We had such remarkable friendships while we lived in Hays and those relationships lasted after we left the reservation. Edith once made a trip to Columbus to visit us. Susie and I have both made trips back to the reservation. We corresponded with people throughout the years, and now that Facebook exists, we remain connected to people through this means. These relationships have remained so important to us through the years. If that were not the case, there would be no way I would have the energy or patience to do all this writing. In many ways, these stories need to be told for their children and grandchildren. And it is a way for me to honor the memories of people that we so loved.
Gordon told me that Susie and I would never have to worry about going hungry; there would always be meat on our table. He said that we have good friends here – he meant he and Edith. As I noted earlier, Ray and Irma took us in like second parents. Gordon and Edith, although older than us, were like siblings. That relationship with the Gones extended to the brothers and sisters and their children. May their memories be a blessing.
We became very close with Frank Cuts the Rope. He was very protective of Susie and me. Once Susie told him that I wasn’t feeling well. He went to the Hays clinic and brought me medicine. He was so kind to us. We were good friends with all the Cuts the Ropes in Hays. May their memories be a blessing.
When Susie was in Columbus, Camie came up to the trailer on a Saturday afternoon and brought me food. She was concerned that with Susie gone, I might not be eating like I should. She brought me marrow guts. It was on a baking sheet. We cranked up the oven, and Camie and I shared a heaping plate full of marrow guts. You can look up what it is on the internet. It is a thing. Camie was such a sweet friend to me and Susie. We exchanged holiday cards and letters after we left. I am so grateful that I got to visit Camie and Darian when I came to Hays in 2014 and 2017. May her memory be a blessing.
We had the honor and blessing of working with Mary, Beatrice and Jim almost every day at the mission school. We spent so many wonderful hours together. We learned so much about the traditional culture from them and we learned the importance of the traditional values which they embodied in their daily lives, starting with generosity. They were such good friends. We became good friends with the Lamebulls and the Stiffarms. May their memories be a blessing.
We had so many wonderful friendships with people in Hays, including with volunteers at the mission.
Religion and the Mission
Today was All Souls Day. There was a special mass for the kids at the mission grade school. Father Retzel said the mass and all the grades at the mission school attended the service with their teachers. The kids behaved like they usually do during the mass. They are generally disinterested and fool around. The first and second graders are the most interested and the best behaved during the mass.
I was speaking with a middle-aged woman who had been divorced. She said that she has a lot of trouble with the church. She is not supposed to take communion anymore because the church does not recognize divorce. She doesn’t understand why; why a person should have to spend their whole life with someone they do not get along with and be miserable. She talked to Father Retzel about it and has asked him for help. The church has special cases where divorce is allowed with special permission from the Pope. She had asked him to help her with this and he said that he would, but she has not heard any more about it. Her current husband has told her that these are man-made beliefs, and they do not come from God. It is like the rules that they used to have at the mission that the people were not allowed to touch the priests or nuns. This woman was always a strong Catholic and always went to mass. Since her divorce she has had problems going to church and has a lot of questions about the church’s stand on divorce. She really has a conflict between the way she was brought up and the doubts that that she now has.
This whole dynamic is common. People want to stay in good standing with the church and not be told that they are going to be treated differently (and not be able to take communion) if they get divorced. As in the rest of society, relationships can be difficult, and often they don’t last. When you add all the factors that come with poverty (and a significant amount of hopelessness), marriage can become even more difficult. To avoid this treatment by the Church, there are a significant number of couples that get married “Indian way” and avoid this problem. If the relationship ends, the couple doesn’t go through a formal divorce, and the Church doesn’t treat them differently. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the result the Church was looking for, but this is what they got.
Marge Chandler said that for her and her husband’s 25th wedding anniversary her daughter made a big party for them. Everyone bought her something silver. She told Father Simoneau that she was going to take out all her silver and have a big party for him when he celebrates his 50th year in the Jesuit community. This will be in August 1978; he will be 70 years old.
A man called the mission at 6:30 while I was on phone duty. He made a collect call from Oklahoma, and I did not accept the charges, but he started to talk anyway. He asked us to go to get his sister. I drove over to her house to get her, and she came up to call him. He is going to school there for some vocational training on the GI Bill and he gets lonely and wants to talk to his sister.
Many people who call on the mission phone do not have enough money to pay for their calls. The mission ends up paying the bill. The phone bill is sometimes $500 for the month. Some people leave money if they have change coming and say that we should use that to cover some of those who do not pay. Some of the calls are made collect.
Sisters Kathleen and Laura are going to be moving into a home in Lodge Pole. She does most of her work in Lodge Pole (Kathleen) and has been in this community since she came to Ft. Belknap. She teaches CCD and GED in Lodge Pole, goes to the services there, and has an arts and crafts program. Her only responsibilities in Hays have been arts and crafts and the breakfast program in the school. Susie took over the Hays arts and crafts and the breakfast program, so her duties in Hays are minimal. The people in Hays really love her, and they give her a hard time for spending so much time in Lodge Pole. Most of the people in Lodge Pole are Assiniboine and they tend to be more traditional than the Gros Ventre. She has been planning to move there for a while, but father said that he wouldn't let her move there alone. This year she arranged to have another sister from her community (Dominican) come to Hays, and then she would have someone to move with her. Sister Laura came from New York. She teaches the 3/4th grade. She spends her extra time in Lodge Pole working with Kathleen.
She has been looking for a place to live in Lodge Pole (housing is very hard to find on the reservation). She found a woman who has a vacant house in the community, and so she went to see her. She said that the house was available, so they are going to move. Both fathers do not want to see her go, but they have promised her. She will have to move quickly before someone else wants the house. There is a waiting list for the house even though it is in very poor condition. The floor in the living room is sinking, there is no water pump, so water will have to be hauled. The electricity is not hooked up, they have fuel oil heat, which is very expensive, and yet the house is still in demand. They will be paying $25 a month rent. It will be paid by the mission. She and Laura will be moving just after Christmas. When she moves out, Susie and I will be moving into the green trailer with another volunteer (Nade).
I was shocked when I read this note. I remember being in the trailer by the canyon for the entire first year. Clearly, we moved after half of the year. Susie really wanted us to make the move. It was often the case that one of us would go to the mission and the other would stay at the trailer. If they later wanted to come to the mission, they had a one-mile walk. Our truck was our only vehicle. If the weather was bad (brutally cold with feet of snow), they would be stranded at the trailer. We knew we would eventually have to make this permanent move, as we learned that the people who owned the trailer at the canyon would be returning for the summer. We would have to move to the mission for three months and then make another move at the beginning of the school year back up to the canyon. That was more packing and moving than I wanted to do. So, we made the move. I would still like to be living in that trailer by the canyon, at the foot of the mountains.
The Church in Hays is St. Paul’s Mission. The Church in Lodge Pole is St. Thomas’. Father Retzel told me that they have different names because each church is watched over by a different saint.
Beginning on January 1, 1977, all couples planning marriage will be required to first complete a four month "preparation for marriage" course. This is a diocese-wide requirement. I have a multitude of thoughts about how this course was going to be conducted and led by people who are not permitted to marry and have taken vows of celibacy. As Pauline would admonish me regularly, please keep all your brilliant thoughts to yourself. And so, I will.
The mission is conducting a "help name our new mission gym" contest. The Mission school board will choose the winning title with a $5.00 award to the winner.
Father Simoneau told me that there was a person in the community who allowed their horses to get into the mission's fields. They graze on the land where they are not supposed to, and they ruin the wheat crop for the people who are leasing the land. They also ruin the fences. Father Simoneau and the volunteers used to shoot the horses with bird-shot to get them out of the field. Once the person got mad about this and he ran his horses through a fence. They ruined the fence. Father Retzel saw this happen and he went over to his house to yell at him. He told Father Retzel that if they ever shot the horses again, he would come over to the mission and shoot him. Father Retzel got scared and told everyone at the mission not to shoot the horses anymore.
Frank got $50 from the council for the turkey bingo that will be held for the Catholic Indian Congress. The money will be used to buy turkeys that will be prizes for the bingo. The CIC was held in the summer of 1977. I will offer lots of descriptions and explanations in later blogs. So much of the year involved fundraisers in the community to support it.
The turkey bingo was held just before Thanksgiving. Roseann and Charles helped to organize most of the bingo, and they did almost all the running around to buy the turkeys and hams that were given away as prizes instead of the usual money prizes. They also had a $40 food basket that would make a complete thanksgiving dinner for a family. They sold chances on this basket for $1. There were about 200 people at the bingo. This is almost twice the number that comes to the Thursday night bingos at the mission. They made about $500 dollars. After subtracting what was spent to buy turkeys and hams, they made almost $400.
