Family
Complicated. Families are really complicated.
I’m going to begin with this observation. The only people who really know and understand the nature of a marriage and how it is working (or not working) are the two people in that union. Whatever it is that you think you are observing, you are only witnessing the tip of the iceberg; and that includes those observations made by the children of that union.
A second observation. Marriage is difficult. Staying with the same person for a lifetime, as each of you go through so many individual changes, and as life circumstances impact each of you in different ways, is a challenge. There are some people who can manage this emotional, physical and psychological roller coaster, and many other couples cannot.
A third observation. There is no guidebook for raising children. First of all, we raise our children with the goal of being able to live effectively and successfully in the world that will exist for them as adults. Our world is changing so dramatically and so rapidly, it becomes more difficult with each generation to predict their world. One minute we’re living in a democracy that is admired by people around the world. The next minute, we’re a totalitarian state and a shithole country (to quote the Orange King).
A couple comes together with all of their life experiences which are going to be different. When it comes to raising children, one of the more significant differences involves how each person in the relationship was raised by their own parents. What was their own parents’ philosophy about discipline, for instance. It is not often the case that couples review all these issues before marriage. Like many facets of marriage, a lot of these issues appear as a pleasant or unpleasant surprise as they occur.
Under the best of circumstances, many marriages end in divorce. According to the American Psychological Association, approximately 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce. The divorce rate for second marriages is even higher, with approximately 60-67% of second marriages ending in divorce.
Susie and I had everything going for us. We came from two incredibly supportive and loving families. My parents loved Susie and her parents more than approved of me. We had financial stability and our futures looked bright. And we had good health. And yet, with all the positives we had in our relationship, we got divorced just short of ten years of marriage. After we got divorced, we had our closest friends tell us, wow, if you two weren’t able to make it, we’re all screwed (and as a postmortem observation, they were all screwed). Marriage is hard.
I am going to approach my discussion in this blog about marriage and family on the reservation from about 30,000 feet. It is too personal (and painful) to address from ground level. I loved the people we were closest to, and witnessing some of the difficulties they were encountering were truly emotionally difficult for us.
So, let me start here … we observed some wonderful marriages and beautiful families. There is no way to characterize marriage and family with broad strokes that cover every case. As in all societies, there were couples and families that managed to weather life’s many storms and came out of the experience with strong and healthy relationships between couples, between parents and children and between siblings. I can think of many instances of those relationships.
As noted, marriage is difficult under the best of circumstances. Life in Hays and on the reservation rarely could be described as the best of circumstances. Again, from 30,000 feet, let’s review. People had gone through the most traumatic experiences of having their culture ripped out from beneath them. What was offered as a replacement was often unsatisfying and confusing. Many people lived between two difficult worlds and values could be amorphous.
Almost every family experienced some level of poverty and unemployment. So many families had to function with economic instability and insecurity. Those factors can cause tremendous burdens for a marriage and family. Alcoholism often could implode a marriage and could have the most deleterious consequences for children. And health problems were common, which also caused challenges for families.
And exacerbating all these issues were the rules, regulations and expectations that were superimposed on this community by the Catholic Church. The Church’s position on birth control was more than unhelpful for a community that was experiencing the stresses and burdens that were endemic among these people. And the very public and personal stigma the Church created around divorce sent so many conflicting messages to the community. Everyone in the community could witness those who wore the scarlet D by observing who did and who didn’t go to the front of the church to take communion. As I noted in a previous blog, many couples found a resolution to the Church’s rules by only getting married the Indian way, not in the church. Then if the marriage didn’t work, no harm, no foul.
Many couples had children before they were married. Some of those children were the impetus for the couple to live together; some of those couples got married. Some of those children were raised by grandparents. Some of those children were adopted by aunts or uncles. It was not uncommon for people to go through multiple relationships and multiple marriages. Large families were common. The children almost always stayed with the mother, unless they were with grandparents. If mom went through multiple marriages, the new husbands more often than not, treated those children as their own. Given the amount of turmoil and chaos that existed in many families, one of the more remarkable circumstances was that children were not raised with the stigma of the parents’ divorce. There was no need for an orphanage on the reservation. Children were taken in by someone in the family, if necessary, and they were loved and cared for.
Ray had been in the hospital in Great Falls. Irma called us at the mission. She thanked us for the flowers that we sent Ray, and she said that she had a big favor to ask us. Ray had come home from Great Falls on the ambulance and needed to be picked up at the Agency. She said that she would pay us if we picked him up. We told her that we'd go to get him, but we wouldn't take any money. My thought was that I didn’t think Susie and I would go to heaven if we charged our mother for picking up our father.
