Flathead Salish Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/key-figure/flathead-salish/ A digital archive of treaties, documents, artwork, and 360° trail panoramas from the Corps of Discovery Fri, 01 May 2026 13:20:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 The Salish People and the Lewis and Clark Expedition https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/research-articles/the-salish-people-and-the-lewis-and-clark-expedition/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:39 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/research-articles/the-salish-people-and-the-lewis-and-clark-expedition/ A tribal perspective on the Lewis and Clark Expedition's encounter with the Flathead Salish people in September 1805, presenting oral traditions and alternative interpretations of the meeting.

The post The Salish People and the Lewis and Clark Expedition appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> This article presents the Salish (Flathead) people’s own account of their encounter with the Lewis and Clark Expedition at Ross’s Hole in September 1805, drawing on oral traditions maintained by the Salish-Pend d’Oreille Culture Committee. The piece offers a significant counterpoint to the expedition journals’ perspective, describing how the Salish first observed the strangers and debated how to respond to their arrival. The article details the Salish understanding of the exchange of horses and information, noting discrepancies between the tribal oral history and the captains’ written accounts. It also addresses the broader context of Salish-European contact and the profound changes that followed the expedition’s passage through their homeland, including increased Euro-American presence, the arrival of missionaries, and eventual confinement to the Flathead Reservation.

The post The Salish People and the Lewis and Clark Expedition appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Lewis Adams on Salish encounters with Lewis and Clark https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-06040503/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:06 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-06040503/ A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

The post Lewis Adams on Salish encounters with Lewis and Clark appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> sure well good afternoon everyone welcome to the tent of mini voices the tent of mini voices is part of the core of Discovery 2 traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit this is a National Park Service exhibit that’s been on the road since 2003 and will continue to be on the road through 2006 during the four years of the Lewis and Clark expedition by Centennial and what we do here in the tenam Min voices as we travel along the Louis and Clark Trail we invite in a wide variety of speakers to share their perspectives their many voices about the Lewis and Clark expedition its aftermath and also about the people that were waiting there when that expedition came along and this afternoon we’re fortunate to have with us Lewis Adams of the Salish he’s a Salish Elder and historian he formerly spent 14 years on the tribal council he also served in the United States Navy during the Korean conflict as a gunner on a destroyer and what he’s here to do this afternoon is talk a little bit about when the original core Discovery encountered his people so please give a warm welcome to Lewis Adams I’m happy to be here I’m glad I was invited to say a few words to share what what little I know I’m always willing to share this is uh this area here M our people call it see I’m I’m a saish from today I found out how far away I lived to 245 miles but our people come over here through the years and this is what they call this place and that means saw houses I guess when they come around here they saw the first the first inhabitants the settlers I guess they uh they built their houses of sod so that’s what they kind of named this area in our language many years ago whenever whenever this time of the year come when our people still lived in the Bidot up near Hamilton near Stevensville this time of the year everybody would would scatter and’ go to their favorite hauns a lot of people would go into which is now Idaho some people go down toward the Yellowstone is what our people call the Yellowstone quad Shen the Yellow Stone and if they went into Idaho they took the trail around westfork now I see on a map they call that the nepur trail but our people called it Nam shaks all that meant was a trail to move on and that’s where where our people went into over the hill from there into net which means deep slow water there was a nice Campground back in which is now Idaho many years ago my great grandpa went with some people back there and he died back there but they tried to get him back over into the bitot but he kept sliding off his horse so finally they buried him on top and right now every summer I I I make it up to where he’s buried at least once or twice a year my lady and I and my grandson my grand son the one that was was here his uh chain e and Greywolf and my ladyes is uh sunflower and my aunt named her that on kind of her hair so but anyway when our people would scatter different places cuz they lived in the bit Valley and they lived into the big hole country my grandma was born not too far from where uh where the battlefield is right now just down the corner from there just Downstream is where she was born next to this next to the river and there was quite a few of our people that I knew of that were born back there but I just bring this out because my grandma was there but that’s to our people that big uh big hole country that’s where our people lived they they dug a lot of C they got arrow heads spearheads knife knife scrapers and whatever else I go up there once in a while and and look these places over because the the places are still visible if you know where to go and uh but anyway it was this time of the year whenever see the the npers have a trail into Buffalo country they call it nimu in their language which means trail to the Buffalo country but our trails to the Buffalo country is right near the Bidot up between Hamilton and Darby you come over scalo our people call that I think that’s the white where the white man got skelo sko means many trails to the country and our people use that and this particular time of the year when they come up suo that was when they uh they met a strange bunch of people coming a small band of people there was a few of our people though my my great grandma used to say that was not the only white white person that some of our people saw her her dad or her Grandpa I forget which which he said we’d already met we they’d already seen a white man from T and to us means the cold country I gu some Trappers from Canada somewhere but they they saw them before but 99% of our people never had seen a white man or white white woman but uh they seen the strange strange people coming up they look pretty tired they look pretty ragged they were they were in pretty sad shape looked pale but uh but they they did meet him there at uh Su K that that’s uh right by the the head of uh Ross Ross Ross Creek I think but anyway when they when they did meet him you know I had a I got a friend not a real good friend he had a friend of mine I met some years go Dale Burke he wrote a book on the the Salish meeting meeting the the Lewis and Clark’s band up there by the by the Su K by Ross hole but I remember I got up to the city fathers invited me to Hamilton to give a talk and Dale Burke was talking when I got there and he was talking about when the Salish met uh Lewis and Clark he said they call them flatheads but that’s a misnomer they’re not flatheads they’re Salish or uh how did he say it I I read his book that’s how I I I picked that out Oly shoot he said in the book he said they’re either Salish or ooot Indians they’re not flatheads so when he got done talking I uh I stopped him I said do you wait here a while I want to I was up next I said I won’t hold you back very long I said uh I got something for you to hear so when I talked I said Mr Burke is Right Flathead is a misnomer we’re not flatheads I said but what he said Oleo is also a misnomer we not that either I said where he got that wherever he heard that I looked I looked in his book I said I I I you might say I dissected this word Ute and I I I kind of thought whenever Lewis and Clark met our people he probably there was no communication verbally he probably asked these Indians you know three eagles and some of them where do you where do you people live naturally he under the chief all the Indians understood that three eagles just pointed down toward well they were up high up by Ross hole so he probably pointed just down toward a Bidot and said sh that’s what that means down below so they must have wrote it down that they’re Oly shoot Indians it didn’t make sense you know so I remember Dale Burke scribbling down some things I I hope he was going to change that someday but uh but after that I told him you can go I that’s all I had to say I just wanted to remind you that but anyway when they met these people I remember my grandma’s stepmom used to say she was she was there she said these strange people didn’t concern us too much it was this one individual the black one because through the centuries our people have a medicine dance in the winter time and at these medicine dance ceremonies there’s there’s sometimes one to a dozen Blue Jays and a blue jay will paint himself black for some special ceremony some special reason but there’s got to be a good reason when they do that they’ll paint themselves black with with ashes and that’s what they wondered what what are these people up to what is this one individual up to why do they have a cost clay that’s what they call a a blue jay a cqu wonder what they’re up to they got a Costco with them and through through sign language and through they finally got across that they wanted to they were concerned about this this black man so they told him well go check on him there so some of our people I remember Sophie used to say that they went up there rubbed his face and didn’t come off well they realized then that that’s what he was a black man these people weren’t weren’t up to something I mean they were but you know but uh but uh at the time they they just that that was their main concern this costly this black man to this day whenever you you you see a colored man or what whatever that’s that’s how you describe him you can tell somebody I saw you know I saw a black person but that’s that’s the sign for that and a white person just like that when our first when our first people met white people they had uh the bangs on women that’s what they that’s what that is but anyway from from that that encounter they uh they headed down the bid they helped him through the bito they gave him what Provisions they needed if they were hungry and change of clothes or whatever they tried to give them blankets and whatever else they needed uh Buffalo robes but in in a lot of cases uh leis leou and Clark band didn’t uh didn’t know how to accept these things they thought if we accept it maybe maybe we’re putting ourselves in into something we can’t get out of or whatever this Suspicious Mind you know but anyway they helped them through there right down to uh Tsum down to L Tsum are are people’s name for l no salmon but they they took him down to napt n shaks and that’s that’s our our name for the the npers trail that they callu well our name for that is nap shaks cuz it’s not a not a one-way Trail like a a fish trap no it’s a two- ways our people named it many many years ago and this saish is the npers to our people that’s why they call it napak not just going to the nesper country going through the nesper country because this Trail went clear to which is the ocean and that was the trail that we we established many many years ago but whenever our people used to laugh about I remember the old people used to laugh about when they heard when they heard that this band of people had a leader that was taking them through a young woman they said you know conqu why didn’t they I’m going to say they always said if they really was sincere on going through a Fast Trip they would have hired one of Salish a young man or a middle-aged man that knew the country he’d have got them through there in two days because they said a young woman she didn’t know the country that’s why they got lost they got into some inaccessible areas where the snow was deep they had to eat their dogs their horses whatever they used to laugh about that they felt sorry for him but they said if they would have hired a middle-aged man he’d have got him through there in two days but that was that was our encounter with Lewis and Clark it wasn’t wasn’t too much they they helped him there was good to him they helped him with horses and food and Provisions whatever they needed and that was that was our our our encounter it wasn’t there isn’t too much to tell on that because uh like I say they when they met him they treated him good all the way through and when they come back back they met him again for a while and they when they come through I guess the Missoula area and come over and through this country but this this place right in right in this area is also where a good friend of our people come through and almost made it to Canada to the Bea UNM musk are people called him and that was Chief Joseph he was a good friend to our people uh do have time to tell you people about about our encounters with with with uh Chief Joseph because like I say uh leis and Clark thing wasn’t too long but whenever whenever Chief Joseph come from from his country whenever the the Army was following him he got to you’ve all heard of Fort fizzle he got close there he had a runner ahead of him but he come back and told Chief Joseph concluded he said there’s somebody waiting for us up ahead so he told her junor we’ll wait here you go on ahead you go to to CH am to charlott’s camp and get us some help to to to make it through here so this young man skirted Fort fizzle and he got to charlott’s camp and he told the reason I know this so well John Delaware I heard John Delaware tell about this because he was one of the young men that went back and helped Joseph’s people come through but he says when the runner got there he told charot what what was going on so he sent John Delaware and two of his brothers back with with this young man he said and when we got back where uh Joseph was where UNM to us that was his name to our people and to this day I I kicked myself on H in for not asking at that time why they call him that it means 8 days but there had to be a reason and I never did I thought our old people going to be here forever but I never never found out why but anyway when when John and his two brothers went back with this Runner he said we got back to on musk and we told him where to come through on the two side of this draw and to our people two side is the north side the C side so we come on top of The Ridges we said and we come through there and we skirted all them people down there that was even some of our young Renegade Indians down in that bunch and how they got them enticed to join them Whiskey Whiskey the the firew water the poison but John Del we used to laugh about that all these guys went over there to for us get drunk so we weren’t worried about them so he said we got them back to charlott’s camp and he told Charlotte we just we want to we’d like to stay with you a few days and rest our old people are tired our kids are tired our horses are tired and Charlotte told him at that time you can stay any number of your people can stay you can all stay if you want to you can live with us but remember we won’t help you fight the days of fighting the Su yapi the white man is over if we help you fight we’ll all be wiped out so sh Joseph told him no we just want to rest but yet some of his people did stay to this day there’s some of our people that have ancestry from npers and when they when they left the bito they went as fars medicine tree they Camp close to it and Joseph Joseph sent his medicine man he said you go over to that to that medicine tree and find out what do we have to do so went over there and he prayed for a long time he was there for a long time he come back he told Han musk he says we got to pack up we got to leave because and Joseph told him no we can’t I I I appreciate what you done I know I know you’re you’re you mean well but we got to rest we have to stay here maybe not as long as we we should since you told us of why we we got to leave he said but we have to rest and he said besides the Army is way behind us they’re they’re not even close and not told him that’s not what I mean there’s others there’s others we’ve got others that sneaking up on us that’s surrounding that’s looking at us that’s we have to have people out there we got to have our Scouts watch so he said well we have to rest anyway so they did they did leave