Gordon told me that he sometimes gets confused about what to believe. He said that the bible tells us that we come from Adam and Eve, and science tells us that we come from fish or germs or monkeys. There are so many different theories. Who can say for sure? I didn’t suggest to Gordon that he take my physical anthropology course the following semester at Urban-Rural.
Bazoo and Nucky are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary today and tonight. Father Simoneau is saying a mass tonight in their honor and to bless their marriage. The whole family will be there, and they are going to have a big party for them at their home. At the mass, Bazoo and Nucky will renew their vows.
Beatrice and Jim celebrated their 37th wedding anniversary on November 13th. We had a small party for them today in the kitchen of the school at 3:00 in the afternoon. The sisters baked them a cake and we gave them a card signed by all the volunteers. When they were first married, they lived in a tent for a while. We asked them how it’s been for the last 37 years? They just laughed. They are both unbelievably sweet.
Sisters Kathleen and Laura got a new car that is being leased by their Dominican Community. The mission lost three cars today. Mike and Bill were in Harlem and the motor in one of their cars caught fire. Father Retzel lost the wheel bearings in his truck while he was in Malta. Kathleen lost all the forward gears in her station wagon in Lodge Pole. Mike said that the alternator broke in the bus while he was in Whitecow Canyon. The bus was full of kids and there was a blizzard. A woman drove by and picked up half of the kids and took them home. Another man passed them, and he picked up the rest of the kids and took them home. In the morning the bus got stuck in a snow drift. Someone saw it stuck, and they went to the mission and told Bill. They were out to help Mike in about five minutes. Gordon said that there should be a radio in the bus. Mike said we don't need a radio; we have the grapevine and it’s much faster. Gordon said that’s true. He said that this morning he saw us (Susie and me) walking down from our trailer through his binoculars and knew that we had some kind of truck trouble. The fact that Gordon was looking out his window with binoculars and saw Susie and I walking that mile to the mission is actually hysterical. Someone stole our gas while Susie was at arts and crafts.
Sister Giswalda told me that there used to be a Catholic Mothers Organization here. It used to be very strong, but we have not had it for a long time. People just stopped doing things. We used to have big banquets, and they were really nice. Irma, Edith, and Monica used to do all the work, and they finally got tired of it, and stopped.
These are photographs that I took of the mission during the month of November.
Basketball
Three basketball games were played by the Hays-Lodge Pole Schools. There was a grade school game, a junior varsity game and a varsity game.
The first game that was played was by the grade school team.
That is a buffalo robe that was permanently hung in the Mission Gym.
These are the grade school cheerleaders.
The second game was played by the high school junior varsity.
These are the high school varsity cheerleaders.
The varsity game was preceded by a flag ceremony.
Rather than singing the Star-Spangled Banner, Gordon is singing the Gros Ventre Flag Song. Of all the many photographs I took of Gordon during our two years in Hays, this one is by far my favorite.
These are photographs from the Hays Lodge Pole varsity game.
I didn't have any photographs of the stands. They were full. The people in the community are avid supporters of the men's and women's basketball teams.
The Cuts the Rope Artists
Clarence and Frank were exceptionally talented artists. They were brothers. Their mom was a very highly respected elder in the community, and they had many sisters who also lived in Hays. They were a large and a really wonderful Gros Ventre family.
Frank began a new technique for his painting this week. He got the idea and with the help of Mike, he did his first painting. Mike brought some walnut boards with him from Indiana (his home). Mike is cutting and finishing the boards. Then Frank is painting on them with pastels. Mike covers them with Build–50. Frank was so excited about the painting that he took it all over the community to show it to everyone. Clarence really encouraged him and said that it was great. Frank came over to our trailer at 7:30 Monday morning to show us this painting. He asked Mike to get more walnut boards. Mike is having it shipped out here. They also made an arrangement where Frank and his brother will use Mike’s frames for their pictures. They will sell the frames with their pictures and give this money back to Mike to use for the mission. Mike makes frames of weathered wood, and they go very nicely with the paintings. Most of the paintings are scenes from this area of animals and traditional Indian life.
Clarence was talking to Susie and me about being an artist. He said that he is trying to do something for his people through his art. He’s not doing it so that anyone would say of him, “there’s a great man” but by setting an example for the children. He said that he takes pride in what he does and is proud to be an Indian. Part of himself is contained in every painting. He enjoys going to art shows and has many friends from all over the country. He does perceive that he is something different. He is Indian. He said that his mother never told him that as an Indian, he had to settle for second best. He was never told that whites are better than Indians. He said that it is very sad that most of the old Indian culture is gone, and the rest is fast disappearing. He realizes how important the old people are on the reservation. He said that he is going to make a point of painting them.
Clarence was planning to have an art show in Havre during the week of Thanksgiving. Some of his paintings sell for between $500 – 700. He had to move the art show to the mission gym because all the Harve hotels were full around thanksgiving. The fathers gave him permission to use the gym.
Frank published a book of cartoons. They are line drawings. He had been working on the book for months and just received copies of it from the publishing company. He had a tribal lawyer (Frank is on the tribal council) make arrangements for him with the publishing company. The paperback is called “Injuns and Cowboys.” Frank at one time had worked on ranches (he was both a cowboy and an injun). It contains funny cartoons that he wrote about the reservation and this area. Many of the originals are hanging up in various places around the reservation. For the past four days we have been trying to connect with Frank but kept missing each other. He came to our trailer, and we weren’t home. We went to his home a few times to buy books, and he wasn’t home. Finally, he came over tonight. He hoped that we had been to his house while he was home because he went out and bought rolls and coffee for our visit. He was very proud of his book, and we bought three copies. He signed each of the copies for us. There are copies of the book all over the reservation and in Harlem at different stores. He has also been going to different people’s homes selling copies of the book. It is a wonderful book, and I still own my copy. I love that Frank signed it.
Mike was showing me one of Clarence’s paintings. It was a portrait of Chief Joseph; a pastel done on felt. Kelly Thomas gave Mike the picture and asked him if he would make a frame for it. He received the painting from Clarence one night when Clarence was driving down 376. He was in a hurry with some type of emergency, and he ran out of gas near Kelly’s place. Kelly gave him gas, and Clarence went into his car and gave him the painting as a show of thanks.
These are photographs I took in Landusky, a gold mining town up in the Little Rocky Mountains.
Clarence set up an art gallery and studio in Landusky. Tourists regularly made trips to this old mining town, particularly during the summer.
Politics
Camie works in Hays for the election board. There are 285 people who are registered to vote in Hays. During the primary elections in 1976 less than 50 of these registered voters came to the polls in Hays. People may register and vote in three places on the reservation: Hays, Lodge Pole and the Agency. 128 people voted in Hays in the national election. Only about 12 of those people voted for Ford. The rest voted for Carter.
I was talking to a man who told me that the Crees on the reservation were not like the Chippewa-Crees on the Rocky Boy Reservation. These people here are Breeds – they are a little of everything.
Ray once told me that people here really misuse the word breed because he said it meant a mixture. He said that everyone on the reservation, therefore was a breed, because there are very few if any full-bloods. Everyone on the reservation is a mixture of different groups.
Teaching cultural anthropology at the college in Hays (Urban/Rural) offered some unique opportunities both for me and for my students. People in the community didn’t often find themselves in a room together to share thoughts and feelings involving everything about their lives on the reservation. We had many fascinating discussions, and it was never lost on me that there was a great deal of catharsis going on in these conversations. My students discussed important issues to the community and to themselves personally. These conversations were amazingly candid and honest … for my students and for me. I was their teacher, but by this time, Susie and I had been on the reservation long enough, that we were also friends with many of these people and their families. I was a history teacher for their children at the Mission Grade School. I was driving their children on the school bus. I was selling them bingo cards on Thursday nights. Susie was making breakfast for their children at school. They were attending Susie’s arts and crafts nights. They knew me. They also knew me as an anthropologist, because they were stuck listening to me lecture twice a week about my discipline in this introductory course.
The people who were in my classes were attending college to become teachers. There was a strong incentive for them to go to college because they were receiving a stipend, and this was an important source of household income. There was also a very strong incentive to become a teacher, both for the benefit of children in the community and because it is one of the most stable and secure jobs on the reservation with a good salary. There wasn’t a whole lot of that happening in Hays.
Some of my students were related to each other, some were friends, and some were neither. Thus, they found themselves in discussions with people who they might not ordinarily have this kind of conversation because they weren’t visiting in each other’s homes. As Hays was such a small community, they certainly all knew each other. Some of my students were Gros Ventre, some were Cree, some were Assiniboine, some were white, and all of them were combinations of all the above.