Edith was telling us about one of her sons who was married to a woman that she really didn’t care for. Gordon said that she wished that she could pick her daughters-in-law. Interestingly, in the traditional A’aniiih kinship system, they practiced father-in-law – daughter-in-law and mother-in-law - son-in-law avoidance. They wouldn’t speak to or look at each other, and if possible, would avoid being in a room together.
Gordon and Edith were talking about the first time that Susie will dance at a pow wow and they were encouraging her to dance at one soon. They were playing a hand drum and Edith was teaching her how to dance. They said that I would have to have a giveaway for her the first time that she danced, and that I would need about $300.00. I would have to buy about 7-10 blankets to give away and some money to give away to people and to the drum that played the honor song for Susie when she danced. I could give each person that I wanted to 2-5 dollars or more if I wanted to. All our friends would dance behind Susie when she danced for the first time during the honor song. Then Gordon said that I would have to have another give away the first time I sang at the drum. They said that our friends would help us out getting the money for the giveaway and that we would not have to worry about spending a lot of money. They said that we will help you out. And that’s how we knew that Gordon and Edith considered us family.
Susie went over to Irma’s this evening to stay with her while Ray was in the hospital. We didn't want her to stay at home alone. While Susie was there her sister-in-law came over and stayed with Irma also. She was staying with Irma for a while. The reason was that this past Sunday, her son came home drunk, and he tore up the house and knocked down the Christmas tree. Then he kicked everyone out of the house. All his brothers and sisters and his mother was forced to leave the house and find somewhere else to stay until he sobered up. She was going to stay with Irma until things settled down with her son. It has been almost 50 years, and I remember this incident like it happened yesterday. I wasn’t close to this man, but I knew him well, and from my relationship with the Gones, we were together on many occasions. I really liked him and thought he was a good person, a nice person. These events were just plain sad.
Irma said she wants to go up into the mountains to get a tree for Christmas. She wants to find a sweet pine. She said that she's smelled them up in Whitecow but she never found them. She said that getting a tree used to be a fun time. It was a family affair. They used to use a cutter and a team of horses. She said, Boy, those were the good old days and they'll never be the same. Things have sure changed. Nowadays, people don't have a cutter, or even a team of horses, hardly. She said they would load hay in the back and let the kids pile in.
I was speaking to a woman at the mission. She was talking about a girl was going to be married. She said that she hopes that her kids don’t get married soon. Many girls get married so soon and too young, 16, 17, 18. They need parents’ consent until they’re 18, but some of the parents do give their consent. She also told me that her father lives in Lodge Pole and that she hasn’t seen him for years. She said that I’m lucky to have a father. She said that her mother died when she was 13 years old. My husband has a job and he only gets home about once a month. She raises 6 kids on her own. She knows now that she can support herself and the kids. She is a teacher’s aide, which is one of the more stable jobs.
I was speaking to a young woman at the rectory. She said,
I was married five years ago. We weren't married in the church. I want a divorce now, but I just don't feel right about it. I know that it’s wrong (she seemed very confused about a divorce). But Father Retzel told me that since I wasn’t married in the church that it would be ok for me to go ahead and get the divorce. I just feel so guilty about it. I've been reading a book about divorce and the Catholic church and that's helped me a lot. They say that you have to do what makes you happy. This marriage and the separation has been such a burden on me. My husband really hurt me. I had my boy on the reservation for one year (her first child) but he just didn't fit here. He didn't like it here. His father came for him. I may never see him again (she started to cry softly). So long as he's happy, that's what’s important. I'm waiting for legal services and then I'm going to put in for a divorce. The lawyer comes to the reservation on Mondays. They told me that it will cost $30 to get the divorce.
I was speaking to a man who told me that he and his wife had eight children. He said that they had a child every year in a row except for one year. He said, don’t get yourself in that trap. You can’t care for kids this way.
I was talking to a woman at the mission.
Grandpa really spoils the kids. My father and mother spoil my children. When I was a kid, if we pushed on the door and ruined the screen, my father would really let us have it. My kids do the same things, so my husband put a board across the screen so that the kids could push against the board to open the door and not the screen. Once, when my father was at the house, one of my kids pushed against the screen and broke it. I laid him over my knee and really gave the kid a couple of good cracks in his rear end. My father really let me have it for hitting my boy. I said, "dad, if we did that when we were kids, we'd still be sitting in some corner somewhere. If the kids do anything wrong while their grandfather is here, they look at me like I can’t do anything to them now, they start to grow horns and a tail.
Susie asked Edith if the girls here used any kind of birth control. Edith gave her ‘the look’ and responded, obviously not. She said that birth control was advertised on a sign on the door of the clinic. Again, the rules of the Catholic Church in this regard were not helpful.
Health and Medicine
Gordon said that he goes for a checkup at the Public Health Service hospital every six months. Everyone can sign up for these examinations. They give a regular examination with blood tests, and they use an EKG. They phone in the results and another doctor reads the tests and gives the doctor at the PHS hospital the results.