before they had to and here it was volunteers people from Fort Missoula that did close in on Chief Joseph because when he when he went when he went through he talked to some of the other people he said to this day I mean to till he died I bet he was sorry because he did talk to some of the settlers in the bitot valley and in near LOL near Victor wherever he had to go through some of the settlers told him yeah you’re okay you just go ahead nobody’s going to bother you but when he got to the big hole country where where the battle took place he was relaxed he let his guard down until he died I bet he wish you to send a couple Scouts back back Trail and to watch but he didn’t he took the word of some of the PE the good people he took the word that they wouldn’t be bothered he relaxed and that’s why there was they were caught up to a lot of his women and kids and men were wiped out there but uh this is why the fort nula Fort Benton Fort Shaw Fort Smith Fort anything the dominant Society have a a different name for every fort in the United States to our people all forts have one name and all that means is home of the killers because that’s what they saw at the time anytime the Army the soldiers come out of there what are they going to do do it was going to kill somebody so that was that was why they called all forts put away but anyway that was that was H musk Joseph’s encounter with our people they helped him as much as they could let him rest and when they were caught up to hear it in the Bear Paws that’s where they was caught up to but that’s that’s what I have to share with you today and when I say my my grandma’s stepmom used to say if it wasn’t for the good people we wouldn’t be here today because at once upon a time there was a move to wipe outapi there was a move to sweep us Indians off the face of the Earth but there were too many good people and that’s whenever I speak if I go to University of Montana or Montana State in Bosman no matter where I speak I bring this up because if there wasn’t good people you people wouldn’t be sitting there you’d say hello with I going to go listen to an Indian there’s too many people in this world they outnumber the bad ones that’s why I’m still here my grandkids everybody else is still here and this is what was handed down to me and I lived by that I run on to a lot of prejudice when I was in service but a lot of my white buddies would be here ah never mind don’t pay attention them yo-yos they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about so I want to thank you do anybody have any questions let me come around with the microphone so everybody can hear them is it on it’s on um it was interesting when you mentioned maybe one of your tribesmen might have gone with them to show them the shorter quicker way would they it must been a communication barrier that they couldn’t communicate that that would have been impossibility for them wouldn’t it either that or they were they were the foregone conclusion that this young lady was going to lead them I don’t know yeah all right another question uh you grew up in the B root no no I was born in in our Flathead reservation presently see there’s uh Ponder kutney and Flathead or Salish that’s all thrown in one basket and were called at that time flatheads and we weren’t but that’s our present home now a million and a quarter Acres when they sent us out of the Bidot our our area and that that area was about 22 million Acres so there was even trade according to the amot to the big man whoever he was that do we have any more questions all right hold on how come Chief Joseph didn’t take what people he had left to Canada what was the question how come Chief Joseph didn’t take what people he had left to Canada to escape Chief J take the people he had left to Canada to escape well because the Army was after him and he thought if he gets into Canada he was going to be safe after he crossed the international boundary but he didn’t quite make it and he I think some people said he thought he was in Canada but he wasn’t anyway he was overtaken and that’s where he he give it up says from where the sun now stands no more will I fight that was it did you guys have any more questions how about some answers no well let’s again thank Lewis here for joining us in the tenam voes oh there we do one more question would you say the name of what you called the fort again this fort here no oh all the fors uhhuh uh-huh and that that means a a killer uhhuh all right well thank you and our next program very nice our next program will be just after 4:00 and we’re going to hear a program entitled Saga WEA speaks

The post Lewis Adams on Salish encounters with Lewis and Clark appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Lucy Vanderburg on Salish Language Revitalization https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-m09010503teg/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:05 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-m09010503teg/ A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

The post Lucy Vanderburg on Salish Language Revitalization appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> introduction introduction at the top of the hour but for those of you who weren’t here welcome to the tent of many voices and the core of Discovery 2 the tent of many voices was designed as a place for people of different professional backgrounds and cultures to come and share with us their knowledge and wisdom as it relates to the Lewis and Clark expedition and so we’re very um happy to have Lucy vanderberg with us here today she’s going to be talking about Salish language so without further Ado let’s welcome Lucy to our stage thank you um in our language we would say Lum which is thank you Lum um and this is the Salish the Salish language um like I said my my name is Lucy vanderberg and I’m the program manager at the people Center in Pablo uh which is seven miles north of uh pson the people Center is a museum and an education uh facility and a a gift shop we and also our we call it native Ed it’s uh the tours that they combine with education um um our mission statement is to educate um the public and the public includes not only the tribal members but non-trial members about the three tribes that reside on on what is known as the Flathead reservation um we have the Salish and we like to be called the bitot sales because this this is actually our homeland and uh somebody made a comment this morning and said asked me where I was going and I I told them that I was going to Hamilton they said oh you’re going back to your Homeland and I always feel I wasn’t born here or anything but I always feel like when I come back to the Bitterroot that it is uh part of my my background and my father was born in Stevensville and he was uh he was a year old when they were uh moved to the to the Joo Joo area there are there are um three tribes that reside on the resid a and that’s the the the bito Salish and the Ponder and the cutney um the cutney migrated down from Canada and like I said we went from here to there the Ponderay have always been in between Arley and pson they’ve always occupied that land um the Cal spell some some of the Spokan uh we’ve kind of had different tribes that have lived there but um to date we have um approximately about 7,000 enrolled members on that um not all 7,000 live on the reservation um for whatever reason a lot of people do leave the reservation um I left at one time and came back after about 20 years um to be enrolled uh an unrolled member you you uh there’s there’s criteria that you have to meet um either Salish CNE or Ponderay you have to have at least um 1/4 uh degree of either trib’s um degree blood to be enroll an enrolled member and there’s a lot of uh um descendants direct descendants that aren’t enrolled um because of the the requirement that you have to be 1/4 um I consider myself a full blood Salish uh my mom was was a full blood my dad um like I said was born here and through the years of uh not keeping records um not having that uh you know the closest thing we have of the records being kept in this area people that were born here in Stevensville in the Bidot are the the Jesuit uh the fathers and they didn’t start keeping records probably until the late late 1800s um my dad was born in 189 91 or 1890 I’m sorry and um they never did put a a blood degree down for him until the reservation was formed in in in u the Joo is actually where the first agency was and somewhere down the line he ended up being 78 and I could never figure out where that 1/8 went you know uh what is that 1/8 you know I’d like to know um that nobody you know we can’t we can’t track down our background um because there just wasn’t any any record of of anything back Beyond like 1890 and uh so I always uh I always wondering you know what what was that 1 18 you know um so I I consider myself a full blood and we have uh to date probably um a very small amount of full blood um members on the reservation uh probably I would say 50 that are full blood and the full Bloods are the ones that maintain our language um pass it on uh we do a lot of uh Consulting with uh our elders um the Salish language was um an Unwritten language at one time uh the Jesuits did you know they did their version of writing the language after talking you know with the the the Salish um and that was probably the closest thing we had to a written language was is kind of like a dictionary vocabulary word list uh that the Jesuits put out and as years went on you know the elders became concerned because the language being um being lost um the younger Generations um not because life was changing a lot of the parents encouraged the students to um you know like when they go to school you know um don’t they’ll be speaking in your language because you need to earn learn English um and for survival you know that makes sense um my mother who who attended the ursaline um Academy in in St Ignatius she used recalled a lot of the experiences that she had um there I mean they weren’t allowed to speak their language so that was and that was in the the early 1900s and that was kind of when our language became uh threatened um parents Grandparents were um encouraging everyone to um not not speak their language um stay in you know learn as much English as you can now when they were uh brought to like the urine Academy or the the Jesuit the the fathers also had a school that a lot of the Indian children were brought to and they you know they stayed there they just stayed there for um 9 months um the hair was cut there you know I mean they pretty much um really discouraged them from being being themselves and living their own lifestyle um and when they would go home in in the summertime for 3 months and then they they would you know have U be able to because Salish is in my home Salish was my first language um until I went until I got older um probably four or five um and I was the youngest youngest child of uh of a large family um so I learned um English probably when I was about three or four but when I was little it was Salish was my first language because it was spoke in the home um daily I mean that was that was our lifestyle um so I have an advantage over uh the Learners now that we’re trying to to bring back the language and teach uh there the language is being taught throughout the reservation now um cuz there there isn’t that many uh fluent speakers I I feel fortunate that my parents did um you know they spoke the language in the home all the time um they encourage education um but they also encouraged us to keep our keep our heritage alive and to keep our um culture um and I’m I feel I feel very uh fortunate that I I have this ability to teach my children my grandchildren um other tribal members um and I you know I’ve taught Lang uh Salish language for probably the last 30 years um I was was hired by they formed in St Ignatius they formed um it was called at the time the Flathead culture committee um and over the years it became Salish and Ponderay culture committee um and one of the things that we found out right at the beginning was the elders wanted to um keep they they wanted to document as much as they could tell us about history uh families uh the Lang everything was done in the language so we we started interviewing large groups of the elders in and tape recording them um way back then it was a little cassette we didn’t have the the I guess the the equipment that that we have now you know we could have took videos of them you know we just didn’t do that in 78 uh plus we had a limited budget and um we were totally um supported by the elders the elders could see the concern back then that okay if we don’t document all this information is going to be lost so that was our job and I worked for the culture committee for 19 years and then I moved uh I moved up to pson and uh went to work for the people Center our job was to get large groups of Elders together and just turn the tape turn the tape recorders we had them um different places around a big conference room and just turn it on and let them talk in their language in 78 there were still um and it was the elders you still heard the language uh a lot now it’s very rare to hear the language openly um to hear the language spoken you have to go to the Salish cutney College to a language class or go to a Elders advisory council meeting to hear the language it’s just not you don’t hear it every day when I was when I was a child growing up um if we were at the local grocery store in Ari or at the post office and people were coming in I mean you heard the language all the time um that’s the big advantage that the fluent speakers have now over the Learners I mean the Learners have a real disadvantage because they don’t hear it every day they have to hear it from tapes they have to hear it from uh language teachers um and like I said it wasn’t a written language um up until 1978 uh we had no alphabet um nothing was really I mean you couldn’t write it down and after we had interviewed all these Elders for so long um we knew that we had to translate these tapes and trying to put a Salish word using the English alphabet uh became complicated because yeah we have sounds that come from down in your throat and the English just the I mean you how can you say well even a simple one like uh it’s just a that’s that’s a that’s a sound in our alphabet so we’re we’re trying put T andl together and it um it became real obvious that we needed to to work with a linguist um so what we did was we worked with a linguist out of uh British Columbia and his name was Larry Miller a very young man um who was very patient us um stayed with stayed at the in St Ignatius listened to the elders listened to the culture Committee in everyday conversation and it was uh decided that we would use the internet National phonetic alphabet we ended up with 43 sounds 43 letters um we have this the like the same vowels as as English um English is AE I O and U we have the same we use the same letter but it’s instead of AE I O and U is a e i u and O um some of the elders concern was the language is being shortened um we have a lot of words that we say like good day is and if you talk to some people they they they cut off parts of it and it becomes so when you’re teaching the language we try to we try to to to teach the the the whole version of a word and sometimes it it gets to be a pretty long word um and there’s also between the Salish and the Ponder the Salish and Ponder speak the same language but they have um Community differences uh from like arle and Ronan St ignacius there might be the dialect differences uh we understand each other um but it’s just okay we know that okay this is how you say it in ronad this is how the pandere say it this is how you say it in AR Le you know um and when when I was a teacher at the college I I tried to teach all three differences if there was three or two or four um because they’re all right they’re not you know you can’t say this one’s wrong because somebody might have grow had grown up with talking in North Crow of ronam this is how their family talked and you can’t say they’re wrong because they have a little bit of a difference it’s it’s just like in the English I mean throughout the United States everybody says things a little different um we do have an immersion school that started um in Ari and it’s it’s with a real small from probably a year old to age three um they have an enrollment of 30 and um they’re they are doing uh I think a fantastic job of uh instilling the language and the sounds and the um everyday cultural Lifestyles into um the small small children because they won’t they’re not getting it at home so um the school is has taken it upon themselves to do this and I think it’s uh it’s been in operation for probably about 5 years now and once they leave the emerence school and they go in to head start at four they it’s it’s like it’s picked up from where they left off Head Start will pick up uh the language uh instruction from there and once they go into kindergarten or uh the first grade all