times. There were bad spirits on the mountain, and they made it difficult to stay up there for the three days he was supposed to be up there fasting. They would make thunder and lightning without clouds in the sky, and they would make a grizzly bear seen running at the person and then it would disappear. 

Eagle Child was holy only to the Gros Ventre. Baldy Butte in the Bear Paws was holy to all the tribes. There was also a place in the Black Hills that was holy for all the tribes. 

Ray explained that the Gros Ventre did not have a sun dance, but rather called it a medicine lodge. The Assiniboine had both a sun dance and medicine lodge. The medicine lodge was used for curing. The sun dance was used for a different reason. If a person had a sick relative or friend and loved that person very much, they would pray to the Great Spirit and would say that if the Great Spirit made that person well, they would go to the medicine lodge (Gros Ventre) or Sun Dance that year. They went to suffer for three days at the sun dance to show that they would rather suffer for a few days and have the person well, than to suffer their whole lives without the person they loved so much. It was also to thank the Great Spirit and show their respect to the Great Spirit. People at the sun dance would fast and dance in the hot sun all day. They would dance in a circle and in and out and would whistle to the beat of the drum to make their mouths very dry. The Gros Ventre built medicine lodges with a stall and then when the singing and drums started, they would get up and dance in the stall. The other tribes did not have this stall but would dance around in a circle in the medicine lodge. There was a center pole in the medicine lodge. 

If a person really wanted to show their respect and thanks that the person was alive, they would try to suffer more by tearing two muscles on the chest and running raw hide through it, and then would tie the raw hide to another piece running back to the center pole of the medicine lodge and then would pull on it until they tore those muscles in the chest. The sun dance was a very religious occasion and only people who promised to perform this actually participated this way. They did not really pray to the sun. They prayed to it as an intermediary because the Great Spirit was so powerful that they would not pray directly to it, but rather to one of his great creations, the sun, that brought life and light to everything. 

Gordon attended a medicine lodge on the reservation (Crow Run). Four spirits came to the lodge, and one of them was the lightening spirit. They talked and sang in a different pitch from usual singing. One of the spirits that came was an old man. The medicine man here had rattles that jumped all over the place. He told everyone to take off their watches and rings, because that is the way he worked. One man forgot to take off his watch and one of the rattles hit him in the chest very hard. Then the medicine man asked him if he had his watch on, and then asked him again to take it off.

There was a man who didn’t believe in these spirits, and one day he found the bowl of a pipe that had one time belonged to a medicine man and he picked it up off the ground. After that, he couldn’t sleep at nights, so he went to a medicine man to ask him what to do about it. He told him to put the bowl back and to leave a cigarette. The Indian way is to leave something every time you take something. Then one day he heard his father talking to him; his father was dead, but the spirit was talking. He didn’t understand because he talked to him in Gros Ventre. This man now believes.  He just had a sun dance for his wife who had been sick. 

One of the more interesting observations I made about traditional A’aniiih prayer was that a person ‘put themselves’ into a pitiful state to create the appropriate environment for the Great Spirit to hear their prayer. From the previous examples, you can readily see in each case that the suffering, be it from the sweat lodge or from the medicine lodge, placed the person in a pitiful state. Often, I heard prayers begin with a statement to the Great Spirit, such as ‘while I am just pitiful … I am seeking your help.’

Ray told us that all the Plains tribes had been in this area at one time and that it did not belong to anyone. He thought that it was ridiculous to own land. He said that the strongest tribes stayed in the area during hunting season, because the buffalo were so numerous in the reservation area. So, they would fight over the territory and the strongest tribes would be here during the hunting season. Many Siouan groups were here and the Gros Ventre. The Gros Ventre migrated very far south and sometimes all the way to Oklahoma. The Arapaho are related to the Gros Ventre and used to be one group. There were 10,000 Gros Ventre at one time, but they died off very quickly. There was a smallpox epidemic in the early 1830s, and many died because they had no immunity to the disease. Ray said that whites also gave Indians blankets that were infested with smallpox. 