Ray experienced some serious health issues during December. These were chronic issues, and we felt horrible for him and Irma. He had a blood clot in his neck, and he lost the sight in one of his eyes. He also had a lot of pain in one of his arms. He has diabetes, and they cannot use a blood thinner to get the clot out because if he had a cut, it would never heal. He said that he had problems with his own doctor at the Agency not getting information from the doctors at Columbus Hospital in Great Falls. They said that they were still trying to get this information. Ray said that he would like to have something done about the clot in his neck, but the Great Falls doctor said that nothing could be done about it. Ray said that he knows a lot of people in Great Falls, and he had a lot of visitors while he was in the hospital. He has had three heart attacks and has diabetes, so this new problem has he and Irma very worried. They are going to try to get him to Seattle, which is the closest PHS hospital in the area. The one at the Agency is more a clinic than a hospital.
Irma said that diabetes is prevalent on the reservation. She said that her nephew is 26 years old, and he has diabetes. He is at the hospital, and he is learning to give himself shots of insulin. She said that the reason for it is that the pancreas does not produce enough insulin in these people. She said that there have been 19-year-olds that have been diagnosed with diabetes. She said that Indians do not get juvenile diabetes. Her daughter has the opposite condition. She has too much insulin, and she is supposed to be on a high protein diet. The doctors told her that she may get diabetes later in adulthood, because there is a history of it on both sides of the family. (And very sadly, she did).
Edith’s oldest daughter died when she was eight years old from a tonsillectomy. Edith didn’t understand how this could happen. She knows that the chances of this happening are very slight. This was a sadness that Edith carried with her every day of her life. Our hearts just ached for her.
Soon after we learned this about Edith’s daughter, Marge Chandler told us that her grandson had his tonsils out this week in the hospital in Havre. There were some complications, and he started to run a fever and was having pain in his legs. They are taking a throat culture to see if he had strep throat. She came to the rectory to call her daughter in Havre to see how her grandson is doing. She and George will drive to Havre in the morning to see him, because they are worried and are also worried about their daughter. She hasn’t had much sleep and has sat in the chair next to his bed since he got out of the operating room.
Lyle is at the Alcohol Training and Rehabilitation Center at the Galen Hospital in Deer Lodge, Montana. He went there voluntarily so he can stay there for as long as he wants, and he can leave any time that he wants. People who are sentenced to go there have to stay there for a certain term and they usually leave as soon as their term is up. We were all hoping that he gets the help he needs.
The PHS periodically tests for TB, and it is sometimes discovered in people.
Frank came up to visit tonight. He said that his mother has a lot of cures for things. He said that she cures a cold by putting Vicks in hot water, steaming something over your head, and a spoonful of rendered skunk fat mixed with mineral oil.
The winters in Montana were so beautiful. Our home up near the canyon was an incredibly beautiful place in all seasons.
Traditions
Margaret picked up Susie and her dad from the mission and drove them to their home so that they could see Clarence’s paintings. Margaret was talking about arts and crafts night and said that everyone there was a relative except for Roseann and Charles. She said that Roseann’s nickname, “Mushsquaw” meant cow in Cree. Her grandmother gave her that name in Cree even though Roseann is a registered Gros Ventre. She said that Jessie Ironman speaks Cree, Crow and Gros Ventre but she told Clarence in English that she doesn't speak English. She said she can speak only Indian sign language. You can visit with her and understand the Indian sign language.
Margaret told us that Jim Stiffarm’s father was a medicine man who turned Catholic, and he held some position in the Church. He had that last name because he had that characteristic, but before that he was known as "No Nose." Clarence is only the 3rd generation to have a surname. Before the people had individual names. Margaret and Clarence named their children “The Girl” after his grandmother and “Catcher” after his uncle. They also have legal English names.
Edith told us that her mother put Edith’s children's umbilical cords, the part that is left on and dries up and falls off, into a beaded medallion. The medallion is put on the end of a necklace. The medallions were beaded into a design and the colors were white, blue, and orange. There were two of them. The beaded ends were sewn together permanently to form a case for the cords. Gordon said that the necklace should have been made longer so that the medallion could be worn around the neck and the beaded pouch put in the pocket. That is the right way for them to be worn. These were short and the medallion went around the neck. Edith had them hanging on a hook in the bedroom.
Camie told us her mother gave Darian an Indian name. It means ‘Yellow Hair.”
Camie invited Susie and I over for dinner on Sunday night. Her brother-in-law had one of his cows butchered with Richard’s help. He gave Camie and Richard the insides of the cow and they will cook it up for dinner on Sunday night. Darian wouldn't eat some of it and her brother teased her and called her "completely white." Darian said that he also called her a honky. (Not very nice, but very funny).