the all the public schools on the reservation have the Salish Ponder and the cutney language in the schools uh AR Le has one of the biggest probably the biggest um involvement uh they have the you know AR Le has always accepted um the Salish language as a um and they get it from kindergarten through high school and once they get through high school if they CH if they choose to go to the Sal scy College um they can continue to pursue that language uh instruction there uh the college does does a wonderful job of of teaching hiring teachers there um pson school is the the only school on the reservation that does the cutney the cutney occupy the northern part of the reservation Elmo Dayton Big Arm um and pson so um it’s it’s it makes me feel good when I go to the schools and I hear they’re having you know I’ll sit in on some of the cutney classes and sit in on some of the Salish classes and um we are making strides we are making um steps towards preserving and re and re reintroducing the language throughout the reservation it’s you know my my children I have three girls who have married and they’re they’re not around as much as I as I would like I guess but they you know they they learned the most and and I’m ashamed to say this they learned the most language from my mom uh because I spent a lot of time with her you know um she had a cultural camp that she ran for three months every summer and they just stayed there the whole three months and they learned probably the most from her and but my grandkids I have seven grandkids and I try to instill in them the urgency I call it an urgency to to to remember your language remember your heritage remember your background um and it it helps that all other schools are are are doing this um this past spring I was um involved with a college with a a group of nine and we’ always heard about the Maui in New Zealand that had this excellent excellent program immersion program that they totally turned around their language was like ours that was being um pushed aside it was being losted and they completely turned that around with uh the immersion schools like the one that we have started in RI we only have the one um but I was uh fortunate to to go to New Zealand in in March and um we stayed there for 6 weeks and we worked with all the different schools the the dayc carees the head starts the junior high the high school and the colleges the universities in New Zealand um and we came away with a lot of a lot of material a lot of uh curriculum that we can incorporate into our efforts to to preserve our language um I enjoyed myself there um it was a little too hot for me but um it was it was good to see little children speaking their language um all the time I mean it was like I remember how my language used to be um so we’re on the road to uh maybe getting another emerging School uh in a different location and um you know if we can just work together as a tribe tribes and work together as communities um we can we can get that language back um like I said we have 43 sounds I call them sounds because some of them have little extra things along them um teaching the languages is is a way of teaching your culture if you if you know your culture you’re going to know your language and to know your culture you have to learn the language um all these tapes that we did over the years uh is all in sales and if you want to listen to those tapes and if it’s going to make any sense to you you have to know your language they’ve been translated and uh the culture committee is putting out um different I don’t know how many volumes but they they just one was just uh released um about a month ago and it was on the Lewis and Clark um Encounters in in the bitot and there was a volume by itself um all interviews of Elders that have that have passed on um and they have a place names um all of these place names throughout the bito valley um in in Salish um sometimes I I I would like to go back to the culture committee and work with them because they’re uh really struggling to keep keep that preservation and um but that’s what we’re doing at the people Center too um this lady that came with me today she’s our education director and we hold classes at the people Center language um history uh stories storytelling um plus we have the museum we have a we have a small Museum it’s not a large one um we hope to and you know expand on that someday um we’re limited in our language teachers um we have um a lot of the students that are now in college that have taken the language throughout the years um are very capable of teaching the language but are um hesitant because they’re put on the spot you know when you’re teaching something you’re kind of put on the spot and the students expect you to not make any mistakes you know and these new Learners they’re they’re fluent I guess um passive fluent they they understand the language they they can do the basics um and but afraid to get into a conversation with an elder because the Elder will stay in the language and you should too but it’s uh sometimes it’s hard being um a fluence speaker and a teacher myself sometimes it’s hard to stay in in the Salish language um because you there’s so many things that we don’t have words for and that’s what the the the elders advisory Council which we have one uh on the south end and one on the North End we don’t have words for microphone uh camera you know the the modern things so it’s it’s up to the elders to sit down with a list and try to come up with something that describes a microphone describes a video camera and just office equipment you know I mean because we did we didn’t have those things when the language was so it’s it’s up to the elders to um try to find something that describes that basically what we’re doing is making up words um I don’t want to be accused of making up any words so I let the elders do that um and they’ve come up with a a a long you know it’s it’s like an ongoing thing every time something new comes out the kids now want to know how do you say uh Xbox you know and so we have to describe this to elders and they so then they come up with you know so you know the the kids always want to know how do you say this how do you say that and and it sometimes it’s pretty challenging to come up with something that but everybody’s in agreement with I guess um so the the language is one of the things that the whole tribal membership um is struggles with but yet is in support of um within all the schools and uh the the teachers um we work with the state um to certify um language speakers um if if you know if you go to college and you have to take a foreign language we’re trying to get it so s isues that foreign language which is um it always confuses the elders because they’re saying well it’s not a foreign language to the to to the like the university in Montana um to them it is a foreign language so then they you know we have to certify our own Learners in our language to qualify for that foreign language uh requirement um the council the tribal council um they’re very supportive of uh the elders the language teachers um the schools supportive I guess in and uh yeah you’re doing a good job kind of thing you know uh verbally um we don’t always get the support and which is um like with anything any any any um business um your your Li budget your budget is limited there’s only so much you can do and you know we try to fund raid we try to get grants and it’s um it’s an ongoing thing I mean it’s like every day you get up and you you’re trying to think of okay what can I do today to make this more uh simple for the schools uh and the teachers in the schools on the reservation um throughout uh all the way to um Dayton Dayton has a real small school they have like nine students um in September the every third week in September we have our Native American awareness week and schools all the schools on reservation will come to the people Center the people Center has been designated as the place to because it’s big enough that we can um accommodate probably oh we’ve had up to 400 kids at one time um and we go through stations um whether it’s game native games history language and they can also take um tours of the museum um I did bring along some um some books of of our language uh the alphabet um it kind of describes it I didn’t uh you know I didn’t uh do copy make copies but if you’re interested uh we do have a our website for the people Center and the college and just you know if you wanted to call anywhere uh the culture committee or the people Center we’d be more than happy to to help we we get we have a travel member who is a teacher at Coral’s and he always brings this uh bus load of kids to um to the people Center and we get people from the bitot valley a lot just coming to to there and I have a really a good staff who’s uh they don’t have to be told every day to what to do so they just kind of do it and I’m I’m happy for that um if you have any questions I would be more than happy to to answer them do anyone have any questions for Lucy oh one back here just a sec let me get the microphone so every everyone can hear I just wanted to ask you if you are related to Agnes vanderberg Agnes was my mother I have a picture after you’re done to show you that I took of her in Washington DC oh yeah okay wow any other questions up here just a sec this gentleman in the is there any other language in the world that is close to the Salish language like Spanish and Italian is close you know what I mean yeah um some of the linguists that we worked with we worked with Larry m we worked with um Anthony matina at University and then um Sally Thompson from Pennsylvania and um um Steve vegal from Hawaii now he said Steve tells me that um the linguistic part of of like the sounds that we make is a lot like Russian so I don’t know we have a lot of lot of words that come from from here and then they move down um like the is you the it’s almost like clear in your throat it’s it’s a sound that’s made down here which is good and we have um some of the others like um it’s uh we ended up with 43 sounds and U we could probably have more according to one of the linguists he wanted to add the Fingal in but uh okay 43 is enough you know let’s just stick with those question over here can you in Sage count slowly 1 through 10 and can you recite the the months of the year okay it has a a glot stop at the end I mean you’re actually cutting off the moose and that’s 1 through 10 and the once you learn 1 through 10 you pretty much got made uh because what you do after you get past 10 is you take 10 and and then you just start over 10 and one is 11 so you got 11 so learn one through 10 and you can kind of figure it out uh the months of the year January is we put at the end of each the first sound or the first word because that means month is the the how do I explain this um the the New Year the beginning they didn’t go by years back then they went by Seasons but it actually it came out that January is the the beginning of the winter season the winter months um February is um and that means that’s just the coldest coldest month um March is and that’s the literal translation is the the month of the geese um when the geese are L whichever way they go I don’t know um April is staman is the flower the Buttercup and and it’s um a lot of the the seasons went by flowers trees animals June is um the cam the month of the month of the C the bulb which we we still gather today uh and that’s uh just lost it um but that after it’s cooked it’s called e and I always tell my students to remember um the word e is you can eat it and it actually has the very the very beginning is kind of like eat uh after it’s baked um and you could eat it July is the um celebration after if you want to look at January February March April and May June is right in the middle um July is the the time to after Gathering Gathering the new the the harvesting the the herbs and the berries in July was a time to celebrate a time to um I guess relax until you started the the process process again for the fall and the winter um July was and now they call it July c h u l a y August uh and that was Huckleberry um sta um that was when a lot of the people did went out P tuckle berries choke cherries all the berries that are right then September was and that’s Choke Cherry after the first Frost is when they they picked the choke cherries and they pounded and kept dried and kept a lot of the foods were was dried um the drying process was after they’re completely dried you can put them away and they’re they’ll last you know they they just like they do now with dehydrated Foods um October is um and that means the hunting month hunting for the big game the elk moose deer and I’m sure a long time ago the Buffalo it was the strip it was all the hunting November is was the trapping it’s that was the trapping month when they trapped for The Furs the the beaver the weasel the um mink um muskrat um and December is the there’s controversy on that and one one part like I said you know the community differences December was theu the storytelling because we don’t we don’t tell any of our creation stories until the snow or like they say until the snow flies we don’t tell any creation stories and by creation stories I mean the the stories that we have about um the ber Valley and and the coyote the coyote was in instrumental in a lot of our creation stories and that was why they called it the the month of Storytelling well thank you Lucy that was great thanks for that question that was a good question thank you if anyone has any other questions for Lucy I’m sure she’ll be around here for a little bit and you can come up and ask them personally to her we’re going to e for

The post Lucy Vanderburg on Salish Language Revitalization appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Chief Cliff Snyder on Chinook and Clatsop Relations with Lewis and Clark https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-09240603/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:56 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-09240603/ A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

The post Chief Cliff Snyder on Chinook and Clatsop Relations with Lewis and Clark appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> and join us for the very last program today I want to welcome you to the core of Discovery 2 traveling exhibit and this tent of many voices I’ll tell you a little bit about us if you’re brand new to the tent I would be surprised I see a lot of familiar faces here in the crowd and I thank you all for coming back joining us for today and joining us for the past few years that’s right we’ve been traveling for four years on the Lewis and Clark Trail starting in January of 2003 in monachello Virginia we went all the way to the Pacific coast and now we’re back to St Louis just as Louis and Clark did 200 years ago yesterday they returned to St Louis well as we’ve been traveling the trail to various towns and cities along the way this is our 95th stop bringing presenters here to the tent of many voices to share their voice with you about Lou and Clark expedition and the people and the cultures they met along the way 200 years ago Lewis and Clark stayed with the Chinook and clats up people on the coast and with us today is a very special presenter he’s the chief of the chanuk people and he was our very first presenter in the tent of many voices 3 and a half years ago in monachello Virginia his name is Cliff Snider Chief Cliff Snider or grey wolf and it would be my honor if you guys would give him the biggest Round of Applause and welcome him to the tent thank you thank you very much I’m overcome have a SE have a SE yeah yeah CL you everybody because I’m seeing so many people I’ve known over the past few years I hope you uh don’t mind if I take a minute to welcome all those guys in the canoe that came down the river yesterday Captain Clark and his whole crew what a marvelous Landing down there what a great celebration I was with you guys in St Charles last night boy did we have a good time my friends my friends from Pacific County and Washington are here I’m certainly glad they’re here we were you know that particular group were the friends of uh uh sister city with Charlottesville Virginia I had a chance to be back there with them and they’re here in the crowd today thank God you’re here I appreciate it very much and all those people with them from uh Pacific County down the coast at the end of the trail I want to make sure that I recognize that you’re here I also want to recognize my chairman is here my vice chairman is here there’s some chinuk Indians here I have some clats up Indians here they’re all back here from our particular native land and I’m so glad they made this trip out here to the Mississippi River I’ll try and get going now the speak speaker before me I have in trouble with this the speaker before me is so good that he doesn’t need a note I’ve got pages of notes because I’m about 30 years older than he is I’m 80 years old now and I have to kind of look down once in a while if