From my anthropological perch in the classroom, my students were able to express their opinions without critique and with almost complete acceptance of a point of view. My students shared in this approach. They were remarkably sensitive, kind and respectful of each other. And as a result, our discussions went to places where they might not have gone had my students been defensive or reticent to speak their minds. This entire dynamic made for a wonderful experience for my students and for me.
Aside from these discussions, one of the more interesting assignments I gave to my students was to have them compose an ethnography of their community during the course. Our textbook covered the main subject matter of cultural anthropology, and I supplemented this reading with lectures and class discussions. These units covered such areas as political, economic and social systems, religion, and kinship. I would cover a different unit each week and then would provide my students with a list of questions to respond to as essays. When they combined their answers, they created a description of that subject area. By the end of the course, and by assembling all their essays, each of my students had written their own ethnography of the community. I will present these ethnographies in their totality in a separate blog at the end of this series … if I should live that long. The authors will remain anonymous.
These ethnographies and our discussions were so interesting to me because it isn’t often during fieldwork research that an anthropologist combines what we refer to as the emic and the etic. These terms derive from the linguistic concepts of phonetics and phonemics. Linguistics is the study of language and is one of the disciplines within anthropology. Phonetics is the study and classification of speech sounds. There is a phonetic alphabet of sounds that are used to describe every language. Phonemics is the study of specific sounds within a single language; the study of the structure of a language in terms of phonemes.
Cultural anthropology adopted these concepts by making the distinction between the emic and the etic. The emic is the way a people describe their own singular culture. Often, it starts with all the descriptions in their native language using native categories, such as in kinship terms. In my case in Hays, the A’aniiih, Cree and Assiniboine were speaking English as a first language, so they were already a significant step away from their traditional emic perspective. They spoke their language the same way I spoke Yiddish … we were using words here and there but we sure weren’t conjugating verbs. Kinship is a good example of how emic existed even in English. Kinship terms define roles. The terms not only define relations, they define the behavior expected between those relations. The A’aniiih, for example, referred to first cousins as brother and sister, and they treated each other as such. These are emic categories.
The etic is the anthropologist’s perspective. We categorize what we observe in a culture in a different way than the "natives" do. We do so to allow for a comparative perspective. We aren’t comparing in terms of one society or culture being ‘better’ than another. Remember, Boas banged it into our heads that this is not a valid way to study cultures. Rather, we make comparisons to better understand a society and all societies. How is the practice of avunculocal residence the same or different for all people who practice this residence pattern. The native people do not either think about or talk about economic systems or political systems. Those are etic concepts.
My students were learning the etic from my cultural anthropology course. They were living the emic in their way of life. When they were in my classroom during discussions and in their writing assignments, they were mish mashing both. I have to imagine that this isn’t a regular occurrence for anthropologists doing their fieldwork. That would be my perspective from fifty years ago. Today, I have no idea what cultural anthropologists are doing.
It is one of the most important responsibilities a cultural anthropologist has to ensure that the people in their community understand who they are and what they are doing. We aren’t spies (even though it felt that way at times in the yukkiest sense of the term). One of the most unique aspects of my teaching this class in Hays was that I spent fifteen weeks describing and explaining who I was and what my research entailed. And because they were taking this class for college credit, I was testing them to be sure they knew precisely the meaning and purpose of my anthropological research. Most of the major families in Hays were represented in my class. That this was a small community and that there was a remarkably efficient gossip network, by the end of five months of our living on the reservation, I had more than succeeded at disclosing the reason for my presence in Hays. After all, I was being watched by people using binoculars out of their kitchen windows.
With a few exceptions, when I refer to these discussions in my blogs, I’m going to combine and homogenize the speakers because I do not want to identify them. These conversations were very personal and, as noted, honest and candid.
During an Urban Rural (U/R) discussion of the problems on the reservation, my class brought up the subject of the Crees on the reservation. They said that people call someone a Cree even if they are a little white or if they have only a little Chippewa. They do not even bother to ask or to find out really what they are. Also, they call these people “breeds” and if they knew what the word really meant, they would know that everyone on the reservation is a breed. There are no full-bloods here on the reservation, or at least very few. Those who have the most white blood are the ones who do the most complaining about the breeds or Crees.
It is very difficult to do anything on the reservation. We cannot improve things because people will not work together. We cannot solve any problems on the reservation, and in the community because people will not stick together. Some people will complain about the problems and then they turn around and will not work with you or they disagree with you, or they stab you in the back.
There is also a lot of jealousy in the community. No one wants anyone to do good for themselves. As an example, they said that they do not want people from the community teaching their children in the schools. They are jealous of the teacher’s education, even though they could get one themselves. If anyone does good in the community many people do not like it; they get jealous and they criticize the person. I asked why people couldn’t get along with one another if so many people in the community were related. They said that was the reason, because they were related to one another. The worst relations are those between relatives.
My class was talking about the tribal council. They said that the council is ineffective, and that the people who sit on the council are out to help their families. The family members and relatives put them into office. They do not worry about the people on the reservation, They get jobs for the people in their families and they help them out, and they help themselves out. If they run for office, the family puts them in, and they keep putting in the same people. The people who vote do not concern themselves with qualifications, such as how well educated they are; they vote for the people in their family. One of the women said that once one of her relatives was running for tribal council, and she did not like the guy and didn’t want to vote for him. Her mother asked her if she voted for this man. She said that before she knew what she was saying, she said no. Her mother really laid into her for not voting for this relative.
In the morning, Frank drove up to the mission and he was in the car outside of the arts and crafts room. He told me that he had to go because he had a new job of deciding whether or not people were eligible for the commodity food program. He said that he’ll probably be real popular. I felt so badly for Frank.
Hunting
I was talking to a man who had been caught poaching by the game wardens. This happened in about 1966 near Malta. His friends would come over to the house all the time and they would go out hunting. This time they went too far off of the reservation toward Malta and they got caught. They confiscated his truck and the rifles and put him in jail. He was in for eight days. His wife had to pick up the truck in Zortman where it was being held. The BLM office is there. He doesn’t poach anymore.
I know a man in Hays who poaches almost every day. He sells the deer meat to people in the community for $10 and he sells the hides to a guy for two dollars. He has also begun to shoot coyotes. He had Mike build him a stretcher for the pelts. The pelts are going for between $55 and $70 apiece.
There are other younger people in the community who also poach. They hunt in the Little Rockies; good spots are near Saddle Butte and up above Zortman where there are open meadows in the mountains. There are two homes in the Hays community where a deer pelt, with the full head attached, is slung up onto the roof.
Gordon told me that the head of the forestry crew was up in the mountains last Sunday and he caught four of the high school teachers; they had just killed four mountain sheep. They were on the reservation and he turned them in. The reservation is starting a program to replenish the mountain sheep that were once in abundance before the 1936 fire. The teachers will be going to tribal court in the near future. Gordon warned me not to try to hunt on the reservation until we see what kind of judgment the judge makes on this case. He said that if I want to come out hunting, I should let him know and he will come along. He said that this way I would not get into trouble. He said that I would have no problem finding someone to come out with me any time I wanted to hunt on the reservation.
Even though I had purchased two rifles, I did almost all my hunting with the Canon Ftb camera.
During the hunting season there is a lot of deer meat and giving away meat is fairly common among people. An antelope was donated to the mission. The antelope feeds mainly on sage and the meat is very wild (pungent) tasting. The deer meat this year is especially lean because it was such a dry year, and the grass is not very good. Hunting has been canceled on many of the ranches in the Bear Paws because it is so dry, and the ranchers are afraid of fires. They said they would not open their ranches for hunting until there was snow on the ground. With only about a week left in the season, there does not seem to be a chance that there will be hunting there this year. Some people give away parts of the deer already cut up and some give the whole thing. We were given steaks by Ray and Irma. There are a couple volunteers at the mission, particularly Mike, who has been giving a lot of deer meat away to families in Lodge Pole that are poor. One woman is trying to take care of her grandchildren, and she is very poor. He has been giving her a lot of meat. We were given some of the antelope meat from the mission and were the lucky winners of a piece containing the lead from the bullet!
Mostly mule deer (or black tail) are around this year. Very few white tail have been seen. We were out yesterday morning from 6:00 to 10:00 and saw 15 mule deer – about 5 bucks, which are the only ones legally taken this year.
Coyote hides are going from anywhere between 50-70 dollars. Most of the people here prepare their own hides when they catch them. If you sell the whole animal, you can only get about $35 because the buyer has to prepare the hide. Most of the people here hunt coyotes, but there are a few people who set traps.
Traditions
Mike asked Clarence who was the last real chief of the Gros Ventre. He had a very difficult time answering the question and admitted that he really didn’t know. But he thought that The Boy and his brother, Lame Bull were the last real chiefs. He said that he thought that the position of chief was passed down.