Gordon said that a man from Flint Michigan whose name is Dick Pohrt, has a big collection of Gros Ventre materials. People sold him a lot of stuff, and some gave it to him.
Mike also told me that he heard from JJ Mount that there is a lot of Gros Ventre materials in Germany. The teachers at the mission used to take away Indian clothes from the children. If they came wearing them, they would give them clothes in the European style. Then they sent the Indian clothes back to Germany and they put them in a museum there. In the museums in Germany, they have a lot of buckskin clothes.
Gordon and Edith told us how to prepare choke cherries. After they are picked, you grind them up and mash them into a mush. They use a meat grinder. The seeds should be ground very fine. Then you wait for a warm day when the sun is out and put them on a piece of cardboard out in the sun. You mash them and form them into a patty about 3-4 inches in diameter before you set them on the cardboard. After one side is dried out, you turn them over and let them dry in the sun for about 3 days. They store the patties in a cheesecloth bag. Then they told us how to make choke cherry soup. You take the dry patties and crush them up and put them in a pot of boiling water. After they have disintegrated in the water, you add some sugar to the water and cherries. Then you turn down the heat and add a mixture of flour and water to the cherry and water mixture. Then you stir this and let it simmer for a little while. (And it is delicious).
Gordon and Edith were explaining to us how a person from Rocky Boy received his powers to become a medicine man.
He had to go to the top of a mountain. He had an attendant with him. He wanted to help his people, and that is why he went to get this power. He took off his clothes at the top and the attendant tied his feet to a tree and tied his arms behind him around the tree while he was standing. Then the attendant went down to the bottom of the mountain. He could have no food or water. Nothing happened to him the first two days, but on the second night a spirit came and told him that one from the north would come if the spirit had pity on him. On the third night there came a flash of light near him and it threw up stones that hit him. A second time there was a flash of light and the stones hit him again. Then a third time there was a flash of light and it was very close to him and it really threw up the stones when it hit the ground. Then the spirit spoke to him. The spirit said that he felt sorry for him, and that he could teach him the power, but he must never use it for bad; only to help his people for good things. The whole night the spirit taught him the medicine songs, and the power. He had to learn everything in this one night. Then on the fourth day, in the morning, something cut his hands loose from the back of the tree, and he fell to the ground and he scraped his face. He hadn't eaten or had water in all this time, and he could hardly get up off the ground. He had to drag himself to the bottom of the mountain where his attendant was. The attendant had water and food for him. Some days later they had a sweat lodge and during it he died. Everyone rushed around him. He said that he felt himself rise up and he went to a beautiful place. He saw all the old Crees and one of them came up to him and said, you are young, you do not belong here. You should go back and help your people. He did not want to leave this beautiful place, but he went back. When he came back, everyone was crying, and the sweat lodge was over. He said that he had not died, but he told them that he had been up there.
Marge Chandler told us that there wasn't a tree raising dance at the mission by the dance committee because Gordon was really mad at the Gros Ventre treaty committee and decided not to have it.
I heard that the treaty committee decided not to give the dance committee $300.00 they promised for the gym dedication because Gordon did not thank them publicly for the money. That made me mad because it was our money to begin with, not just theirs. I felt like putting a letter in the camp crier just saying thank you for the money that is ours. It also makes me mad that people do not appreciate what the dance committee does. They ask why we don’t have more dances, but they don’t realize the work that it takes, and if we didn't do it, there wouldn’t be anything. I don’t see anyone else doing anything. For myself, I would just rather stay home, and it is so much work preparing for a dance. Before the gym dedication, Gordon took off a week from work to do all the running around and preparing and his family suffered for it, but he doesn’t get any thanks. When people grumble about this stuff I really jump and let them have it.
Susie was taking photographs with a Kodak Instamatic Camera of early 1970s vintage. When developed, the images are grainy. Digitizing a grainy image gets you a grainier image. I converted both to black and white to salvage the photographs the best I could. These photographs were taken in the fall, but we must not have developed this roll of film until sometime in December. Susie took these of Gahanab and me up in the canyon. This was a common scene; my taking photographs and Gahanab tagging along up on the walls of the canyon. Those were the good old days when I could squat.
Religion Spirituality Superstition
There is an interesting relationship between how much a people feel they control their environment and the practice of magic and the existence of superstition. The more people understand the environment and have some sense of control, there is less reliance on magic or superstition. Those practices are replaced with the knowledge that comes with science. Where that understanding doesn’t exist, there is more a reliance on magic and superstition. And the environment includes the physical and social environment.
Gordon said that if you hear a voice that means that someone is asking for a prayer. They want you to pray for them. You don’t have to know who the prayer is for; you just pray. You can light sweet grass when you pray. When I hear a voice, I’ll say a prayer.