you don’t mind if I get lost just wait a few minutes and I’ll catch up with you this I know I’m going to for get some people like try to catch up with Terry last night I know the people who are taking pictures and everything I if I’ve forgotten you I’m sorry I’ll meet you out back and and we’ll talk it over anyway I’m going to mention some other people in the crowd later on people that had something to do with the beginning of this Trail this is the end of the trail what a wonderful day the great spirit gave us to have this final occasion no rain we hear about rain all the time from these people who work here but today look at it sun’s out nice calm Day Lewis and Clark on their return met at the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers and they begin the final leg of their trip back they dropped off Chicago AIA sakaia chachaa whatever you want to call her depends on what tribe you’re in they left her off in the Mandan Village Knife River with sharbono and her baby pump they continued up the river and they run into a couple of French Trappers they pick them up they picked up Chief Shahi at Knife River the chief of the Mandan tribe they’re going to take him back to see President Jefferson and they were on their way and they got to rushing you all took psychology in college you know about gold gradient don’t you the oh horses when they went out on the trip the closer they got the barn the faster they went well that’s what was happening the big rush was on we got to St Charles and look out in the pasture there there’s a moo cow we know that we’re getting close now and oh the joy St Louis in sight I kind of changed that a little bit but here we are in St Louis what a beautiful place to be one of the good reasons I like being on this Trail for 78 years is because now I get to see them Missouri I get to see the Mississippi I get to see the Grand Arch and then there a wonderful place I love St Louis as onary Chief the Chinook Indian tribe there’s a difference between a chief and a chairman we have a chairman with a beautiful uh uh Indian Council I was on the Council for 25 years fighting for recognition when I retired the tribe named me honorary chief for life so if you’re working on the internet you’re trying to find our leader it’s not me I’m just an honorary person our real leader is Ray Gardner sitting in the audience today we have come full circle and it’s time for everybody to celebrate I distinctly remember when I first began I was in partnership with the United States fish and wildlife and we’re having a meeting in Leon Idaho and we just had to introduce ourselves as we went around the table there were probably 50 60 people in this big round table and they were discussing what we were going to do on the Lewis and Clark celebration which was coming up and I was just there merely as an associate when I got around to me and I introduced myself as a chinuk Indian a member of an unrecognized tribe in United States of America everybody kind of looked at me Rod ARA white was next to me ly Shon he says we are also not recognized by the United States government who makes those decisions it’s not made by Congress it’s not made by executive order of the president but somebody in the Bia and nobody will take the blame for it and that’s why we were we were there we’re just talking about other things the next day they had another meeting that meeting the same thing happened they got around to me and I said uh I can’t see that we should be calling this a celebration and the word started moving around and the Indians felt that we couldn’t celebrate the Caucasians taking land from us and it by that by vote they started to call it the Comm commemoration and that still stands to this day I was proud to be part of that the second part of it was they’re unrecognized Indian here are all these Indians sitting around they’re unrecognized what are they doing here you remember what uh people were saying you know Indians should have uh equal rights and and anything that’s happening here and so uh they decided to include all Indians on the Trail whether they’re recognized or not out of that meeting was about seven or eight years ago I can’t tell you exactly but what a wonderful feeling to see that’s still happening today and then when Gerard Baker came in and he started talking about what the Indians are going to do on the trail he says we are not going to be p uh we’re not going to be involved in this unless we have equal rights we don’t want to be looked down on as second grade citizens and Gerard Baker is still my hero today for saying that give that big guy a big hand now most of you are acquainted with the Lo and Clark Trail by the authors that we had and the history books that you read and I bet you 99% of you know know more about the generals and I do I know a little bit about what the Indians thought and sometimes my thoughts are quite different than the history books because I’ve been talking to Indian leaders for eight years they’re telling me these little legends that aren’t even written down in the beginning our third president of the United States which by the way was born in England President Jefferson made the deal of the century by purchasing all the land that was to be all the way to the Rocky Mountains doubling the size of America he paid what $15 million 18 c a square mile for all that Land wait a minute am I missing something here who’s living on that land out there are the French living out there did na Napoleon really really uh own that land now the Indians felt this way and it’s the land was not owned by anybody we belong to the land and if any of you guys out there are part Indian and have Indian Heritage you know what I’m talking about we could not buy and sell the land it was not for sale we belong to the land so I just want everybody to know where they got the land from and what they paid for it and who really lived on the land maybe I have a little favoritism there I don’t know I’m going to El light over something because we’re going to have some some ceremony here after afterwards and I don’t have Sammy Meadows from Colorado to give me this I’m just going to have to hurry through it I talked a lot like to talk today about it says on the program I’m going to talk about the chip culture we’ve always been given the privilege to change the title around a little bit what I’d like to do is tell you about the Indian tribes that they met on the way I’m going to miss some but I’m going to put some of the important items and I’m going to put in there about some things that aren’t in the history books the stories are going to be different and I got this from Roger Wile who portrays droillard on the trail these are the Lost journals of Lewis and Clark right Roger and so I’ve been using using that your phrase for a long time because I’ve been in these Indian Villages and they’re telling me these stories and later I’ll tell you how they might contradict the history books that we have well you know the rest of the story Jefferson pointed Lewis and Clark and uh he didn’t have the slightest idea of what Li was lying ahead he had never been over the mountains he had been 200 miles west of monachello he didn’t know about the rivers the mountains and all those things terrible animals and things and above all he didn’t know a thing about those wild Indians that were out there we have to be kind of careful of those guys we don’t know whether when we go through those Indians are going to kill us or whether they’re going to help us or what’s going to happen so that’s the interesting part how did the Indians help Lewis and Clark go through this whole trip and back as a unit and why weren’t they eliminated and that’s the reason we’re all here today because they did make it I’d like to talk about some of the couple of the first tribes I met you know all the things they went through about going through France and and when they could leave St Louis and all that kind of thing but there were running into Indians right away that had seen white people before when they left St Louis and some of those Indians were oage Indians had a good opportunity to talk to some of them while I’ve been here and the Shaun some of my friends dark rain Tom and her husband beautiful Chinese uh sh people and then they ran into a team called uh I’m saying team because I’m an ex- coach but I ran into a tribe called kapoo now the only time I ever knew about the kapoo was from Lil Abner when I was a kid and they remember they used to drink kikapu joy juice and that’s where I got that name from I don’t know if any of you know about kikapu enjoy Jews I like to try it sometime then they ran into the omahas and the otos and they’re back there and they met with them and had a counsil and they were telling them how good our president was and so now they’re going to be that was their new leader and you know where the name Council Buffs came from when they talked to them and now they run into the yton Sue boy they likeed them they had They carried them on Shore with big carriers straped with skins they went to the camp and they danced and they had a great time no problem there some white people had been there before so they knew about him so far so good now there’s no problems with those wild Savages but they’re running into the ton Su and black Buffalo and you all know the story they wanted more tobacco they wanted more supplies because they were going to take a toll to go up the river and we’re not going to let you go by and so Clark says no way Lewis said no way so they drew the bows and arrows well Clark took out his saber Lewis ordered the cannon on board ship to be trained on the Indians that was in that battle right there and so they finally agreed to let the women on board the kill booat and take a small trip with them and they proceeded on is the way I put it but just think what would have happened at that particular point if they had got into a scuffle and there been a lot of people killed well it didn’t happen so good for them so now we reach s raras I’m getting a little warm with this blanket so glad to have it though the riod tribe and they saw this guy that was on the stage just before me they saw York they couldn’t believe it they come up and they rubbed his skin and they couldn’t rub it off they just didn’t understand it and I must say then that some of the Legends I discovered by talking to people that there were some seual interchanges that took place between the core and the Indians but I can’t confirm that but I just wanted to tell you that was something that I read how the winter was coming the reached Knife River they reached the mandans you all know that story they nearly starved they built a fort there that was a longest stay they had on the on the whole Trail and they said to the core there’s not much food here because of buffalo have gone but if we eat you eat and if we starve you starve and so that went on they made it to the winter they had a 3-day Buffalo dance and all of a sudden the Buffalo returned and that’s how they made it to the longest winter uh longest day they had on the whole journey at this point was the most fortunate thing that ever happened to him on the trail in my belief they hired Chicago WEA shano as guides and interpreters to continue on wait a minute now there’s a baby too and you know they had a dog now they got a baby that’s going to go on this trip it’s amazing they ever let that happen but what they did is they told them all what was going to Beall him on the trail ahead about the huge Falls that were several miles up the river we’re talking about the Great Falls when they got there well that’s just going to be couple days and we’ll get around the falls and we’ll continue on you people have read all the journals s was almost a month by the time they got around where those dog gone in Indians when they needed them where are the grow buns they were up in the hills they were watching them the whole time but they were suspicious and they didn’t want to come down and get killed but anyway the crew made it on their own and passed on well now we reaching the end of the River it’s like a creek that can jump across and the next thing you know they run into the Shon ly shonis if you were here in the last session you know how they were greeted how they were welcomed in the camp this is Chicago’s tribe and she recognized a girl that was captured with her and they felt like well maybe uh that Chicago had died had would never return and then of course you about the meeting with her brother C8 and so they hugged each other well that’s a good end there’s going to be a good chance we can do some trading now that they know each other in one of the sessions they say that a brother wasn’t necessarily a brother but it was just someone like a cousin or something like that so I can’t be definite whether it was a real actual brother or not well how are they going to to trade now we got no more water that’s the end of the water passage we got to go over some mountains to get to the Pacific we need horses well you’ve got horses well how did they trade with the Shi Indians very simple Lewis talked to leish in English leish talked in French to shano shano talked in Hadas to Chicago WEA Chicago WEA then talked to Kamaya in Shoni and then in the reverse took part can you imagine that they picked up 29 horses and a mule and they had a dog well they got a guide with them they’re going to go across the bitteroot mountain sometime but they run into the Flathead Indians flaad Indians received them very warmly some of the horses were giving out so they gave them uh some price horses seven or eight of them and some were Colts then they went over the bitter Roots boy there was a place that was probably one of the worst places on the whole Trail and how they got across I don’t know they nearly starved to death they had to eat some of the Colts but they finally made it nearly starved the made the way up Prairie on the clear waterer River and they ran into the nzp Indians our friends over there I’ll tell you what a welcome site we had they had fish and enjoyed a good meal but the young guys said oh boy look at all this stuff there’s guns there’s ammunition there’s horses and there’s trading Goods let’s kind of let’s kind of take some of that stuff and just destroy all these white guys wait said this lady who had been with the white people over in the plains and as an old woman she returned to the npar her name was wat kuis and she says they are good people do them no harm there books out about that I’m so proud of what she did and so the neps decided to let them go of course they made the canoes went down the Clear Water went down the Snake River and I’m going fast now because I’m omitting a lot of things but I want to tell you they did go upstream and and they uh met the Walla wals and they met the yakas and the WAMS and they were turning the corner on the Columbia and they looked over there there’s an Indian with a sailor jacket on red and blue my goodness we must be getting closer and there were other Indians wearing sailor clothing wow we can’t be too far from the Pacific Ocean but they kept running into these funny looking Indians they’re only 5 foot five tall and they had flattened heads who are these people we know them today as chinuk Indians but we’re coming to these Falls it’s called salila Falls nowadays it’s only 48 ft wide they met the Indians there and the chuks started ringing their hands and crying we’re all going to be killed here come these bears with upside down faces my goodness what are we going to do wait the Chicago whe there’s a woman and she has a baby this can’t be an armed group we can deal with them well let’s see them go over the falls which is about 30 ft tall you know and then when the canoe tips over whatever floats over at the beach we’ll just kind of take that and Stephen Ambrose really wrote about that how the chinuk Indians were kind of Thieves you know they smell like fish and they were kind of the thieves and our feeling was you know whatever is laying loose that’s for the taking it’s not the way we look at it today but that’s the way it was then well finally they just decided they shut the canoes over the falls and and the Indians helped them Portage and everything turned out all right they said look out for those Chinooks down there you know how many Chinooks on the river at that time 16,000 chinuk Indians at the mouth of every stream on the Columbia Gorge was a chook village with the canoes up on the shore there might be 40 people it wouldn’t like sitting bowl with thousands of Indians around them 40 people 60 people 20 people you got married you went and lived with your husband and his band I hate to call them bands because United States government frowns on bands of Indians they like the word tribe period we’ve run into that problem several times times anyway just imagine this if any of you have ever been to Oregon or even if you had to Heaven there’s these huge Cliffs on each side of the Columbia Gorge you’re floating down there in your canoes at night and on the shore you see all these