Ray told us that in the past there was a strong avoidance between the son-in-law and mother-in-law and the father-in-law and daughter-in-law. They were not allowed to look at or speak to each other or even be in the same tent together. Irma broke this custom in her family. Ray said that there was a joking relationship between a brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  He told us this when his sister-in-law was sitting at the table, and he apologized to us if he used any vulgar language with her. They did tease with each other through the evening. 

Ray also told us that all cousins were called brother and sister, and all uncles and aunts were called mother and father. I asked Ray when they started to use the American-English terms. He answered that in the late 1800’s the mission people started ‘correcting’ them, by telling them, for instance, that’s a cousin, not a brother. The mission had a separate building for girls and boys, and each had a big wall around them. Ray said that they made holes in the wall to look at the girls. The Ursuline Sisters taught the girls, and the fathers taught the boys. At that time, it was a boarding school. 

When I talk to Ray or Gordon about relatives, they will often describe the relationship as the ‘Indian way.’ They distinguish between the white way and the Indian way when reckoning kin.  They often use the white way, but sometimes refer to relations the ‘Indian way.’

In the traditional Gros Ventre culture, there were two pipes that were very sacred and an important element in the traditional religion and belief system. Over the two years, I was told many stories about these sacred pipes. Sister M. Clare Hartmann, O.S.F., wrote a book about the pipes as partial fulfilment of her master’s degree from Montana State University. Sister Clare taught in both the Mission High School and the elementary school after the mission high school was closed. The title of the book was The Significance of the Pipe to the Gros Ventre of Montana, 1955. Both The Boy and Fred Gone (Ray, Fred, and Edith’s father) were major contributors to Sister Clare’s understanding of the sacred pipes.

Ray said that there was a person who had the pipe today who does not have the right to do the pipe ceremony. The pipe was not handed down to him nor the right to use it and not the instructions on how to use it. It is no more than the pipe I smoke myself. The pipe is sitting in an old house and that is not ok. It wouldn’t be this way if he had the right and instructions. The pipe was given to the Gros Ventre during the great flood.

The Assiniboine do not observe the pipe as a sacred object. 

Ray explained that Indian time was very different from white or non-Indian time.  Indians will go somewhere when they feel like it and do not worry about looking at a clock to be on time.  The conception of time was imposed by western society.   

Ray said that an Indian does not usually offer to shake hands with someone when they first meet them. This is because you have to earn their respect first. He also said that he will not call someone mister until they earn his respect. 

The relationships between Gros Ventre, Assiniboine and Chippewa Cree (Metis) on the reservation are very complicated. There will be many stories that involve the relations between these three groups on the reservation. These relations influence tribal governance, the treaty committees, many of the benefits that accrue to the tribes from membership (or lack of membership) in the tribal communities on the reservation, and impact social relationships between people. For many people, the problems that exist between these groups are a very upsetting aspect of life on Fort Belknap. These complicated relationships are further confused by the frequency of intermarriage, particularly between the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre and between the Chippewa Cree and Gros Ventre.   

Early in September, Gordon held a dance committee meeting in the mission gym. Gordon heads the committee that has about eight members. There is a woman’s and man’s flag bearer, head cook, drum keeper, and some other positions on the committee. The first order of business was to plan a mourner’s dinner for those who had a member of the family die in the past year. Father Retzel reviewed the church records and identified nine people from the community who had died during this time. The year was calculated in a rather flexible way. The committee then estimated that from the families of the deceased about 125 people would attend the mourner’s dinner. They also decided on the menu which would consist of chicken, baked beans, potato chips, coffee, Kool aid, olives and pickles.

Gordon and Edith had explained to me that the feeding of the mourners is to welcome them back into the community. People in the old days did not do anything that had to do with entertainment while they were in mourning. They would just stay home. Even if there were a powwow next door, they would not go to it. When people mourned, they would either cut or comb out their braids. If someone came up to a woman and offered to braid back her hair, she could not turn down this offer and she had to come out of mourning, and her hair was braided. 

The next order of business for the dance committee was to plan a bingo to raise money for the new mission gym dedication dance. In addition to bingo, people on the committee planned to canvass the community to ask for donations. Money will also be provided by the treaty committee and the tribal council. The dance committee figured out the pay days for BIA and Tribal employees and decided to ask for donations on those days. I had contributed money to Gordon the week before and at the meeting he introduced me to the committee and asked everyone to shake my hand. Each person on the committee then approached me and said thank you and shook my hand.