When Clarence’s son Catcher was a year old, he wanted to have a celebration in honor of naming his child. He went to Bob Mount to find out how to do it.
We were sitting at the kitchen table at Gordon and Edith’s. After they put away the beadwork they were showing us, Gordon took out a cloth bundle and placed it on the table. It was a purple cloth tied up with two pieces of raw hide. He opened the purple cloth and there was a red silk cloth inside. He opened that and there was a stone bowl (soap stone) and stem and two bags, one with tobacco and the other was an old bag with sweet grass in it. He said the Indians wrap everything and he really didn’t understand why. He handed me the old bag after he took the sweet grass out of it. He asked me if I knew what it was made from. It was a woven bag about 4 inches tall and 3 inches wide. It looked like a plant fiber that had been woven so tight that it looked like thick thread woven together. It had been covered with some type of material that made it shiny, but it was old and looked worn. It had a red and black design on it of lines going up and down across it. Gordon said that it had belonged to his grandfather and that he had used it to put thread in it. Gordon keeps sweet grass in it and the sweet grass is woven into braids that come to a point at the end. They are about 1 foot long and are stored by winding them into a circle. It is burned like incense when they pray. It can be picked in the mountains. When you pick it, you thank the Great Spirit and leave something on the ground where you took it in return. When I handed the bag back to Gordon some of the sweet grass that had fallen apart fell onto the table. Gordon said that I should sweep it up. I did and handed it to him and he put it into the silk cloth where other pieces were lying that had broken off of the large braids. There was also a plastic bag of “tobacco” that was used in the pipe. He said that they used to smoke black twist that they would get from the traders, but it was too strong and they would have to mix it with something. They did not smoke for pleasure but only smoked when they prayed. The “peace pipe” was smoked with whites when they made an agreement only because they wanted to show that the great spirit was binding the agreement for them. They were smoking to show that they made the agreement with the Great Spirit and to keep the agreement. It was not just smoked when they made the peace with the whites.
Gordon had made the pipe himself. He ground the stone to make the bowl, and the stem was made from a willow branch. He used a metal wire that he heated to make the long hole in the stem. He said that he could not figure out how they made these pipes before they had metal, and the stems on their pipes were much longer. He said that each of the pieces on the pipe had a different meaning. The willow stem represented all the wood in the earth. The muskrat pelt wrapped around the stem represented all the fur-bearing animals on the earth. The stone bowl represented the bones of mother earth. The feather (eagle) that hung down from the bowl represented all the flying animals. Then he pulled the stem from the bowl and wrapped everything back up.
After Gordon showed us the pipe he had made and the other things in the bundle, he said that he would have to learn more about the pipe and how to use it before he would be able to pray with it. He said the pipe will be too sacred to unwrap like that in front of people just to show them like he had done tonight. Once he uses it the right way, it will be sacred. He said that he would have to go to the Arapaho in Wyoming to learn because they are still pretty traditional. They would be able to teach him, and the Arapahoe are the closest group to the Gros Ventre. He said that whenever they go down to visit the Arapahoe, they are treated really well. They feed them in the traditional way sitting on the floor.
Gordon was a young man. His interest in learning, understanding and practicing the traditional A’aniiih culture was remarkable. There weren’t a lot of people like Gordon in the community, not with the intensity of his interest. He learned a lot from his grandfather and from other elders that he respected. He was very interested in the music and learned as many songs as he could. He headed the dance committee and was a Hays Singer. He traveled all over the west to attend pow wows and other celebrations and demonstrations. He also became very involved in making traditional culture materials. This pipe was only one example. He was always working on learning about and creating different pieces. He made his own hand drums, and he made me a hand drum as a gift before we left Hays. We learned so much from Gordon about the traditional culture. In many ways, he was under-appreciated in the community. Through Gordon and through the Gone family, I was invited to attend many social and religious events that I would not have attended otherwise. Gordon was such a good friend and was so supportive of my research.
Gordon was telling us about his great grandfather, Old Bull Lodge. He was a great medicine man. He had a bundle with two feathers and animal furs inside. He would perform operations with these feathers. One of these he used to cut the person open, and the other feather was used to close and heal the person. He was so good that after he rubbed this feather over the cut you could not even see a scar on the person where he had made the incision. He would take the bad thing out of the person after he cut him open and he either ate the bad thing or he burned it. He used the fur from the animals to locate the illness in the person. He would choose a pelt from the bag, like a weasel pelt for instance, and the pelt would jump out of the bag and run all around the person. Then the pelt would sniff at the person until it located the part of the person where the illness was. Then it would stop. Then he put the pelt back in the bag and would operate. The Indians wrapped everything in bags or cloth.
Red Whip was another Gros Ventre medicine man. He and two other people were attacked by a group of Sioux. The other two men were killed but Red Whip used his medicine and held off the Sioux. He finally got away. When he went back to bury his friends, he saw that the Sioux had given them a good burial to show their respect for Red Whip who was able to hold them off. They laid their friends out really nice and placed all their articles beside them. Then they combed out their hair across their shoulders and front. Their hair was very long, down past his waist. Usually, they would have counted a coup and cut off their hair and taken the scalps. They did all this to show respect for Red Whip. But this is why the Sioux hate the Gros Ventre, because this one man held them off.
I asked him how many medicine men there would be at one time in the society. He said that there would not be many, just a few because they would compete with each other if there were more than a few. Old Bull Lodge, Red Whip and Jim’s father were great medicine men.
Gordon said that many names of the people in the community have been changed in recent years. Mount was Mountain, Gone was Return to War, and Lodge was Bull Lodge. Also, he said that people were named by the first thing that a person saw when they were going to name the child. If they walked out and saw a bird flying, they would name the child bird flying.
Marge Chandler was telling us how smart Darian was and how creative she is. (We agree, Darian!) Darian is her niece. She said that she should have an Indian name. She said that all her children were given Indian names: Rider, Pretty Eagle, and Two Bears, only the names are in Indian. She is Assiniboine and her husband is Gros Ventre, and both tribes have different ceremonies for naming. Their grandson was named at the Crow Fair this summer. He had to sit in a sweat lodge this summer for a while, and he was so scared that he cried.
Gordon said that it used to be so different here.
I'm tired of racing with time. Time used to mean nothing to the Indian. Now you have to be at the doctor at a certain time. It used to be that if you needed to go to a doctor, you just went. You didn’t have to worry about being there at a certain time. People used to do a lot more visiting also, especially in the wintertime. In the evening you could always hear the Indian drums coming from someone’s house. The Indian drum really carries when it is still at night in the wintertime. There would always be a dancing party at someone’s home. Today you just can’t do this anymore. The people who live across from me warned me that they would turn me in if I play the drum at night. They said that they would call the police and have me arrested for disturbing the peace.
Edith said that she was born in a tent. She is 44 years old. That was 1932. I didn’t ask Edith a lot of questions about this, but I should have. Some families moved into a tent in the summer time, out of their log homes. But Edith was born in November, and it would have been cold. Also, I didn’t ask her if she was referring to a tipi, which she might have been.
Beatrice said that her grandfather was Lame Bull. He was one of Flannery’s and Cooper's major informants when they were doing their anthropological research. Old The Boy was her uncle (her father's half-brother. The Boy was also one of Flannery's and Cooper's major informants. He was also a son of Lame Bull. The Boy and her father were half-brothers, because they had the same father but a different mother.
Lamebull had five wives. One of his wives was Beatrice’s mother and another was The Boy’s mother. Beatrice said that she did not call all of Lamebull’s wives “grandmother,” only her father’s mother was her grandmother. She does not know what these women (Lamebull’s four other wives) were to her, and she never knew them. She and Mary and Susie started joking about having more than one wife. They were trying to decide who had the better idea – or the better time of it – the oldest wife or the youngest wife. Then they joked about what it would be like to have Beatrice as their oldest co-wife. They laughed a lot about it. I asked Beatrice if she ever heard of sisters marrying the same man at the same time, and she said that she never heard of that.
And this is why I trusted whatever Beatrice told me about the traditional culture and language. She knew what she was talking about. And when she didn’t know, she had no reticence whatsoever to say so.
Gordon shared the following with me:
Old The Boy was telling his stories to a white man. When he was done, and after telling his stories for the whole day, the white man asked him if that was it, if he had told him everything. He said all of this through an interpreter. The Boy said that the stories are like a tree, and there are limbs and limbs on the limbs. He said that he had only told a part of one limb.
Gordon didn’t mention the name of the white man. It was Dr. Cooper, the anthropologist, who was studying the traditional A’aniiih religion. This story was told to me by a few people while I was doing my research.