canoes and now you’re going with the current and you look at all these canoes and look there there’s a fire here and a fire there this 50 fires in this one Village and you’re going silently down creek what a beautiful sight that must have been and now we’re getting closer place called Portland Oregon Vancouver nowadays they stopped in all these places they got by Beacon Rock whoa there’s a tide change we can’t be too far now tide changed from the Pacific Ocean scwr upt there on down they went they finally got down there and my fourth great-grandfather I can’t Indians don’t like to use the word great that’s just my grandfather from now on my grandfather discovered Lewis and Clark as they came down the stream not the other way around we were already there we discovered him just like we discovered 28 ships had been there before him had come across the bay my group gave them some fish dismal Niche showed them a place to Camp they went over at the beach and raved their name on the stump and searched around the weather can you believe the weather was so terrible and I’ll tell you how long it was later but it was raining there MO ERS were completely worn out their clothing was terrible they hated salmon by this time they didn’t like the smell of it what are we going to do are we going to Camp here Station Camp no we’re working on that now chairman on station G but let’s have a vote Stephen Beckham and leou and clar college doesn’t like to call it a vote he just took a poll who wants to go up to Vancouver area who wants to go kamak area who wants to go uh over to the other side of the river whatever well my grandfather said well you don’t have much to trade we’ve been trading with 28 ships that already come in why don’t uh why don’t you guys go on the other side why should we go over there well there more elk over there besides that if you a ship comes in you can see it better and you’ll be out of our hair too well they went down to Pillar Rock when my mother was born and they crossed over there because the dog gone Cano you know how it was going through the locks yesterday coming down did you know that there going to be locks on that River coming down from St Charles well those canoes didn’t do very very well in the mouth of the Columbia and sometimes you were in a boat with a lot of freeboard you still wonder if you’re going to make it well they went down to where there’s some islands got around up to tongue Point cross over and they built that Fort at Fort claton my clat of brothers are back there now they know that history we all spoke the same language and so sometimes we feel that we’re just like Blood Brothers there but they went across there they set up the port and they stayed there the second longest time on the whole trip and that was good but they had elk meat and they they described it in the journal say poor elk meat p o r e because evidently it didn’t last very long in that kind of weather they saw 12 days without rain and only six did they see any sun at all you know about the salt K and the whale story and all that but they made it through and I made it through because the clat of Indians were helping them every day with food and and doing everything they could about directions and I must say something now about Dick bash his fourth or fifth great grandfather Chief cab or kol who was a classup chief at that time now he’s the director of the tent of many voices and we both served together for 25 years on the chook Indian Council my salute to Dick bash back there I love that guy on the way now I have to check my notes see where I am sometimes I get several Pages ahead of myself byway I’ll tell you by memory we just took off they uh while they were there a ship did come in Over the Bar you know there’s 10 and some ships buried out there I don’t know how they made it across in a tall ship it was called the Lydia and the Lydia came into Port was there for a while my grandfather told him oh where’s they has for Lewis and Clark oh heck they went back they’re already gone so the lyia Trad with them and then left and went around I always say they miss a good bus ride home and they had to come back by horse and B can what a shame that was but in a way there’s more stories on the way back I’m just going to tell you one or two the one or two are on the way back they tried to get a canoe from the clat spion they couldn’t do it they wanted to trade women they wanted to trade sexual favors and wanted to trade everything else and it just couldn’t happen so Lewis and Clark’s crew stole a Cano and they left and they were going up the creek and as they’re on their way up the creek they got into this Channel and they look back and here comes a clam Chinook Indian just pedling like mad to catch up with him what’s going on we stopped we talked to him this is a no in slooh here that you’re in the main river is out there you got to go back and by the way that’s my canoe that had you stole my canoe well good thing they had some extra elk skins so they traded him for those elk skins and away they went again the other one if you’re were in the crowd before Smokey was telling about only one man died on the trail and that’s a story that I learned by Legend from the blackbeat tribe the pans young I imagine young boys you know probably 15 to 23 something like that camped with ls and Clark that night and they slept with him they got medals they got the American flag but early in the morning they started to take off and they were stealing their guns and they were stealing their horses and they were taking off with them uhoh so I think it waso not Floyd but it was one of the guys and I’ll think of he’s nameing a second after I’m done but anyway he Fields Fields shot one and he got his stuff back and Lewis ran after one and he stabbed him So when you say Floyd was the only one killed on the whole Expedition it’s not two there were three people killed on the Expedition so I’m sitting in my home Portland Oregon I get a call from a man in a black foot drive he says come and through come have coffee with me and we had we’re were talking about those things he says that’s not true either I said how come he said the one that Lewis St uh shot I mean the one he shot recovered and then died so only two men died on the ls C Expedition that’s why I call them the Lost journals because they’re just a little bit different that you read about in the textbooks well I’m getting down there near the end I want to thank Diane back there for getting me here I want to talk thank everybody that’s responsible for the T of many voices dick bash and his boss and I want to leave you with one thing and I speak for the chairman of My Tribe Ray Gardner my vice chairman Sam Robinson I want to speak for them and say don’t forget the seven chinuk directions and those of you have been listening to me for the last several years know what I’m talking about seven directions are east and west north and south up and down in the directions of your heart cop from my heart Kaka so be it amen thank you I’ve got my drum here anybody wants to help me celebrate I can use the word now celebration is ready to gok if you have any questions for chief Snider you’re welcome to raise your hand I do have some colleagues out there with some microphones and um the chief Snyder can take your questions so go ahead and put your hands up if you have a question there’s a guy come on up in the back am yeah I’ll repeat it yeah I think I know where go ahead he asked if there were any sign language on the West Shore uh but but all only way we could communicate because the Chinooks had a guttural language that was even hard for anybody from one Village to another to understand I always put it in this perspective like England and there’s whales and there’s Ireland and there’s Scotland they all spoke the same language it’s difficult for everybody to understand each other any of you are watching the writer cup now you know what I’m talking about you can’t understand what those guys over there are saying but we had a lot of different dialects which started at the mouth of Columbia and went all the way to wishram and uh they had a kickish form of dialect up there the only way I can figure out that they even communicated because that language even Chicago didn’t understand the only thing that they could do is point and draw in the sand and and try and just beat it out of each other by sign language now when I’m with Roger back there and we’re talking to different schools he will do sign language with me like from my heart I’m talking to you you know things like that and that’s about the only way that we can communicate with each other from the old days and I think that’s what they had to do like this was be me I’m talking to you and which direction are we going that sort of thing that’s all I can say but we definitely they did not understand our language but on the trail there had been some white people in before that French Trappers and so forth and so they had some idea of a couple of words they might throw that in in the meantime any other questions I have a drum up here uh I’m going to set this down and when I’m when I’m talking to the kids in the school I also work for the Confluence group with my Lynn out of New York that did the Vietnam Wall so I’m talking to a lot of schools all the time grade schools high schools colleges all that and I always let the kids play the drum so I have it here and I can pass it around if you guys want to beat on a chinuk drum I’d love to have you do it this gentleman here I know would like to do it take this and and that anybody else any of my girlfriends out there I want to thank all of you for coming out I just wanted to mention I know that all of the Rangers would agree with me in saying that our family is sitting right here all of you are family to us you been traveling with us over the years you’re very close and dear to our hearts so I’m very glad to see you here for our very last presentation in the tent of many voices um before I get too far I would like you to give one big round of applause for our last presenter Chief Snider thank you stay right where you are okay at this time uh we were we’ll be preparing for our closing ceremony which is a very special time and I want to kindly ask the folks in the front five rows we’re going to um we’re going to make those reserved seatings so if you will have a seat but don’t I’m sorry don’t let anybody move yet oh excuse me we’re going to do an honor song I’m sorry it’s snooze I got just say one thing first I didn’t see them but my friends with the uh and I left that little part out in my speech about the circle of tribal advisers Bobby don’t run away I’m talking about you and Sammy these two ladies right here are just wonderful to the leaders of the circle of tribal advisers and they made it possible for all the Indians along the trail to express their views and respected their views and so that’s what happened over the last three or four years and I’m so proud of you guys I was glad to be part of your group thanks for coming and uh uh Diane Diane you can come up here too as the chair of classs close cloudia till comes con n King Chacha Jeff painter Nang I’m Jeff painer I’m one of the cultural resource Specialists of the clat up tribe and uh this is our chairman and vice chair and we just really want to honor up Grandpa Cliff here for all the work he does for our people and uh he’s a real healer and uh does a lot to make things come together between people that might be having disagreements and uh and I just had a talk with Ray and he said it be okay for us to do this so this is an honor song to honor to this man this song was composed in the 1700s when one of the epidemics came through our village at NL and the meaning of it it sounds like uh eii o vocable words but there’s a meaning with that song and it means you’re all so valuable we can’t afford to lose one of you and that is directed at that Grandpa over there but also to each and every one of you that’s witnessed this journey you know the talks today you’ll take that back to your community whatever uh culture that you’re from you’re all very important you’re all witness something here today hey he he

The post Chief Cliff Snyder on Chinook and Clatsop Relations with Lewis and Clark appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> York’s Account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-11190503tmb/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:56 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-11190503tmb/ A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

The post York’s Account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> everyone welcome to the core of Discovery 2 tene voices if you folks could this program does get filled up because uh the program you’re about to hear is very good if you don’t mind there’s a space uh SE in between you to sit close together if you can um just so we can get more people in here uh during the program I would appreciate that for those of you who are not familiar with us we are a traveling exhibit we’ve been traveling the Lou and Clark Trail since January year of 2003 and we finally made our way Westward to the Pacific Ocean and we’ll be doing the return trip again next year back to St Louis like L Clark did 200 years ago well 200 years ago on the Expedition Captain Clark brought along his slave York and today York is here to tell his side of the story to be told for the first time so please help me welcome York we have been away from the eyes of the whole world almost 3 years thousands of miles away from civilization lifetimes away from the madness all them civilized men called slavery there was me a young Shoni woman named sag C Lewis C Clark and more than three dozen what I call volunteer Patriots now our mission seem simple enough all we had to do was cut a path through the Savage Northwest Territories all the way to the Pacific Ocean cross 4,000 mil of the highest mountains and fastest rivers in the americ ever seen before President Thomas Jefferson called us his core of Discovery and every day we live is the day we all prepared to die just on the word of the president we left St Louis a small army of men 3 years later we returned more like a Band of Brothers not one day went by that every man was tested past his limits only way you survive that kind of pain if every man willing to give what the one beside him need to stay alive well when had said in hard on us talk around Camp was if our luck didn’t change we might be looking at starvation soon one day C Le called me up says y want you to go out there try your gift for hunting see what relief you can bring to us now I took that request more like an order gathered up my rifle and started out early only been gone by an hour so before I come across some fresh tracks look kind of like Bear Tracks to me now I don’t know how many yall Tred bringing down a b before let me just tell you anything a man goes through with half a heart anything a man goes to with a whole mind either if you ask me but we was desperate I was determined to show Captain Lewis that his faith in me was well placed I thinkig you since the wind was blowing in my face been doing so all morning I might to follow these tracks out the ways without that obey but knowing was coming and if I was to catch up to him we’d have to see where was what so I follow some tracks out a mile or so come over to he and there was way off in the distance now that was a slow moving giant of a bear but by that time I’d already made up my mind and folks that know will tell you once your make up his mind there ain’t nothing in this world set to change it so I found a good size tree laid out my shot and powder and I showed him a rifle I was adjusted for the long range of the shot about to pull up a little more to account for the wind been blowing in my face all morning about that time I realized the wind wasn’t blowing in my face no more mostly kind of that old B on his nose and he let how to grow Sho the tree right beside me I knew my time for thinking was done boom that first shot fell between the shoulders gr on this come charging back in me CLA and face so I du back behind start pring the whole time I make my first mistake with rle right there I was pretty sure it was going to be my last mistake with that rifle it seemed like it took me about I to get that neck shot Lord the whole time I think the B must be beating right down the back of my neck I can’t hear nothing cuz my heart is beating so fast and loud sound like Dr in my ears somehow I got that neck shot loaded I come around the tree I was pull the tricker before I even seted up boom that second try to hit him in the arm it didn’t even slow him down and I knew there wasn’t going to be a third shot so I L my rifle Ste out and smoke to the right side of the tree and I pulled my Axe and my knife and I waited for him see I waited cuz it don’t make no sense a man trying to out run a wound and Angry Bear all that’s going do get you cut up from behind way I see it my best chance maybe my only chance is to Stand My Ground and