Edith said that in the Indian way if someone is going to die, then someone will see him. We saw my father walking by our house, and he was also seen walking with his cane near Rays’s house. They think it is to say good-bye. The person is visiting everyone and saying good-bye to them. Two weeks after we saw him, he died.
Gordon said that the Milk River Dance Committee was going to have a mourner’s feed at the Agency gym on Friday night. He said that he doesn’t know why they are feeding now, but he was invited because of his ‘grandfather’ who died about a month ago. He said that he was glad that he was being fed, because he would like to sing again at the pow wows, but he was sorry that the feed was on Friday, because he was going to miss the Box Elder vs Hays – Lodge Pole basketball game, and it was really going to be a dandy game.
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. There was a mass in the church at 11:00 for all the kids in the school. There were about 30 adults from the community who attended. At lunch Father Retzel got up and announced that there wouldn’t be any school in the afternoon in the honor of Mary on her special day. The kids cheered and thanked him. The kids took the bus home after lunch. At 3:15 Bill drove the bus again to pick up the kids from the H-LP school, because they had a full day of school. There was a mass at 9:30 that evening, and there were about 50 people from the community at this mass.
Gordon told me that there isn't any peyote around here, but there is a lot in Wyoming.
We can get it from down there. We have friends there who can get it for us. We once had it at a pow wow in Lodge Pole. It really makes you feel good. First, they boil it in water, and then you drink the water really hot. As hot as you can take it. It looks like a dried apricot or a dried peach. Then some people eat what is left of the peyote after boiling it. Nothing is wasted. At first it makes your stomach feel kind of weird and then you feel sick. Then you feel really good. You smile all the time, but you don't know why you are smiling. The effects last about 12 hours.
Edith said that her father used to eat the peyote and after eating one he would sing all night.
It really makes your tongue feel tough, like cotton, when you eat a whole one straight like that.
Gordon said that he tried to drive home from Lodge Pole after he had drunk some of that water, but he couldn't. Edith had to drive. If you drink any alcohol with it, it can really make you go crazy. I will try to get some of it for us and we can do it. We can try it. It is a good high without getting drunk and without a hangover. You feel really good the next day. There is not a religion with it, like there is some other places.
Ray said that they were going to have a peyote meeting this week. His brother was going to come up from Crow and would help to put it on. For the Gros Ventre, peyote isn't a religion. But the peyote religion did come as far north as the Crow. That's where Fred got involved with it. He could bring some up here. They have had peyote meetings in the old log house behind his house on his land. We'd go in there and would sing for a long time. After you eat that peyote, you could sit on your knees all day and sing. Cyndee was sitting at the kitchen table with us, and she said that it was the only legal drug, and that was because it was a religion.
I did attend a peyote meeting with Gordon. I will describe it in detail when I get to that place in my fieldnotes. It was one of the more fascinating experiences I had during our two years in Hays.
Gordon and Edith went to a spirit lodge on the Ft. Belknap Reservation. Kenneth Gopher, a medicine man, and Chippewa-Cree from the Rocky Boy Reservation, had the spirit lodge. (When we told Irma about this spirit lodge and the medicine man she said that yes he was a medicine man of sorts but seemed very skeptical about the authenticity of the lodge and his powers.)
It was held in a log house and the lodge was built right inside of the house. Edith said that she was a little scared about going to the spirit lodge. She wasn't sure what it was going to be like. When she found out what it was going to be, she almost backed down. They built the spirit lodge right in the log house. It was built with four poles in the corner and four raw hide straps tied very tight to make it secure. The floor of the lodge was nailed down very securely to the floor of the log house so that the lodge could not be moved at all from any movement inside of the lodge. It had colored cloth all around the top of the lodge on the outside and rows of bells were tied around the outside and top of the lodge.
The medicine man had two attendants inside of the lodge, and there were three singers. They had their drums hung on the walls of the lodge. There were two guards at the door of the lodge in the log house to make sure that no one came into the lodge while the proceedings were going on and could not disturb things in the spirit lodge.
There were three rattles, and Gordon and two other men were given rattles and told to keep time with the beat of the drum. Ben (Brother Jones), Quentin, Lilly, Gordon, Edith and many older people were in the spirit lodge. They were sitting on chairs that were lined around the inside of the lodge and up against the walls.
There was a spot for smudging on the floor on the inside of the lodge, and they smoked a pipe and passed it around. Women were not allowed to smoke the pipe. They sang some medicine songs and nothing happened. Then they sang stronger and one of the rattles started to bounce around the inside of the lodge. It bounced around really fast on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the lodge. People were not allowed to bring any jewelry into the spirit lodge, and one man had put a watch into his pocket and forgot about it. When the rattle was bouncing around, it hit this man very hard in the chest where the watch had been. The medicine man asked him to please remove the watch from the spirit lodge. Once a white man was in the spirit lodge and he was very curious about what made the rattle bounce around like that inside very fast, and so he grabbed out at it. Two hands grabbed the guy and threw him all over inside the spirit lodge. It really threw him around and then dropped him down hard in the center of the lodge. They had to stop and turn on the lights and take him out. He was really beat up. You are only supposed to pray and talk to the Great Spirit in the lodge.