Gordon said that he wished that Dion’s grandfather was still alive, because he’d like to give him Dion for a while. I would like him to learn Gros Ventre and to learn the traditions. Now would be just the right time. He would learn the language real fast. Gordon said that he wanted to learn about the Gros Ventre religion, and that he wished he knew enough about the religion to practice. He said that he couldn’t learn about it from books; that he had to learn about the religion from experience.
I asked Gordon about how the pipes got from The Boy to where they are now. He told me that he grew up and learned not to talk about them. He said that he still feels that way. I don’t know nothing about it.
Economics, Employment and Housing
Gordon owns 153 acres near Three Buttes, but he doesn’t want to live on this land or work this land because he said that it is “too damn flat.” He leases the land behind his house from the tribal council. It is seven acres that he uses to graze his horses. He leases it for one dollar an acre. The 153 acres are leased through the tribal council. He wants to own some land near the mountains and would like to trade the tribal council his 153 acres near Three Buttes for some land near to the base of the Little Rockies. He will try to get some land there, but he does not think that the tribal council will let him give up his home site in Hays. The only way that he would be able to get land up there is if one of his kids could get it from the council and he would be able to get it through his kid's name. He does not know if this is a possibility either, because he does not think that his older boys will come back from the city to live on the reservation. If he could get this land, one of the families near Three Buttes told him that they would help him get started with a farm. They would loan him two pigs until he had a bunch and then after a few years he could give them back two. They would help him the same way with cows. He would also like to raise horses.
Gordon said that he worked on the housing project up at the agency building for 3 years. It was an assembly line putting together prefab houses for the reservation. He was a wood cutter. He cut up the wood and then handed it to others who put the wood together. This project was started by a man who came to the reservation and was working with the tribal council. They started a housing project, and built a large metal building (which is now the tribal office) to build prefab homes. First, they started by building parts of homes and then moving these out to the house site to put up. These homes were not too bad. Then they started putting the whole house together and moving it out as a whole house. By the time they got out to the site, the house was in bad shape. In these homes the walls are cracked, and the walls sometimes shift and open along the line where the walls meet. He said that in some of these homes you can see light coming through in the corners. These modern homes have been built since 1968; that is when this project was started. This guy was also talking about putting up resort homes in the Little Rockies and developing a ski resort. The tribe was put into a 1.5-million-dollar debt, and then this guy left. Gordon said that it was all legal and so there was nothing they could do about it. He took them for a lot of money, got rich and then left. I asked him where he is now, and Gordon said that he went somewhere else to “Jew someone else out of some money.”
Yikes.
In October we were painting Ray and Irma’s house, Ray, his son, nephew, and myself. Ray was saying that his home and nine others were built about ten years ago. It was part of a project where ten men and their families were going to build each other’s homes. They worked together, and no one could move into their house until all ten of the homes were finished. These are modern homes and are better built than the prefabs and the newer homes that are being put up now. Ray says that he is glad that he got in on this project.
Marge said that she worked for the housing office here on the reservation for three years. She was saying how the inspectors are very strict, but that the workers do not follow the specifications when they build. They were putting up a fence line around the two-acre house site and the inspector told them that they were not following the specs so take it down. They went ahead and continued working, and he made them tear down the whole thing. Sometimes they try to pour the cement for the basements in freezing weather. Even if they build a fire and put a tent over it, it is too cold to pour cement. The result is that there are cracks all over the place in some of these new homes and the inspectors make them do it all over again. The workers put up rocks around the homes to mark off the house sites and they put a rock garden in by the shopping center. The inspectors made them take the rocks away because it was too much of a home for rattle snakes. Marge said that someone will get bit this summer. All the new homes have fireplaces or wood burning stoves in the plans, but HUD made them take them out because they were too expensive for their budget.
I was talking to a couple who used to live off the reservation. Their two sons, about 24 and 26, said that they would never live off the reservation again, and never wanted to live in the city. They live on the reservation today. Her daughter lives in San Francisco and her husband is an airline mechanic for United Airlines. He was just promoted to an inspector. The family lived in Oakland for seven years. The husband was working on an assembly line at a Chevy factory. Things started to get bad there with rioting, so they came back to the reservation. Today he works on the road crew and drives a grader on the reservation.
Gordon was laid off work on Friday. He said that 12 of the 21 guys on the crew were laid off because they ran out of funding for this forest program. They are still waiting to hear about whether they will get the five million dollars to maintain the forest. He said that this money would employ a lot of people for the next ten years. He worked on this job for the last nine months. He said that he will go up to Havre on Tuesday to see about getting unemployment money for a while. He said that the amount and the time that he can get unemployment money depends on how long you have been working at a particular job. He said that he thought that he could get about $96 a week. He said that he had been taking home a little over $300 every two weeks, and he is still paying off bills. He said that he is still paying off his car and a repair job on the car. He said that his electric bill is about $30 a month. He doesn't know what he is going to do about work, but he doesn't think that he will be hurting for a while at least. Gordon said that there was going to be a large planting program this summer to try to replenish many of the areas in the Little Rockies that were destroyed in the 1936 fire. He said that the fire burned up there for three months. They will give the jobs to men who have families. Gordon thought that about 50 men could get jobs in this summer program.
Edith came up to the trailer this morning and asked me if I could help Gordon. Gordon wanted me to help him get some wood down from a mountain where he had cut it at work. That afternoon, Susie, Gordon and I went up to Green Mountain. There was a new road put in with the CAT on Friday so that the forest crew could start to get some of the "buggy" trees off the mountain. Once we got up to the top, Gordon began to show us around. He pointed out all the trees that were infested with bugs. They have to be cut down to cut off their supply of food, which is the sap. They are in hibernation now and cannot get out of the trees. If they did not cut these trees and get them out, the bugs would spread to other trees. He showed us trees that were almost 80 years old but that were not growing because they could not get enough light. So, he showed us trees that would have to be thinned out. He showed us a tree that was hit by lightning and had a ring around it going from the top to the bottom. He said that it would eventually die.
He showed us a plant that he said the people used to dry out and smoke. I think this might be called a larb plant. They mixed it with other tobacco and smoked the mixture. He learned all these things while working on the forest crew. He really enjoys working up in the mountains. and being outside. He cut up logs that he wanted to use for his wood burning stove. We loaded these logs into the truck and went back down. He said that only two trucks could get up there, mine and the one that belonged to the forest department, the only four-wheel drives in Hays. The drive up was on a 70-degree climb. They put logs along the soft shoulder so that their trucks would not slide off the road and down the hill.
While we were up in the mountains, the truck got off onto a soft shoulder and we were stuck. We learned early on that the four-wheel drive was great at keeping us out of trouble. When we did get into trouble, the four wheel drive usually got us into deeper trouble. It took us a while to get out and back into the middle of the narrow road. That was sort of harrowing.
These were photographs that I took on Green Mountain while loading wood with Gordon and Susie.
Today was the last day of the senior citizen's lunch in Hays. They had a thanksgiving dinner for the seniors. The senior citizen's center had moved down to the recreation center in the middle of Hays. The reason that it was the last day is that the cooks were laid off work. This was their last day. They had run out of manpower funds, which is the source of their income. As soon as they can get more money, they will reopen the center for the old people. The council has promised that they will get the money for them soon, and the program will be started up again. The senior citizen's sewing had to be canceled also, but when the money comes, this will also be started again.
Hocking: To sell or pawn something; to leave something with someone temporarily in exchange for money.
As I noted in a previous blog, the hocking system on the reservation was a necessary feature of the economic system. It existed as a function of the high rates of unemployment, the endemic poverty, the lack of secure jobs, and the need for emergency money. I got totally sucked into the system unwittingly. People came to us for help, some people in dire straits. It was difficult to turn anyone away. But it eventually became obvious that it was something I should not be involved in, for so many reasons – not the least of which was the long history of money lending by Jews in Europe. The connection and the history were toxic, and my sensitivity to the entire situation was exacerbated by my listening to Gordon use the phrase Jew down on a regular basis. But it took me a while to connect all the dots and to get out of it.
A couple of young women drove up to the trailer after school and said they wanted to hock a rifle. I asked them how much they needed, and they said $20. I told them that I only had $10 and they said that it would be alright. They said they needed the money to get to a basketball game. One of the women told me that she wanted to go hunting this weekend. I told her that when she came back with the money, the gun would be here waiting for her. She said that she would have the money here for me next week. When I was with Lyle later that day, he said that if the money wasn't given to me by next week, the gun is mine. That’s just the way it works. I told him I didn’t want the gun and that when she brought the money, it was hers. He said that I didn’t need to give it to her if she comes later than next week.
The woman who was wanting to hunt, drove up to the trailer and asked for her gun back. She handed me the money. I gave her the rifle and the money back. She didn’t say anything to me.