face him like a man so I waited for him said a quick prayer for my wife and family back to L I said a couple longer prayers for myself mind you then I waited boom boom about that time a do report come from my left side it turns out K Clark sent a couple boys to check on my success and I was so glad he did both shots po that old b square in the chest by that time it must have been nothing but pain and rage prob through that great big body of his that finally give out on him that’s in 10 Paces Where I Stood waiting I took a second to gather the whis thank them boys for their good timing thank them for their better shooting and we set the skin that to clean as much of that bear as we could as fast as we could because with all that smoke and Noise with all that blood see we knew the Wolves was coming and that is the last place a man wants to be when the wolves come so we packed as much meat as we could carry and headed back to Camp arrived like conquering Heroes that night we feasted like kings and the laughter that have been abent from our fires for weeks slowly returned as hard cold men began to speak more farly of home of families their dreams and that night thousands of miles away from this civilization on hard Cold Ground I slept asleep of the day dreamed of my wife and family back in Louisville praying to God please W don’t you just let me see see her face one more time these old eyes of mine before you decide to tear me out of this here World yours my name is York just y it is the name that my daddy carried before me I was born a slave no I was born to be the slave to be the property of another man and that is the shame my daddy carried before me but I have seen a world that few white men might ever dream of I have climbed to the top of snow capap mountains swarm Rivers so Swift that the Buffalo lose their foot watched whales Dan across the Cool Waters of two oceans and and I have walked among the people those Americans you call Indian have welcomed me into their land with open arms like some long lost brother and now I ask you hear of the things that I have seen so that when I am gone from here my name my voice my story does not die here with me for that is the way of the people that is the only thing of value I have left to give now the hardest part for me was always the not know him see many times before Master thought and I would go on adventures sometimes leaving home for months at a stress but always with the understanding we was coming back once we sell from New Orleans all the way around to New England took us 9 months at Sea soon as we touch ground we headed for home there’s something different about this mission of Discovery well everybody talking about where we going and what we doing ain’t nobody said a word about when we coming home and that concerned me that in the fact when nobody ever asked if I wanted to be part of the president’s grave mission of Discovery if I wanted to lay my life down for this nation cuz I was just a slave this even funny thing is you know that if I were a free man I could not have volunteered to lay my life down for the president but but since I was just a slave nobody cared to ask but once we crossed over Missouri River but for me it was like crossing over the river Jordan found myself the other side a changed man to the Indians we met many had seen or at least heard of a white man before but they ain’t never seen nobody like me start to give me names like black Indian or Big Medicine some even said that I was a gift straight from God you know I kind of like the way the Indians is thinking out there now we set our second win camp at the Manan Village called it Fort Mandan for meaga and her husband shano now I called him her husband but we all heard how this Indian girl was stole from her family when she was young how this old Frenchman shano bought her and trade from the adop Indians then decided to make her his wife and maybe that’s why we so close me and her kind she’s the only one out there know like I know what it means to be called the property of another man she was great with child give birth a little poy over the winter I sit outside the lodge waiting for him to come into the world when I hear him crying I told C clock I says C clock as long as that girl that baby with us you ain’t got to word for whatever it takes to keep him safe I am prepared to give it even if it cost me my life and it show as I’m standing here today we all best believe I kept them safe now that winner is also with metal one ey chief of the H Indians now he refused to come and visit for a long time kind of the hadashi Indians had supported the British doing that Revolutionary War I guess we all know how that turned out for him anyway they say that word of the black man finally got the old one he couldn’t take it no more had to come see what everybody been talking about so he come to the Fort demanding to see me I stood there in front of him and the first thing he did was to lick his thumb good and start to rub as hard as he could thinking he might take the black right off of man he said he was afraid it might be another trick by the white man and he had to be sure but when it didn’t come off but that’s when he start to look at me like the others like I’m somebody special and then I did what I always did with a new Chief or tribe I stripped my shirt down bare and I stood there before him with my arms out as far as I can hold them and I let two sometimes i’ let three indian warriors get up in each hand and then I pick them up till all their feet was off the ground and let me tell you something well they Ain never seen a man that powerful before said that a man like that they said that this black man right here had to be touched by God and C CLK he was quick to agree with him he say surely you ought to respect a man with that kind of power he says but if you respect this man then you must respect the white man cuz before the white man come along this York and All His Kind they were nothing but Savage animals and the white man captured him and the white man tamed him the white man made him a slave if you’re going to respect that kind of power then ain’t you got to respect the man that can take that power and make it his slave and then sometimes c l will file the air gun once or twice to get everybody’s attention back and that’s when they start to explain to him how they’re going to be part of a new tribe now called the United States how they going to have a new Chief and great father now we call the president they have this Duty protect the president’s Warriors in your lands or suffer dearly for it now I don’t know how many times I heard him tell one Chief or another tribe that story before I understood what it was they were saying what they was telling all them Indians is they going to be American not like y’all get to be American they was going to be more colored Americans and by my figuring well the kind of misery I call life ain’t got room for more souls I wish I could have made myself so ferocious I could have scared them all away or at least one but I don’t speak the languages besides who was I just y slave of Master William Clark so sometimes I just excuse myself from the lodge go out to the cold night air and you know what the little Indian children that they always follow right behind said they knew that a gift like this could stay with him forever so they want to be as close as they can until God decide to send them on his way and sometimes I’d ask God one day he might forgive this man what he couldn’t do for all the men and children but we stayed with the man Dan the GE been flying North about 3 weeks when the ice started to break on the Lakes the captain agreed it’s time for us to make our push for the Rock Mountain now the man that say any man got a hope of making them mountains need three things good supplies better horses and a man that knows the way they say the Shon Indians is the best place for all three so our mission changed before we can go to the mountain we got to find the sashon Indians we got to find the snake people for the next few weeks moving up Riv we had no contact and finally Captain Clark says maybe a small detailer then working Inland from the water have better luck so when he called the name of the three that would accompany him well my name was on that list because he knew when the step he could take that I wasn’t prepared to follow so he walked 5 days almost 75 miles by the end our boots were tore through and our feet blooded had to wait for the others to catch up when they did well Captain Lewis drew a fresh detail of in and they proceeded on few days later we got word they finally met the Shon we was to get there fast as we could on kind there was a lot of concern a lot of agitation well this many armed white men so far in the Indian country was making everybody nervous but they told him was traving with an Indian girl and a baby was s me eat some fig no self-respect the man going to go to war when not with women and children but they say the word of black man already made himself up River they all just standing around waiting to see what everybody else been talking about so when I step out the boat everybody gather around me like the others then C Lewis called Chicago over to translate with words seeing she speak the language to all that hand talking JW are so good at now that’s when we got our real surprise remember I told y’all this Indian girl was sto her family when she was young how this old Frenchman Sho bner decided to make it his wife well she say she don’t remember much about being a child all but what she do remember is her big brother his name KEH away turns out when a man be Shashi called chief he carrying that same name without even trying to we found a way to bring a family back together now I don’t know about where y’all come from but in my life whenever the change of R tear family apart ain’t nothing sort of DME going to make it right this right here was a miracle God working well he give us a good reason to celebrate at least made it easy to trade for supplies and horses kamway was so pleased he give us his best tracker an old man he say know them Ms like nobody living now the old man’s name was awful hard to pronounce c Le say is cuz civilized tongu were never meant to speak such Savage words just called the old man told me be done with it he said now I was with the Mind well I figure any man going to lead me through the mountains I’m looking at here and promise to keep me alive the other side well I figure a man like that ought to be called whatever he like to be called but nobody asked me what I was thinking and I wasn’t up for volunteer so old Toby lead us into the bitter rot before we got in good we come across the Flathead Indians now they was like all the others except maybe more so when it come to me see the Flathead Indians tell us that an Atri when a man goes off to war and he is brave when a man goes to battle and he is strong The Greatest Warrior on the field they say that’s the only man done earn the right to paint his skin black with the cold from the warfire so when you come back to the tribe everybody know without asking which man among them was The Greatest Warrior which man among them was the strongest which man was touched by God that day so the Flathead figure if God took it to mind to make a man black like that for good ain’t that got to mean he great I sure like the way him Flathead was thinking out there but we only stayed with him a short to sh cuz we had this mountain now if I was to Never See Another Mountain until the day that I die it still be about 10 days too soon for me only thing I knew about the mountain we looking at here is ain’t no way a man going to make it out the other side of life it’s going to save us a brave market for the president’s brave men of discovered and I wouldn’t the only one thinking it but we couldn’t turn back we had ourselves a mission from the president we either complete or we perish in the attempt so we pushed on to the bitter once we got in good a storm come out of nowhere dropped 10 hard inches of snow we lost our path started throwing packs and losing animals got so bad we had to put down two coats we shot them dead and we ate them whole as we were staring we were dying in those mountains finally C Clark says maybe the only chance we got to small detail and working way the other side of this mountain hard as they can gather whatever they can gather and coming back for the rest it’s only chance he said now when he called out the name the five or six men he trust to compy him on this Mission will you best believe my name was on that list because he knew when it come to his life this mission of the president ain’t nobody breathing he ever counted on more than me so we push hard against that mountain until they finally give us way in the other side and the next person they was kind enough to trade us for roots berries and sand we gathered everything we could carry and went back in for our friends now once we made it out the other side we stayed with the next first several weeks took a few days just to feel the bones and our bodies again we were that cold while we healed up we made new canoes now the Indians taught us how to fire boats out see always before if a man want a good canoe you take a tree trunk you put the axe to it and you call yourself a boat right but the envian taught us how to fight you take that trunk lay red hot Co across it and you burn away one layer at a time so when you’re done you got a boat that run smooth in the water you got a boat ain’t got no leaks you got a good craft the Indians taught us that and a lot more they kept us alive out there once we all healed up the captain say it’s time for us to make our run for the ocean we left our horses and a few supplies with the next purse on the promise of returning and we proceeded on now the next few months it was much of the same thing new Chiefs new tribes tell them about the United States and the president C CL even named a group of islands after me called him York’s eight Islands ain’t that got a nice sound to it and then one day we come down the colia and the captain start to shout Ohan oh Ohan we had made it to the Pacific Ocean 4,000 miles of high mountains and fast Rivers all that way all of that suffering and pain and we only lost one man but he was a good man his name was Sergeant Charles Floyd come with us up out of Kentucky he grew up in Louisville but his family figur the god they know and love ain’t never intend one man owning the soul of another man say they don’t want no part of the state that make it the law so he move across the river to Indiana to to free country I was with s Floyd from die I did my best to keep him comfortable I cried with him I cried for all the men might never know one true God loving soul on account of him early passing this world and all but we made it to the ocean you see so we had our own reason to be celebrating now the first order of business at Station Camp was to set our last one of Fortune and the captains put it to a vote which Sal we settle one better for hunting the other good for building and supplies and every man went around saying one way or the other what he thought it ought to be and they got to me and everybody looking at me like I’m supposed to say something here now y’all know better than I do with the law of this nation say a negro man ain’t got the right under the Constitution or under God to put his word up beside a white man C clock well C clock says it took took every man his blood and his sweat and his whole heart to get us this far on the most important mission for a nation for a president the way I see it means every man will earn the right to say where we go from here y it’s time to put up your word it’s time for you to vote so I voted right there beside all all them white men I put my word up and it counted for something and some say maybe that made me the first negro man this whole country to vot Legal beside a white man don’t know if that’s true but I know it felt good it sure felt right so we decided to settle the south side of the river and we set to build in Fort Clon now for the next few weeks I was putting my back into it some days I was holding trees as big around as my body all by myself I wanted to show all of them men how much I deserve that vote see I couldn’t leave no room for questions C Clark as I was working so hard I fatigued my body was made up a few days but I think I made my point clear once we said Camp we start making regular Journeys down to the ocean sometimes just to bring water back to boil down for salt to have something to put on that awful food we’ve been eating for 2 years and some days we sit at that water for hours y’all ever seen the whale before well have you the way move across the water so smooth you can hardly see him there they don’t bring that body all the way out and see just how great he is before he dive down and disappear all together I would sit at that water for hours watching them whs trying to see in my head where it be like if a man had that kind of Freedom if a man could run as far