It is completely dark in the spirit lodge, and Edith said that if they had not taken breaks to turn on the lights and smoke, she would not have been able to stand it. While they were singing the medicine song, the rattle bounced around the lodge and then it rose up in the lodge. They heard birds, coyotes, wolves and a bear in the lodge. Then they heard the voice of a very old man in the lodge. He was whistling like he was breathing very hard. It was the sun spirit from the east. He talked in Indian. It was Cree, and an interpreter told them what he was saying. He told everyone that there would be a drought in the south. That all the good things that the white man gives them will stop when this drought comes. So, the Indian better save and spend wisely. Then people in the lodge should warn the people that live in the south. Up in the north, where they live, there will not be drought. There will be lots of rain, and the earth will shake, there will be earthquakes.
People were allowed to ask the spirit questions. He would take a long time to answer the questions because he would leave to find the answers. One man was an alcoholic, and he had lost everything. He was making good money, about $700.00 a month from veterans benefits and disability, and he had a home. But he lost everything when he started to drink. He asked the sun spirit if he would be able to get his house back. The spirit answered that he would and could, but he had to stop drinking and would have to save and spend his money wisely. Another man cried when he asked the question and said that he didn't have anything to give his children. Three days later, the woman who had his house said that she was moving and would give the house back to him. He has not been an alcoholic since, and he has his house back. Other people did ask other questions. The black spirit was called from the west; the spotted spirit from the south; and the lightening spirit came from the north.
When the lightening spirit came there were big blue flashes inside the lodge that were so bright that they really lit everything up inside of the lodge. All the spirits had different voices, and they were all voices of old men. They came while the songs were sung, and they dropped to the floor making a loud noise. Also, a happy spirit came into the lodge, and since no one asked him questions he played pranks on people. He talked in Indian. The interpreter said that he called Gordon and said to him, “I am afraid of you, because you look like you could eat frogs.”
The medicine man said that he sent the other spirits out to make sure that no other spirits came into the lodge. If they came in, they would pinch and poke at everyone and it would feel very cold and clammy. The spirits told him that people were buried along the creek because spirits came from there and two spirits came from a hill, so two people were buried up there. When the rattles bounced around, the bells also shook at the top of the lodge. They also had curing in the medicine lodge. Gopher said that doctors were interested in the power that he had to cure without a scalpel. Ben asked for a cure and so did Lilly. She was getting sick from eating any greasy food and would vomit and had a pain in her chest. The medicine man took out a big gall stone from her and displayed it to everyone. It was still wet. A sick person was put on a bed of grass and sage and was laid in the lodge during the cure.
Gordon said that after he went to the spirit lodge, he backed away from practicing the traditional Indian religion. He said that if you don't do things right that you can get into a lot of trouble. Bad things will happen to you. He said that when he was in the spirit lodge, it made him feel really good. It was what the Indians used to do. It made me feel so good to see those drums hanging on the wall. I felt like I really belonged. It made me feel way back in time. It reminded me of the movie, “A Man Called Horse.”
I attended a spirit lodge with Gordon. I believe it was in the second year of my fieldwork. I will provide a detailed explanation of my experience when I get to that period of time in my fieldnotes.
Gordon said that the Indians from Canada practice bad medicine. He said that if he took me to a dance there, and if I was dancing, they might say that there is a white man dancing, and he is showing us up. They would be jealous, and they would point a feather at me and shoot it at me. Then any time I would try to dance, I would get cramps and would be paralyzed. I wouldn't be able to dance. Then he said that I could go to a medicine man for a cure. A good spirit would be called and would come to fight the bad spirit in you. The bad spirit doesn't want to leave and there would be a big fight between the good and the bad spirit. Sometimes they fight so hard that they really tear up the lodge.
Irma said that there were medicine men in Canada. She said that their Indian medicine could be used for good and bad. One time there was a girl who danced like a boy. She won all kinds of exhibition dancing. A medicine man shot a feather at her and caused her to be struck right there on the floor and could never dance again. They were just jealous. She thinks that Ray had a hex put on him so that he couldn’t sing anymore, because he used to be real good and all of a sudden he couldn't sing anymore.
I was speaking to a woman who told me that Father Retzel sometimes gets mad at her because she is sometimes skeptical about the church. I don't like to go to confession. The fathers have been here for so long and they know your voice when you go in there. I don't feel right about telling them everything. Her husband doesn’t go to confession and he talked to father. He said: “I don't know why I have to tell a priest what I do. God can see me and everything that I do; why can't I just tell God about it.”