When Gordon was visiting me, he asked me if he could see the rifles that I had in hock. I brought them out. He told me that I had better tell people who hock things to me that they have to return the money to me by a certain time. He suggested that I charge interest on the money. He said that people usually charge 10 cents on the dollar. He said that the owner of the trading post does this, and his charges are high, but people still buy their stuff out of hock from him. Gordon told me that if I don’t do this, everyone will be hocking stuff to me all the time. He told me that I was too easy.
Edith said that she will not hock anything.
Public Health
A Public Health Service doctor came to the mission today to administer the swine flu vaccination. He has been traveling all over the area. On the reservation, he has been assisted by the staff employed on Ft. Belknap. One of these people is Irma. They were at the agency last week, Hays this morning, and will be in Lodge Pole this afternoon. No one has been sick, nor have there been any problems on the reservation. The staff said that a lot of men are coming for the shot, many more than they expected. Also there have been many younger people. Most everyone working at the mission who did not have a cold got the shot.
Irma was talking about the swine flu shots, and she said that they did not have any problems at all while they were giving the shots at the Agency, Hays, or Lodge Pole. She said that only 72 people got the shot in Hays, but she also said that this was more than they expected. People with diabetes, heart or lung diseases got the bivalent shot for swine and wisteria flu, and all other people got the mono valent shot for the swine flu.
Susie and I were having a conversation with Bertha. She is a nurse at the hospital (PHS) at the Agency. There is a clinic in Hays, but it isn’t open every day. People have to travel 30 miles to get any medical service on those days when the clinic is not open and also every night. That there are so many services at the Agency that are not in Hays, is a constant complaint in the community. Bertha has been working at the hospital as a nurse for a long time. In so many ways, Bertha was ahead of her time. She was a highly respected member of the community and was involved in leadership roles. She was also respected in her family and her siblings regularly sought her advice.
We told Bertha that we met Dr. Feingold in Columbus before we came out to the reservation. He worked at the PHS hospital about 11 years ago. She said that she really liked him. He cared about his patients, and he was a really conscientious guy. Susie said that she heard that all the doctors were interns. Bertha said that this was true. Also, some of them are in their 4th year of medical school and they are “on the job training.” She said that many of these guys are only here for a couple months. During the 60s she said that many doctors came to avoid the draft, and they were there at the hospital for two years. She said that some of these guys did not care about the people at all; they were only biding their time. She became very defensive about the hospital and the doctors. She said we get some good and we get some bad, but mostly we can't complain. We are lucky to have any doctors here on the reservation. She said, I'll defend them. She said that it is very hard to get full-time doctors here because they wouldn't make the big money they could get elsewhere, and they don't have much to offer a doctor in the way of benefits. She said that we do get some dedicated people. She said that there was one doctor that wasn't dedicated at all and she really told him off. She said that he would do anything for the money and did not care at all about the people. She told him that even though they were Indians they still had feelings and were sensitive, and felt pain and bled just like white people do. She told him that he would really have to change his attitude if he were going to be a good doctor someday. She said that the only way she would ever go to him would be if she were unconscious.
There is a problem with obesity in the community. More than an average number of people are overweight and diabetes is not uncommon. I know of more than a few people who are giving themselves insulin and a few people have lost their limbs. A significant part of the problem is the diet. Many people rely on the Department of Agriculture Commodity Food Program. This supply of food is loaded with fats and carbohydrates. Unlike today, grocery store shelves were not loaded with low fat, low sodium, low carbohydrate options. In order to be on a diet low in these elements, you had to be doing lots of cooking from scratch. Well, most of the ingredients were coming from a program that did not offer these options. Fresh fruits and vegetables had to be purchased from a grocery store, and often people didn’t have the money to do so. I had a very good friend on the reservation who was suffering from diabetes. There was a long family history with the disease. I had a conversation with her about it. I sent her money every month with the explicit agreement that she was going to use this money exclusively to purchase fresh vegetables from the grocery store. I made her promise me that she would not use the money for other purposes, like spending it on her grandchildren. That was a tough one, but I knew that she needed to improve her diet in order to stay alive. I hope the situation has improved, but I have my doubts. Poverty is a tough barrier to cross when it comes to a healthy diet.
I was speaking to a young women who told me she belongs to a club to lose weight and they have to pay for any pounds that they gain. She said that they meet at the U-R on Thursday nights. She was telling me this at bingo. She was eating popcorn, a candy bar, a hot dog and drinking cola as she described this club to me. She also told me that she was on the WIC program (Women, Infants and Children). It is a government program that provides food for pregnant women, infants and children under five years of age. She said that she gets 9 pounds of cheese, 16 quarts of milk and cereal and other commodity foods through this program.
Gordon said that if we do not get a lot of snow and cold weather this winter, he was worried that there was going to be a bad swine flu. He said that the cold and snow kill the swine flu germ.
Weather and Community
Gordon was talking about traveling on 376. He said that it was very bad in the wintertime. It is very dangerous at night, because there is so little traffic. He also said that it is very different from how it use to be before there were cars. The trip to the Agency was so long. Even after cars came to the reservation, 30 miles an hour was going fast. There are hardly any homes, between People's Creek and Nine Mile Creek. It used to be called White Bear Creek until people found out that it was 9 miles from the Agency. He said that if we travel at all during the winter whether it is day or night, we should always put a lot of blankets in the car when we go in case we run off the road or get stuck some other way. He said if you run off the road in a snowstorm it does not take very long before your truck or car gets covered up with snow, and no one will see you, especially at night. They used to have crank phones on 376 every seven miles so that you could call for help if you had trouble on the road. These are gone now because they were vandalized. A couple of people started fires in the booth to keep warm during a cold winter night when they got stuck on the road. Gordon said that whenever they travel down from the Agency to Hays, they usually stop at Bobby and Caroline’s and tell them that they are leaving and will be going back to Hays. If they don't get a call from us in about 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours, they should send someone out to look for them.
Gordon and I unloaded a great deal of wood in front of his house. I asked him if that was going to last him the winter in his wood burning stove. He said that what we had unloaded twice would have lasted him, but he has given a lot of wood to his mother and to his aunt, and now he is going to need more.
Gordon said that the medicine rock is about 35-50 miles south of Malta. You have to drive to Malta and then south to get to it. There used to be a rock with drawings on it up on top of Snake Butte, but someone stole it; they out and out took it.
Gordon said that Mission Canyon was formed by water, the creek that runs through it. He showed us places where the canyon wall had broken loose and the rockslides that resulted. So much rock has broken loose from the wall that the road going through the canyon has been elevated above the creek. The loose rock results from the freezing water in the rock in the winter and then a warm Chinook wind comes in and the water melts, and then there is another freeze. This happens over and over until the rock comes down from the canyon wall.
Beatrice thinks that she is old, and she is always joking about it. She is 54 and will be 55 in a few months. The people who have died recently were in their 80s. You have to be in your 50s to be in the senior citizens group and to get the benefits of the senior citizens lunches.
We had heard that someone we knew from off the reservation had passed away. This news turned out to be false. The man had a brain tumor and was in a coma. Someone took a phone message and misunderstood the information. The rumor of his death spread throughout Hays in just a few hours, but the information about him living took about three days. Rumors spread very quickly in Hays and throughout the reservation. Some of the information is pretty accurate, but there are instances of false information and exaggeration. One of the methods for acquiring information is the telephone system in Hays. There is a party line on the mission phone that is shared with seven other homes. People will pick up the phone during a conversation and listen. In order to get them off, you really have to be quite rude.
We were invited to Gordon and Edith’s to watch "Billy Jack" on television with them. Edith said that she was real mad about the way the Indians were treated. She said that she saw a movie called "Soldier Blue" that showed how the whites treated the Indians. She said that she was shitten mad. I just cried when I came home from the movie. It was more than them just putting the Indians on the reservation. They were killing all the women and the children. I can remember when we were kids, we saw the movie "Custers Last Stand" and we didn't think nothing about it. We were too young to know what it was about, but I do remember seeing it.
Gordon said that while they were in the spirit lodge, one of the spirits told them about some things that were going to happen. He said that there was going to be a disease that would strike. He must have meant the swine flu. He said then that in the south there was going to be a drought for a long time and that things would be real bad. He said that in the north things would be bad too. They would have rain, but there would be earthquakes. Then he said that we should be aware that the whites were going to stop giving money to the reservations, that times were going to be so bad that they would have to stop their funding. He said that we should be aware of these things and that we should start saving our money and spending it wisely. I attended a spirit lodge with Gordon during my two years in Hays. I’ll describe it in a later blog.