as he want around and nobody telling it’s time to come back or you ain’t got a right to be there just CU of the color of your skin you know I couldn’t even see it but that kind of Freedom would look like one day C clar come through he says y’ it’s about time for us to put our mind back on civilization our mission for the president’s complete our success will be going home soon now them words I’ve been waiting to hear since before we left St Louis me the only man out here away from the world got a wife and family back home able to give them up a dead by now I couldn’t wait to get home one night Cam Lewis call us all around the fire say been think about what he might tell the president of these United States about his brave men of discovery about these men that sacrific more than any Patron ought to volunteer for his Nation about these Heroes that made a president’s dream come alive and he start to call out the names one after the other like he might presented to the president and after every name that be a ho or Hollow cuz I started theid we was having ourselves a good time we was having so much fun that I don’t think anybody even knows I mean besides me maybe they just didn’t notice see after C Le finished calling out the name of those brave men sacrifice more than any Patriot volunteers Nation to we finish listing out the name of them Heroes make the president’s Dream Come Alive well my name wasn’t on that list you see and maybe that’s when come clear to me what it is C CL been saying all this time he say YK it’s time for us to put our mind back on civilization he said y it’s time for us to put our mind back on walking three steps behind and not looking a white man in the eyes when you pass y it’s time for you to put your mind back on not speaking let somebody tell you to speak it’s time for you to put your mind back in change boy cuz cuz we going to civilization cuz we going home now folk ask all the time they say if you had so good out there with the Indians they treating you like God and all then why would a man come back to living like this well I had my reasons my wife my family see a man can’t run away pretending he free if he ain’t got the ones he Lov beside him cuz that ain’t Freedom besides I figure all them children need to know what it was I seen they need to know there’s a place that this country people see you coming they don’t run you off to the corter they don’t spit in your face instead they ask you to come and to sit down right beside them they ask you to eat the food off of their plate because it means they have been touched by God I figure if I didn’t tell them they might never know that they was more than slaves so I had to come back now the truth be told I fig it’s only a matter of time us coming back to civilization me gaining my own Freedom before we left on this mission for the president Master Clark freed Ben went on and on about see as how servitude for life is against God’s Will and against the natural order of mankind I’m giving men his freedom for faithful service for Ben a good boy you been with us a while but not like me I doing Master Clock my whole life more than 30 years by his side without fail I fig after the last three years we didn’t had all he got to do is make it home and he going to make me a free man so I could not wait to come back starting back up River we was making such good time like we was walking on water if we try we get too we trade more horses for both the faster we go by the time we got back to the next person C order us trade everything we don’t need to survive he said trade it for root I don’t know if y’all ever had root before well it ain’t the best tasting thing in the world the truth is it is the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth and that said a lot after the three years out there dog and horse included but we know that R will keep a man alive all we had to do was survive this in Mountain we was going home C L he cut the buttons off his uniform and give them to me to trade all told I come back with 20 bushes of fruit we had more than any man ever want to eat his whole life and once we cleared that mountain we started back for home past sh and the the M the the Sue all the way back into civilization we got to St Louis look like a parade started up folk line the road as far as I could see and most of to give us up a dead years ago for a few days they stopped me on the street asked me about the president’s mission of discovery about the Indians we met the great things we see I went back to my duties I tried to smile and to not look a white man in the eyes when I passed him on the street but it was hard to lower my head again and finally it was time to go on home when I got to Lille I sent the word out when the word day through and all the chores was done everybody’s the around and if it take all night best be prepared to sit all night I tell them everything I can remember about the last 3 years and I told them everything now most of them they couldn’t even believe but I told them anyway and then it was time to go on to Washington report from the presid he give every man 320 Acres of good farmland for his hard work every man double duty pay in gold coin for a sacrifice every man the appreciation of an entire nation for making the president’s Dream Live I was in the slave cours waiting to be called before the president but that that call never came for long it was time to go on home Master Clock say he been promoted to General Chief Indian agent for the the entire nation I fig he deserved it he’s a good soldier like his brothers before but he said to carry out his new duties he was going to be moving his house to St Louis permanent say can’t see himself going about new service in a Strange Land without his most prized possession without his most favorite slave you’re right there beside him so I asked him I said Master Clark if we move to St Louis for good then then what about my wife what about family and he asked me he said what about him I can give you a lawful order he says not expect you to follow without question it’s time for you to be done with that wife y she said I order you to be done with that wife there are plenty of slaves in St Louis I’ll find you a new wife there now I couldn’t believe them words coming out of his mouth like that see the whole time we out there away from the world he going on and on about Miss Julia Hancock of Virginia how he can’t wait to get back to this civilization and take her hand can’t see itself growing old without the woman he loves standing right there beside him so I thought that meant he knew how a man needs somebody he can run home to when the world been standing on his back all day a shoulder that he can cry it if he got to somebody tell him long as you know somebody love you tomorrow got to be better than today I thought he knew what it was for a man to give his heart away here he tell me he ordered me to be done with my wife like she some stray dog I found on the side of the road so we packed the house Master Clock went by boat and I left the slaves and wagons overline to St Louis when we got there I come up with a plan I went to Master Clock I says Master Clark seems to me you got lots of business interest still attend to in Louisville re you need somebody you can trust to handle all that see as I took care of your business most of our life together figure I’m the right man for the job you can send me back to Louisville I’ll take care of your business and be close to my wife and family sound like a good plan he said he can see what I was getting that he wasn’t going to stand for much of that kind of talk but he allowed me back to Louis for four or five weeks to finish up his business and to sell his boat for St Louis when you return he says I expect you to be done with that wife of yours set to get back to your duties as an obedient slave in my house four or 5 weeks for a man to throw his heart away well about 5 months later he sent word to his brother I must have misunderstood his orders cuz I’ve been gone four months too long but some yall know about that when a lot of misunderstanding see sometime a man got to do what’s right by him instead of what another man tell but I knew if I didn’t sell that boat for St Louis directly that’ be the devil to pain Master CL thre before to show me what real slavery is like he said he sell Me Down New Orleans they say a man find himself a slave down New Orleans he ain’t never going to see nothing he love again the rest of his short painful life they got ways down there of crushing a man’s Soul then they grind his bones into the dirt I done seen it you don’t want to find yourself a slave down new ORS so I had to sell that boat for St Louis now before I push off my wife come down the water and see me she say the man she call M well he decided to move his house further south in the slave country she said well if you plan on selling that that boat back to St Louis well I reckon you best turn on around here y’all turn around here now okay one last long look at you why cuz the chances is he ain’t never going to lay lies on again now them few words them few words almost dead but the hardest three years of my whole life could not do almost stop my heart beating dead in this test M but I knew if I did not sell I was going to lose everything I ever loved I didn’t have a choice here slaves don’t have choices so I had to sell for St Louis but when I got home I made up my mind to see and folks to know tell you and said once you don’t make up his mind there ain’t nothing in this world set to change it so I went back to master CL said Master CL since we’ve been together our whole life more than 30 years by your side we was little boys we used to wrest together hunt fish ride horses all day long up and down the rivers when we was older well I went about my duties with respect you ain’t never have to question my loyalty to you or your kid and when you fell down I picked you up and when you were sick I made you better and if somebody was to threaten your life don’t you know that I would kill a man with my bare hands or I would lay my own life down just to see you safe and for three years me and you we stood side by side against the whole world that up there and I did get one acre good farmland for it and nobody dropped the gold cord into my pocket and President Jefferson he don’t even know my name Master CL Billy way I see it you’re the onlyest man in the whole world got the power to give me what I need most right now you can make me a free man Billy you can save my family I thought Master F going to hurt himself count of how hard he was laughing what it was I had to say he said he thought it funny me believ in any service I my whole life more than 30 years by his side was more than what a slave does for his rightful Master under God said if he was to ever see such immense surface he’d be the man to rewarded but it ain’t come yet besides he said you much too valuable piece of property for a man to just let go like that that’s what he said much too valuable a piece of property for a man to just let go if any was to ever ask me what my thoughts was of Master William Clark of the Clark family i’ been quick to say that he was honest but he was fa in the right company I would I would have called him my friend for life right there he made it clear more than 30 years almost every day of his life he ain’t never looked into this Brown face of mine and seen nothing but a slave so I fig if it’s about my value well I can do something there started to agitate doing things just enough wrong he can see it was by my choice so he knew what I was getting that it wasn’t going to stand for much but mind you I tried to smile and to not look a white man in the eyes when I pass but I couldn’t lower my head again so Master Clark had me strapped to the poster he paid a man good money to beat me until I could not see and after I healed up I tried not speaking let somebody tell me it’s my time but I couldn’t hold my tongue so Master Clock had me locked in the jail house 30 days that beat I took ain’t nothing compared to how they break you in the jail house I guess somewhere in all that M CL figure whatever broke in me wasn’t getting fixed fast enough so he decided to go on and send me home to L now I don’t know what the letter read he sent on to his brother I can’t read but I can guess figure that letter says that it’s time for y’all to know what it is to have a severe Master know how good his life have been till now what it is to be a real slave I think that’s what the letter says cuz that’s the lesson his brother said to teaching me they sold me out to man dressed me in rags threw me in the field and he St the big old bull plot across my back and for 2 years that old man tried to grind my bones into the dirt and for 2 years I ain’t heard one word from Master Clark and finally news come through his nephew he decided to go and give me my freedom only been 10 or 11 years now since we we come back on this Mission and most dayses don’t ever see Freedom especially in my age but everything I’m fighting to be a free man for is out of my hands my wife my whole family is gone and how I’m free and I’m all by myself in the world so Master PA give me a wagon some horses set me the drives business running Freight from Richmond Kentucky to Nashville Tennessee folk ask all the time what sense it make a free man ride headlong to the slave South trying to do business well I had my reasons F somewhere along them roads somebody seen or heard tell that family that’s holding my wife if this business of M was worth anything a man might have enough gold in his pocket one day to buy his hard back but there things they don’t tell you about the slave South how they got these laws that say a free man ain’t got the right associate with slaves kind he might be telling that slave what it’s like to be free they might get a mind they want some of the same business wasn’t too good I guess it didn’t make sense white man hire somebody like me it didn’t look good for the slaves to see that kind of thing going on those that did hire didn’t always pay cuz the law say negro man ain’t got the right and the Constitution or God to go into court and swear out against the white man even if his life depend on it my hores started dying I think they was being poison got so bad I had to hire myself in a hard nebor a whole year but I’m done with it now and I ain’t never going back see I know some things now I know now that I ain’t never going to see my life again except every night when I Clos my eyes she right there telling me long as you know somebody love you y’all but the M got to be better than the day but I not ready to die yet and I know now that a man can’t live like this so I come up with another plan I figure if I can make it up to the Missouri and out to Indian country things would be different somewhere out there maybe a man could walk down the road people ask him to stop a while but children ask you to throw him into the air and catch him with the strong hands cuz it means they have been touched by God maybe somewhere out there a man could live a man could die like a man and I a to find that place or I expect to perish in the attempt now before I go I was hoping maybe y’all could do me a favor if you was of the Mind way I see it one day somebody might ask you what you know of Captain Lewis and Captain Clark of the president’s Brave mission of Discovery and you could tell them you could tell them that you know a man with skin as dark as night that you know a black man who walked stride for stride who suffered pain for pain with the greatest heroes this nation might ever know you tell them that my name is your just your it is the name that my daddy came marri before me and although I was born into change you tell them that I am not now tell them that I have never been the property of another man and I ask you this so that when I am gone from here my voice this story does not die here with me but that is the way of the people sad truth is these two words they are the only things of value that I have left to give son has set my friends and now my journey must begin God’s me the S Davis ladies and gentlemen he will be speaking again tomorrow at 1:00 if you have friends or family that think e e e

The post York’s Account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Salish traditional games: lacrosse, shinney, stick game https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-m09030501tmb/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:54 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-m09030501tmb/ A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