I was slightly embarrassed by Gordon’s recognition and the behavior of the dance committee members. I came from a culture and world view (Judaism) where Maimonides, the great rabbi, scholar, physician and philosopher taught that the highest form of giving was that which is done anonymously. This entire episode was a part of a critically important lesson that Susie and I were being taught about both the traditional and contemporary A’aniiih value of generosity. Before a full month of our living in Hays, we were being taught the formal and informal rules surrounding this most important value.

The dedication dance would include feeds and giveaways in the afternoon and the dance at night. They were expecting attendees from Rocky Boy, Crow and from Canada. Gordon asked people to put the visitors up for the night while they were attending the powwow. 

The people on the dance committee will be giving up their positions after this dance. During the powwow, a special song would be done while the committee members turn their positions over to their successor. Gordon said that he remembered that there was a special song for this purpose, but didn’t know it. He asked others from the committee, and no one knew this special song.  

During the meeting, one of the committee members used the expression, to Jew down. I stayed silent, because there would have been no purpose in my beginning a presentation about the long and gruesome history about antisemitism across every continent on the face of the earth. None of them understood the origins of the phrase and its underlying dangerous meaning. They know not what they speak. For almost everyone on the reservation, Susie and I had to have been the first and only Jews they’d ever met. Montana wasn’t exactly teeming with Jews … most of the Jews out west had been homesteaders and shop owners in South Dakota or were seriously lost. But the use of this idiom certainly was a reflection of the level of acculturation in the community. Everyone knew what the speaker meant by the phrase which was uttered shortly after everyone thanked and shook the hand of the Jew who had just contributed to their cause. Oh, the irony.

The mourner’s feed took place in the old gym at the end of the month. The feed was supposed to have taken place on Saturday, October 23, but it was moved up so that people could attend the Chief Joseph’s and Veteran’s Memorial Powwow which will take place October 1 and 2.  Only 60 people attended the feed. They were expecting twice that number. Ray gave a speech welcoming the mourners back into the community activities. Father Retzel said a short prayer. 

 The weather was getting much cooler in September and the leaves were starting to change color. This was the corral and the abandoned log home in front of our trailer. 

The mouth of the canyon was just below our front yard, and we took Gahanab for walks in Mission Canyon as often as we could. It was spectacularly beautiful in all seasons, but it was really something special in the fall.

The field where our trailer was located was just around the corner to the left. Mission creek is to the right.

 This is an irrigation channel on mission creek.

Susie and Gahanab

We had plans with Gordon and Edith to go up into the mountains. With the weather getting cooler, there was often fog over the prairie and in low lying areas. Seeing the clouds so low to the ground was beautiful. This is an image looking north from just in front of St. Paul's Mission Church.

The four of us squeezed into the cab of my truck and we headed up into the mountains. This is looking out at fog over Zortman.

Ruby Gulch Mine

Cave in at the Ruby Gulch Mine

Gordon and Edith took us up to the Whitcomb house in the middle of the mountains. The Whitcomb family lived in Malta. George Whitcomb bought 2,000 acres in the mountains and opened the Ruby Gulch Mine. Getting all these materials up into the mountains to build a home this large must have been a monumental feat.

Susie near the Whitcomb House

Beaver Creek ran near the Whitcomb house, and there was a beaver dam nearby.

We next headed up to Antoine Butte where the truck got stuck in soft dirt just off the narrow mountain road. We quickly learned that having four-wheel drive sometimes just got you into deeper trouble. Getting out of there was a harrowing experience. This is an image looking out at the Coburn Buttes from Antoine Butte.

From Antoine Butte, this is a view looking west toward the Bear Paw Mountains.

The ABC television transmitter was located up on top of Antoine Butte. As the trailer that Susie and I lived in was so close to the base of the mountain, the signal went over us. We couldn't get any of the ABC programming. This is Gordon standing next to the transmitter.

This is one of my favorite photographs of Gordon and Edith from up on Antoine Butte.