Mike told us that three boys tried to break into where the scared pipe is kept. They were trying to get the pipe. The next day, all three were killed in a car accident.
I was talking to a man at the Urban Rural Christmas party. He told me that in the traditional Gros Ventre religion, there was a belief in God. He said that there was a relationship between the Gros Ventre and the Hebrews. He said that the Assiniboine don’t believe. They are sun worshippers. Then he said to me, I shouldn’t tell you all this. You are too young to understand. You shouldn’t drink with me.
The following Indian Prayer hangs on a plaque in many people’s homes:
Great Spirit –
Grant that I may not criticize my neighbor
until I have walked for a mile in his moccasins
There were horses all over the reservation. The children didn't ride bicycles; they rode their horses everywhere. The traditional A'aniii were equestrian buffalo hunters like all of the tribes on the plains. Horses were not indigenous to native North America. (There was a species of horse in North America thousands of years ago, when other prehistoric animals were also present in North America. They became extinct). The modern-day horse was brought to the Americas by the Spanish in the 1700s. Nomadic buffalo hunters immediately found the utility of the horse as the horse made for more effective warriors and hunters. And with a nomadic lifestyle, following the buffalo herds across the plains, shlepping all of one's belongings was much easier with a horse pulling a travois as opposed to using dogs or one's wife or wives. Thus, horses quickly multiplied across the Americas.
While horses were everywhere, this might have been the only time I was on a horse during our two years in Hays. If memory serves me, Matt and Carletta offered me the ride. Susie captured the picture. Most of my time with horses was spent lifting kids on and off their ride or helping to get them steered in the right direction if their horse was being uncooperative.
The photograph with the horse and the one below must have been taken early in the fall during our first year. I didn't have a beard. My beard quickly reappeared for the duration. Susie took this of me up in the Little Rockies.
Prejudice
I would prefer not to deal with this subject, but leaving it out would not do justice to the experiences we had in the mid-1970s on Fort Belknap. I am trying to be honest and candid in characterizing these experiences. Prejudice was a significant problem on the reservation, and it involved relationships between various groups. The whites off the reservation often demonstrated prejudice towards the Indians on Fort Belknap. The prejudices between Gros Ventre and Assiniboine were endemic and manifested in various ways. There weren’t enough Blacks or Jews around for prejudice to be relevant, although I definitely heard comments during those two years that were unflattering to both groups. The most serious and dysfunctional prejudice existed toward the Chippewa-Cree or Metis and primarily from the Gros Ventre. The Assiniboine might have also had this prejudice, but as I didn’t spend as much time with people in Lodge Pole, I was less aware of it. I sure didn’t see this prejudice in everyone, but it was pretty toxic among those who held these beliefs.
There was one event in particular that poisoned the community while we were in Hays. What made this situation particularly painful for us was that we were very close with the Chippewa-Cree family that was involved. They were dear friends of ours and remained so for decades. What they experienced was beyond sad. It impacted the entire community, and it was such a monumental tragedy.
To make a very long and complicated story short … there was a Gros Ventre family that was more than agitated by the ‘landless Indians’ on the reservation. To remind you … the reservation was formally established for the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes. The Chippewa-Cree had lived in the area, and as I understood it, they came onto the reservation to be near the mission when they lost their homesteads during the depression and the drought in the west. Over the years, this group intermarried often enough with the Gros Ventre that mixed blood was more common than not. One didn’t get very far in the kinship diagram before concluding that everyone was related to everyone.
Keeping in mind that tribal status was based on degree blood, rather than identity, one would be pretty hard pressed to conclude that the Gros Ventre family that had a burr up their butts about the Chippewa-Cree were full blood Gros Ventre. Again … the tribal rolls were based on interviews with people at the time of allotment of reservation lands. There was no 23 and Me. There were no birth records and Gregor Mendel had only performed his experiments with pea plants some decades earlier … genetic testing was a very long ways into the future. Thus, the odds that any of these people were pure Gros Ventre was probably not all that great.
I just completed rereading George Horse Capture’s, The Seven Visions of Bull Lodge. It is the story of Bull Lodge’s life as told by his daughter, Garter Snake to Fred Gone. Fred Gone had been involved in the writer’s project during the depression. George Horse Capture worked from Fred Gone’s writings to compile the story of this great medicine man and the last keeper of the Feathered Pipe. Sometime during the mid-1800s, Bull Lodge lived with the Crow. At various times, the Gros Ventre and Crow were both enemies and friends. George Horse Capture notes that during those times of friendship, intermarriage between these tribes was common. One might wonder how many people recounted these instances of intermarriage when describing their ancestry at the time of allotment. Here … let me help you … they didn’t. Even if someone knew about a marriage between a relative and a member of a different tribe, they would have been hard-pressed to understand how far back that intermarriage took place, and what degree blood might have resulted. And they wouldn’t have been able to figure out how many intermarriages had taken place over time, including with whites.