George Chandler said that he was talking to an old man on the Rocky Boy reservation and he was predicting what the winter was going to be like. He said that we would not get much snow until after Christmas. Then we would get just a little bit from then until April. But mostly it would be dry. Then from April until June we would really get a lot of snow. A weather service in Havre and Great Falls used to call this old man to ask him his prediction, and most of the time he was right.
George and Marge Chandler were telling us about the snowstorm that came in May three years ago. It was on the night of the mission graduation ceremonies. The power went out for about 60 days. After a couple weeks, they brought in a generator to Hays, but they couldn’t use much electricity. Now they said that people are prepared for these big snows in May. They were not prepared then. They talked about how hard it was for people to get around in their cars and about how everyone was really stranded.
Thanksgiving
Today was the last day of the senior citizen's lunch in Hays. They had a thanksgiving dinner for the older people. The senior citizen's center had moved down to the recreation center in the middle of Hays.
Mary and Beatrice made special lunches for the children at the mission school for all the holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas were always spectacular lunches. They put so much love and care into cooking for these kids. The Thanksgiving lunch was really great. Whenever there was a big occasion like this, it was usually all hands on deck. Bill, Mike, Brian, Susie, and I would pitch in to help as much as we could, and we were there to help clean up the all-purpose room and the kitchen.
Susie and I were very close with Mary and Beatrice. I also spent a great deal of time with Jim, but he was very reserved and quiet. When I would be cleaning the classrooms with Jim, I enjoyed being in his presence, but there was little conversation. If I asked Jim a question, he gave me a polite and short response. He was very sweet and kind.
Mary and Beatrice were very social people and they both had a wonderful sense of humor. People on the reservation generally had a great sense of humor. People laughed easily. There was a lot of joking, and people thoroughly enjoyed making fun of me … as I was the resident anthropologist. They knew that I was trying to learn about their traditions and their contemporary way of life, and they loved feeding me all kinds of hogwash. Most of this feeding was pretty obvious, and they so enjoyed putting one over on me (the anthropologist). Gordon would enjoy feeding me weird stuff and telling me that it was some kind of fish until I finished eating it. It was usually a part of a cow that someone from Cleveland Heights would never consider eating or was the purest example of traife.
Mary and Beatrice knew us well enough that we were trusted. Our comfort level with both of them was sufficiently high that I never felt any reticence about asking them anything, and I asked them both some monumentally stupid questions. The results were usually some great laughter from all sides.
One of my favorites of these instances came during Thanksgiving. While I was assisting in the preparation of lunch (between my history classes), I asked Mary if she ever thinks about the Pilgrims during the holiday. She gave me the most wonderful sarcastic look and asked me if I ever thought about the Pilgrims. Boy did we laugh. I don’t have a photograph of Mary’s look from this instance, but I do have a photograph of Mary with that look. I will be sure to point it out when I post that group of photographs. She was a one-of-a-kind wonderful human being. She was so loved by all of us.
Susie’s parents and her sister flew out to Billings so they could be with us for Thanksgiving. If memory serves, Lou came back up to Hays with us to visit for a while, and Marti and Sharon flew back (likely to return to school – Marti as a special education teacher and Sharon as a student at Ohio State).
During those two years in Hays, it was unusual for Susie and I not to be in Hays celebrating with families in the community and our mission colleagues.
As I’ve noted many times (and will likely continue to mention), we had the most wonderful friends in Hays and on the reservation. The Gones were family to us … and have remained so. As such, when there were holidays and celebrations, we received invitations from Ray and Irma and Gordon and Edith. And as family, we were expected to share our celebrations in both households. They were both sensitive to our balancing act and helped to make it possible. Thus, we always celebrated all these holidays more than twice … once in each of these Gone households, and at the mission. Ray and Irma and Gordon and Edith always put a feast in front of us. The amount of food I would pack away at these holidays was pretty remarkable (and frightening). It always made Susie and I feel so good that we had such incredible friendships and such a loving and caring family.
Vandalism. Mayhem and Social Control
Irma and I were sitting in my trailer talking, and some boys pulled into the driveway to drink. She said that they do not drink near her house because the kids are afraid of her and her husband. As previously noted, there’s no way I would ever cross Irma. She was such a strong person, with strong values. She had no confusion about her beliefs and was entirely comfortable expressing her opinions. Irma was such a good person.
Gordon was saying that if he was going down the road 40 miles an hour, that the police would stop him. They would stop him because they know that he doesn’t drink. They will not stop alcoholics, because they are afraid of what they will do.
Gordon told me the name of the person he thought was the last good policeman on the reservation.
He was fair to everyone and treated everyone the same way. He did not even favor his family; he treated them like everyone else. He was a real son of a bitch on the job, but he was the best. He would go into a house after someone if they were being arrested and they had better come out with him. People did not mess around with him because he was very big and strong and would not take guff from anyone. He even took in his father and his sister once and arrested them. Today the police do not enforce anything. What they need today is whites to be police or Indians from another reservation, where they do not have friends, relatives and neighbors to deal with all the time. The tribal police force used to be run by the BIA in Billings and then it was good, because the people in Billings told these police that they had to do their job, and the police had to answer to these people. For the last five years, the police force has been run by the tribal council, and they cannot do anything. There is even a problem with the judges coming from the reservation. There are two judges. Once, one of the judges gave someone a stiff penalty, and when he got home that night from the court someone had burned a lot of his hay. It almost broke him, and he had a hard time getting through the winter. The judges cannot do something without being afraid of the consequences.
During a class discussion at U/R, we began to talk about the problems of law enforcement on the reservation. They said that there were a lot of problems with the police on the reservation. There are too many relations, and the police cannot do their job because they have to deal with relatives, friends and neighbors all the time. We need people from off the reservation as police, either Indians from another reservation, or whites. It was better when they had police from off the reservation. The police we have today are totally ineffective. Another problem with law enforcement is that if someone sees a crime or some vandalism, they are afraid to report it or to be a witness in court. People in this community know exactly who does what, but they are afraid to do anything about it and are afraid to tell anyone.
Gordon told us that vandalism and stealing are very bad today. It was never like this until after the 1940s and early 1950s.
Almost every night, but more often on the weekends, there are several car/truck loads of teenagers that drink at the bottom of our drive and in the canyon. There is another spot at the turnoff to star hill on this dirt road. As it is too close to the road, our driveway is the more popular location. They will drive up, usually one car or truck at a time and pull in backwards so that they can get away in a hurry if someone comes. They turn off their lights and drink. They toss the cans out on the road. The cars contain both boys and girls, but usually it is boys. Rarely just a boy and a girl will come up alone. Sometimes more than one car or truck will come up. They also listen to tapes in their cars. After they have been there for a while they pull off and leave. They do not make much commotion and do not bother anyone down there. Occasionally, they will stop the car part way down the road, and someone will get out to relieve himself along the side of the road. The only times they get really loud is when there are a number of cars and trucks and they run back and forth. Sometimes one of them will either get bold enough or drunk enough to try to climb up the hill alongside of the canyon with their truck - which is very difficult even with a 4-wheel drive. Everyone knows that the kids drink up here. The police never come up to patrol the area and they never go into the canyon at night to patrol unless there is an emergency up there.
So why in the hell would you select the cultural anthropologist’s front yard to be putting on this performance on a regular basis?
There was a chevy van next to the veteran’s monument in Hays for about three months. The kids in Hays played in the van for as long as it was there. They jumped all over it, tore it apart, and crawled all over it. They bounced on it. They pulled it into the street a couple of times. They turned it over on its side and right side up. Every time you drove past it; it was in a different position. At the end of October, someone put logs in the van and started it on fire. It burned for over eight hours. Nothing was left but a shell. As I drove by today, I noticed that it was no longer there. The van experienced its entire evolution in the month of October from a vehicle to transport people to a jungle gym for the children, to a neighborhood bonfire to an empty shell of itself.
We didn’t have a movie theatre or a bowling alley, but we did have this kind of thing going on regularly. It wasn’t a healthy form of entertainment, but this kind of behavior became a regular fascination for the community. If it went on long enough or if the activity were outrageous enough, it became legend. This was the kind of thing that Mike and I talked about, laughed about and shook our heads about for forty years.
Last year, someone from Hays got ahold of dynamite that had been stolen from some company. One night they blew up the police station and jail in Hays. No one was in the building, and no one was hurt. Legend.
A police car drove up to our driveway this evening at 11:00 to make sure there weren’t any cars with kids drinking. Since living in the trailer, this was the first time we saw the police doing this sort of check. It was also one of the rare occasions where the kids were not up here.