A member of this Gros Ventre family killed a Chippewa-Cree man for no sane reason. He killed him because he had a last name from a prominent Chippewa-Cree family. And the insanity of this act is evidenced by the fact that the victim was Chippewa-Cree and Gros Ventre. This happened just before we moved to Hays, so the animosities and the pain were very fresh in the community. The prejudice was always there, but it was rarely manifested in such a brutal and horrific way. The Gros Ventre family moved to Lodge Pole before we arrived, so we didn’t really know them and didn’t have much to do with them.
What made this particular expression of prejudice so sickening was that it wasn’t like the Chippewa-Cree were in the way of either the Gros Ventre or the Assiniboine. For the population size, Fort Belknap was a large place. The Chippewa-Cree weren’t competing for housing, because they had no preference for housing from the tribal government. The same was true of employment. The Gros Ventre and Assiniboine had preference for jobs on the reservation. The Chippewa-Cree received medical and education benefits through their recognition by the federal government as Indians. In either case, they weren’t displacing any Gros Ventre or Assiniboine in either hospital beds or classroom desks. And everyone was welcome in church, because once we get past hating each other, we’re all God’s children.
The only Chippewa-Cree who received a home from the tribe did so from being married to an enrolled Gros Ventre or Assiniboine. Many of the Chippewa-Cree had enough Gros Ventre or Assiniboine blood to actually be enrolled members of the Fort Belknap community.
This prejudice was based on pure, unadulterated ignorance … as is the case with most prejudices.
It was Camie and Richard’s son who was killed. It was Darian’s brother. His memory should be a blessing. You will read a lot about this family in our blogs because we spent so much time with them during those two years. Camie and Richard were good friends. Camie was a student of mine at the Urban Rural program … and she was an excellent student. And Darian was a student of ours at the mission grade school. All the worst of this episode was going on as we arrived in Hays. Our hearts were broken and remain broken for them. It was a senseless tragedy that impacted the entire community.
The trial took place before we arrived. The culprit didn’t get a very long sentence, and this result made it into the national news. On Paul Harvey’s radio program, he described all of what happened, and the sentence that resulted after the guilty verdict. Paul Harvey noted on his program, that if you want to get away with murder, go to the Fort Belknap Reservation. (You might have to Google Paul Harvey). Just plain sad.
Camie said that she went to the feed up at the agency for her mourning for her son who was killed this past summer. She said that the mourning was for the families of anyone who died within the year. The dance committees put the feeds on once a year for the mourners. The mourners for Ira were at this feed and he died about a month ago. If the person died within a week or two they probably would not have been invited to the feed. The mourning does not have to be for one year. The people who go to the mourners’ feed are sent invitations to come by the dance committee.
Camie told us that she is not going to stay at the LP dance on New Year’s Eve. She’s just going to pay the dance committee for the mourner’s feed for her son. She said that she can pay them anything, one dollar, twenty … it doesn’t matter.
Irma told us that when they were just kids, we used to be walking home from school, and a member of this family used to call me "Cree Bacon" (a derogatory term for the group Irma belongs to the French Chippewa Cree). I used to get so mad; I would beat him up. Then when he got bigger, I would use a stick on him.
We were speaking to a couple who told us that prejudice toward the Indians on Fort Belknap was really bad in Harlem. This is the white community just off of the reservation. The children from the northern half of the reservation attend the public grade school and high school in Harlem. The man said that it didn't bother him for himself but for his people. The woman told us that she was refused a seat somewhere in Havre because she was with Indian women.
Clarence and Margaret were speaking to us about the teacher who had written the letter in the school newspaper. Margaret went to the school and asked the teacher to apologize.
We were speaking to a middle-aged Assiniboine woman. She told us that the problems between the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine really bothered her. She said that she wakes up at night upset about it and will stay awake to pray about it.
Sisters Kathleen and Laura found a home in Lodge Pole, and they were soon going to be moving out of the green trailer at the mission. Susie and I were going to be moving out of our home at the canyon and back to the mission. It would make life so much more convenient for us, but we were sure going to miss all this spectacular scenery along Mission Ridge and in the canyon.
Gahanab was going to miss his home more than Susie and I put together. He had free reign in our front yard. He loved running around the base of the mountain or chasing after the cows and horses that found their way into our yard. He was going to have to be chained up more often due to all the traffic around the mission buildings. He could have cared less about making our lives more convenient. He was going to be sacrificing a lot.
Sorry Gahanab.