In a class discussion (U/R) of the problems on the reservation, the students mentioned that vandalism was one of the biggest problems on the reservation. The parents are really at fault for a lot of vandalism on the reservation, because they are just too damn lazy to control the kids. The council won't give much money to the people here in Hays to build anything because they say that if they give money for projects, the kids just tear everything up. The police have a hard time trying to control it. One of the policemen was trying to do something about it, and one night when he was in his car, someone fired three shots into it. He quit the police force after that, and now he is a stock inspector for the reservation.
On Monday night after the ceramics class, Father Retzel finished the service and was about to leave the church when he saw a light on in the basement. Then he noticed that people were in the basement with candles, so he ran down there. He found three boys, a sixteen-year old boy and two 4th graders. They had taken some things from the arts and crafts room and clothes that are used in the sale after Sunday mass. Father has not decided what he is going to do about it. The sixteen-year old has dropped out of school. He has really raised himself and lives in a very confused environment. He has only a few friends and they are much younger than he is. Yesterday, one of the younger boys went up to Susie and gave her a piece of leather that he had stolen. He told her that he found it in the creek. Susie thanked him for it.
Gordon came up to the trailer to visit. He wanted to see the 30-30 rifle I had just purchased. He told me not to say anything to anyone about buying it, and he told me to hide it. He said that for some reason people really like 30-30s and they’ll get it from you if they know you have it. I used to have a 30-30 and it was sure a dandy with an extra-long barrel. Someone came into the house, and they stole it. They didn’t take anything else. They had to have known that I had it.
While we were watching tv at Gordon and Edith’s a boy came to the house. He was about high school age and he asked them if they wanted to buy some beads. He wanted to sell them a bag for $6. Gordon asked him where he got them, and he gave Gordon the name of a friend of his. Gordon checked them out and decided not to buy them. After the guy left, Gordon said that he must have stolen the beads. He then told us that we should go check our gas and his because this is a way that these guys get gas sometimes. He was in the house for too long. While he’s in the house talking, his friends will take our gas.
The boy who stole our dog chain in early October, returned it to us through Mike today. When he gave the chain to Mike this morning before we got to school, he made Mike promise that he would not tell us who gave back the chain. He told Mike that he did not take it, but that he found it in a can down by the creek and brought it up. Mike promised him that he would not give us his identity. Mike said that he thought that this boy felt guilty about taking the chain and decided to bring it back. He said that this boy's family is getting very close to G-d and they are trying to live a good life. This boy was probably feeling guilty about taking it and went to confession and talked to father about it. Father must have suggested that he bring it back to us.
Susie and I only felt badly for these kids. Period. So much confusion.
We were talking about social control in my U/R class. We had just read in our textbook that in large scale, industrialized, urban and complex societies there is more need for formal law than in small, less complex, and rural societies. Then I asked the class, What about Hays? (Hays was a small, isolated, rural community of about 600-some people).
Student 1: Hays needs law! But it’s not complex; it’s small and everyone knows everybody real well. The reason why is that people know everyone's business, but they will not tell on each other. People know when someone does something wrong, but they will not tell anyone. When the recreation center in Hays was vandalized, people knew about it, but they did not do anything about it. There are no police in Hays; they are afraid. And they break the law also.
Student 2: My brother was stopped by a policeman for something. He told the policeman that if he reported him, he would tell that he saw him going into the canyon with a woman while he was supposed to be on the job. My brother was wrong for doing this, but the police aren't right either. There's less vandalism at the Agency. They have more programs for the kids and the parents organize activities. The parents here won't do it. They say that their kids are not interested. Also, the kids don't like rules or structured activities. The boys on the basketball team drink and smoke during the season. There aren't any police in Hays. The tribal council doesn't care, and they won't do anything about it. They know what's going on here in Hays. Someone stole fuel oil from me and I was real mad about it. But there's nothing I can do about it. I even know who did it, but there's still nothing I can do about it. Even if I turned him in, nothing would happen to him. The judges give such light sentences and light fines. They don't do anything. They give small fines and then they say, well, pay me when you can. Also, the parents stick up for their kids even if they know the kids are wrong. If you yell at someone else's kids, they get mad at you. It has not always been this way here in Hays. It has changed since we were kids. The parents are very easy on their kids. They think that their own parents were too strict with them, and they want their kids to have what they did not have. So, the kids have no restrictions. They think that if they punish the kids, they are not being good parents.
You are going to go back to your Eastern College and tell and write about how bad this place is. It really makes me ashamed.
Student 3: We should be ashamed.
Student 1: I just stay home. I don't care what happens here anymore.
Student 4: The other group on the reservation are mostly Chippewa. My people come from Minnesota. They intermarried with Cree when they came out here. Most are enrolled as Chippewa at Turtle Mountain. When the reservation was established, they lived around the reservation. Many lived around Lewistown. Some got allotments on the reservation, and some had homesteads on the reservation.
Student 1: My grandmother remembers when they came onto the reservation. When Jack Plumage says that he wants housing for all on the reservation, he does not mean anything about the Chippewas. When he says everyone, he means all the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine. There is a lot of hate for the Chippewa, a lot of prejudice against them. They only have medical benefits on the reservation. They don't leave because this is their home. They were born on the reservation. My father says that this is not his home; that he does not belong here. He does not have a home, even though he was born on this reservation.
Student 2: There are many laws that the Indian doesn't know about. The Indian is allowed to hunt anywhere, on and off of the reservation. There is no poaching for the Indian. This man shot a deer off the reservation, and he was stopped by a game warden. He told the warden that he knew about this law, and the warden did not take away his deer.
I read all of this with such sadness. I’m back east and I’m writing. There’s nothing to be ashamed about. When I discuss the chaos, I always provide context which includes the history about how you got here.
None of these problems are going to be fixed by building the kids a bowling alley. They’d end up burning it down. It also isn’t going to be repaired in a sweat lodge, although the sweat lodge might be more effective than the bowling alley. They need an economy on the reservation. They need financial security and stability. The entire economy on the reservation is based on government programs and funding. The government in this regard is chaos, which means the reservation economy is chaos. With every change of administration and every congress, they get a change to their programs. There is no predictability or stability. So much unemployment and insecurity. It takes a horrible toll on individuals and families. For the past fifty years, every time I observe the federal government cutting a program or limiting the funding of a program, my first thought is that my dear friends on Ft. Belknap are totally screwed. The government changes programs and cuts funding every ten minutes. The result is that the economy on the reservation remains chaos. There is not nearly enough land for everyone on the reservation to be a farmer or rancher. And the land has been so been so severely subdivided over the generations that no one is making money from the leasing of these lands. The reservation is incredibly isolated. It is a beautiful place, but there aren’t any major population centers or commerce for hundreds and thousands of miles.
The social problems in the community are not going to be repaired until there is an economy on the reservation. We killed off their economy and way of life, and we did a monumentally half assed job in trying to replace what we took away. Representatives of the government stole from them. They usually had to deal with the worst of us. I don’t have any great answers as to how to make this happen. What I do know is that social control and social problems will remain endemic to this reservation and all reservations until they have jobs, financial security and the promise of upward mobility that the rest of us have. Alcohol and drug abuse will improve when they get a stable economy that does not depend on a change of administration every four years. We owe them the solutions and whatever those solutions may cost.
We stole your land and your livelihood, and we forcibly stripped you of your language and way of life within a generation. We took everything away from you and did not offer a satisfactory replacement for all of what you lost. What we gave you was no jobs, poverty and everything that comes with living such a precarious life. The situation was much worse than living between two worlds. It was living with almost no world.
If we did to any community of people regardless of heritage what the federal government and our military and the missionaries did to you, the results would be no different. Economic peril, conflicting values, confused beliefs … this is what happens when you force people to change, take so much away, and return so little. How do I know this? Because it has happened all over the world. While all of Europe was colonizing the rest of the world, they were creating all kinds of monumental chaos. Just take a look at the mayhem between Israelis and Palestinians or between India and Pakistan. This kind of chaotic crap occurred everywhere people went through these experiences with the western world. Proselytizing, greed and big guns have caused this kind of mayhem the world over.
You have nothing to be ashamed of … we do – for what we did to you … and for knowing what we’ve done and not doing what we need to in order to make things right.
President Biden’s apology for the boarding school disasters was a nice and incredibly late and teeny tiny first step. The distance we have to go to make all of this right is downright staggering. Please look at your feet. You are on the land we stole from them.
This is Gahanab looking way more docile and well behaved than he was.
These are two images of our next-door neighbor - the abandoned McMeel log house mansion.
I love these next three images. This is our front yard at three different times of the day and three different cloud conditions. The changes in the colors in the trees and the mountains is wonderful. As I'm now reading about the impending move onto the mission, these images of our front yard are taking on a whole different significance for me. Having this view every single day was a blessing. I wouldn't be getting these shots after the move. If we went into the canyon, we rarely stopped to visit our empty trailer and front yard.