The post Salish traditional games: lacrosse, shinney, stick game appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> ladies and gentlemen welcome to the tent of many voices this tent is part of a traveling exhibit that has been following the Lewis and Clark Trail since January of 2003 this tent along with our exhibit tent over here our scale model kbo out here our PLS Indian Tepe all have been following this Trail went through the Eastern States in 2003 in 2004 we started in St Louis came up the river to North Dakota and in 2005 we started back in North Dakota and are heading west across the trail in about the same time frame as Lewis and Clark so here we find ourselves at the Rocky Mountains the area that was an obstacle for Lewis and Clark and thinking about what Lewis and Clark did on this journey they tra traveled across lands that they knew were inhabited and some of those inhabitants they knew and some they didn’t and part of their job was to meet the Native Americans along the way that was on Jefferson’s orders meet them learn from them and find out about their lives find out about the things they do this tent of many voices is called the tent of many voices so that we can bring to you people from different walks of life different backgrounds different perspectives it is a story of Lewis and Clark all the way through but not just them it’s a story of the people they met along that their way and with that said I’d like to introduce to you our next presenters they are both members of the international traditional game society and they are part of the Salish language immersion school so at this time let’s please welcome our Salish presenters Arlene Adams and Ryan three woodcocks he fore thank everybody for coming here today we thank you for taking time out of your life to listen to what the animal spirits have to say to us I am told that as a Salish person that my knowledge comes to me from all of the elements around me and from the teachings of those elements through the tools of my ancestors from my great grandmother my great grandparents to all of the people that helped bring me here today my name is Arlene Adams my Indian name isas that means that Indian Paintbrush Thunders Sparks makes that paintbrush that’s my Indian name I come here my people were forcefully removed from this area in 1885 5 to about 1910 and so it’s with the heart of the ancestors that lay below me today that I am honored to be a part of of this Gathering to come and talk about traditional games with my sisters and my cousins Sarah and Wes will come and join us at any time we are part of an international traditional the game society that formed about 25 years ago to re Revitalize our Raw Games the hockey and the basketball and all of the different n or the games that you see in athletic sports today majority of them came from indigenous peoples and so it’s with that in mind that we continue on that we started this society and on every reservation and every place in the United States States will look at the revitalization of native games as well we’re we are um with the Salish revitalization of our Salish language we have a school that is three years old our we started out with eight students in the preschool age and now they are going into the second grade and it’s all Salish immersion we have six on staff we are hoping to to add 10 more staff members this year and 35 more students as of yesterday we had 30 students and so it is our great hope in the revitalization of all of our tools and all of our knowledge that these things will come about for us and it’s very unfortunate that our history tells us and gives us what we have today but it sure certainly didn’t um wipe us off like the tent was and so we’re happy that today our ancestors are still looking at us and still hoping for the best for us that’s what we pray for and we go out and we ask every day the elements out there to help us when we go out and We Gather our sticks everything that that we do as teachers we do as hunters and gatherers is it’s really hard to have as a teacher you have a set budget to buy your your tools with $100 doesn’t do it per year and so we we do our best to find any item that we’re going to utilize within that curriculum when our Salish people were given creation stories it’s a misnomer that were called flatheads and someday that will become that will come off of everything everything that’s attached to Salish and cutney and Ponderay people but that within that frame of being Flathead it really helped me to understand my identity as Salish and how the misnomer can just go around me I’m not a Flathead Indian and I’m proud to be a Salish Indian and I’m proud that in our creation stories coyote came about and he did a lot of things for us for the coming of you the way that we’re told that these creation stories I can’t tell you any of them right now when that snow comes and when those Spirits say that it’s okay then that’s when those stories come out and so I we weave around those misnomers we go in and out of our culture to understand who you are so that someday we’ll all understand who each other are and we come here with the spirit of our ancestors the spirit of all of the the tools that they give us they give us buckin balls they give us the hair that creates the the ball inside of here comes from the animal hair that hair I am told your hair is an extension of your mind it’s something that you’re only given an opportunity to have once in your life and so you take care of that hair and when we take care of our animals we take care of all of his body all of of everything that he has on him and so when we scrape that hair off we dry them and we use them for our buck skin balls the Rawhide and all of his animals are used to stretch onto the the drums um onto any kind of Rawhide tool that we’re going to make anytime we go out and just take a stick from the hills you’re always told to leave some kind of offering so that we’ll always be there for our kids we’ll always be there for us to go and have we’ve been sitting out here for 4 days teaching kids the kids in Hamilton are wonderful they’re very very wonderful kids that just want to learn and want to understand that that relationship between non-indian and Indian and it helped me to understand you guys are all sitting on our homeland and I said well someday you know maybe we’ll come back here and we’ll have a school here and we’ll be able to share this a lot of the kids wanted to know how come we didn’t have a sailor school here why weren’t there any Indians here and a lot of really ironic questions that if you have and that this you know our big Society picture of getting along and using our diverse culture and educations then it’s up to each one of you and each one of us in this Valley to help each other to help our kids understand why the non- Indians and the Indians don’t get along and so I I challenged that little girl I said go go out and ask your your postmaster go ask the store clerk go ask anybody that lives in your town why that why that isn’t because the schools evidently aren’t teaching that and so when we when we go out look at those raw tools we look at the arms and the elements of our trees all of the the elements out there we’re told are there for us are told that when you take something you put something back and with that in mind I would like Ryan Woodcock to introduce him himself we are our families are from here originally our Aboriginal territory is so vast um we were told that you know from as far as we can see all around us and then we got shoved onto this little piece of land and so the bones of my ancestors my direct descendants of Chief Charlo and his Bunch are from this area his granddaughter I would like for her to come up and explain too when when when um Ryan speaks after he speaks to talk a little bit about about them and what brought them into this Society or the traditional games movement so to speak Ryan hello my name is Ryan Woodcock my Indian name Isa and I’m honored to be here today and speak in front of you all I know I’m much younger probably than most of you so just happy to be here and I’ve been playing lacrosse since I was in fifth grade and been teaching lacrosse all my life since then to whoever I go and share the game with it’s a game that’s close to my heart that I was given and where I was shown when I was growing up to live you know in a in Denver Colorado is where I was raised so so many things have been shown to me coming back here and realizing who my family is and meeting them and speaking and listening and being with them so I’m just so happy to be here with that said uh these are our games um these games um are for our mind our body our spirit and our emotions um it’s how the games are are played and um young age simpler and going on through uh through adulthood this is shinny here um shinny Hit The Shins too much so but uh this modern day hockey um stems from this game um double ball pick up this here these basically have sand inside of here in balloons nowadays but uh traditionally uh a woman’s game so I shouldn’t be playing this but yeah so have two post on each side you know fuel’s range uh can be half mile 500 yards you know to modern day of 80 yards or less than that so um but all the games are are played for other reasons than just physical aspects there you know to make us strong y yot make us strong inside and make us grow and become older and and become young men that’s what lacrosse is it’s a young man’s game to grow into war um to become strong and uh and to use your mind in everything you do so um with that said these these are some other uh introducers and um we need to hook them up to the mics you have one go ahead this is Sarah wall it’s a good day good day to see you all of you here today she said I’m Sarah wall um I’m direct descendant of Chief Charlo um I guess my first involvement with games was in high school I went to the tribally Run alternative school in Pablo it’s called twel River School we’d have shinny tournaments the first game he showed you that was my introduction into traditional games up until that point I wasn’t I was aware of games played lacrosse mostly I guess I learned more as I went along I’m lucky enough to have a mother that’s really involved in a lot of our tribal aspects and teaching a lot of things she has tour guides and one of the things I love about teaching games is to work with children you know to start start with the young ones and you know talk about us and the way are the way our lives are as Arlene said so there’s more understanding you know breaking stereotypes is a big part of what we do and uh I know I just I’ve it’s it’s very dear to my heart these games as well just to hang on to our Traditions our culture in any way possible as long with uh teaching more children as we go we have uh during Native American Awareness Week up at the people Center in Pablo we teach games all week long to all the schools on the reservation and some schools off the reservation and uh I it’s like what what I Norm normally teach would be double ball and shinny stick some hoop and dart as well uh I saw let my partner introduce himself as well hello my name is Wesley Michael Pierre sapet I’m originally from here this is where my family comes from and um I teach native games as well usually how to make the stick and ring games for children um there’s a lot of history behind each one of these games mainly for endurance and self-discipline and a lot of other things as well and if Sarah wants to continue with the aspects of the history of these traditional games I’ll I’ll just help her out thank you okay I noticed that we explain they started explaining some of the games and uh we could go just a little further into detail uh with these games I guess we could start out with double ball as you saw like he said traditionally originally uh The Story Goes that this was originally a black feet women’s game that was played amongst women when we’re teaching children we don’t you know we don’t pass that information on that way boys don’t mind playing it the whole game uh is uh you can’t can never touch the double ball with your hands everything must be done with a stick passing picking it up throwing stealing scoring all the above has to be done with the stick uh self-control is always a huge part with these games because a lot of times they would play games rather than go to war like have a have a huge shiny tournament like he said they could be miles long with tribe against tribe and the thing was is somebody on the opposing team whacked you with a stick you couldn’t turn around and whack them back because you know it could start a war between your people so self-control was always the really major part of what they were teaching with them focus and of course endurance and strength these shinys sticks they’re made out of Cedar usually young Cedar like when they grows out of the ground the bottom part of the roots under the ground it curves like that so when you go out to gather shinys sticks you un cover a little bit of the bottom of the root and you cut them down so they have a curve like this it’s not always Cedar sometimes they do use uh Willow as well um but they are really hard sticks I mean it’s it’s pretty major that one of the first years my daughter played she came home with a Shiner like you wouldn’t believe she got nailed right in the face you know six-year-olds with cedar sticks I don’t know it’s a little crazy but you do hear a lot of things people are you know worried about letting their children play these games because they can get a little rough but strength was part of you know growing up Indian you had to be strong life was good but life was tough but um I a lot yeah these are the shin shinny sticks these are the ones of see Peter they start out with at the bottom with the root and like I said uh hockey comes from this like if you’ve ever seen a game of floor hockey it’s a lot of like originally there were really not any rules to shinny other than scoring getting the ball through the goal I mean but uh you know nobody went out of their way to crack somebody in the head or anything but there really were you know no rules like I said they could have 80 against 30 depending on the size of the tribe it didn’t it was never evenly matched or you know and it could go on for hours for a full day people could play on these three mile Fields you know to decide something between two tribes and uh okay but yeah it’s played a lot like field hockey nowadays when we teach you know we tell kids no high sticking and whatnot so we don’t get little girls with shiners and and uh it’s we do play on a lot smaller Fields a lot of times when we play Maybe It’s you know 50 yards with younger kids okay and that’s shinny um double ball oh I didn’t explain okay scoring with shiny is just through the goals you have your two goals as long as it goes through you know you get a point for it uh double ball the scoring is a little different the way they set them up the goal post on each send would be with two tripods with a Tepe pole Laying across the top of them so the goal is usually probably about 8 feet n feet up in the air and with double ball when you throw when you score if it goes over the top of the goal that’s worth one point if you can hang it on the Center pole that’s worth two points if you can hang it up in a tripod it’s worth three points but what with a double ball the game doesn’t stop somebody scores somebody else just throws the ball back in and the game just keeps rolling as long as like I said it’s only touched with the sticks you can’t use your feet to step on it or you know use your hands and it’s it’s a really fun game double ball is definitely one of my favorite games okay and as as well as those we have uh hoop and dart which is a a younger child game that’s the hoop he’s holding there uh the hoop we have is got it’s it’s metal on the inside this one’s probably as well and it’s this woven and it’s this um woven maybe you could call like a spider web or maybe more commonly known like a dream catcher and uh the way it’s it’s done is it you say line up your children on either side and the reason it’s done with little kids is it’s for for being able to aim you know more self-control of course and like uh the hoop is represented of of say a grouse or a you know a small rabbit and it’s rolled pretty well here let’s see I’ll give you a good roll on that one and the way it’s scored your Dart must stick in there if it doesn’t stick it doesn’t count if it goes through it doesn’t count if it sticks and falls out it doesn’t count but yeah okay I almost ran him over there but but yeah okay it was oh yeah okay we have some smaller Hoops as well but let’s say okay okay if this was our playing field we’d have kids on either side they’re not allowed to step the line you roll it down and uh they have to throw it it can’t just be jabbed in there because everyone knows little rabbit’s not going to stay there and just let you jab it with a stick or a dart for that matter yeah there there it is self-control again once again and patience is very important when we’re teaching this game we tell kids okay Whoever has the most points the prize you win is is you go home and feed your family that’s the winning RIS with this one and uh okay what else do we have up here we did bring a a stick game set oh we’ll show you stick and ring real quick that’s one of the favorites with little kid well with anybody depending on the length of the ho the string or the size of your hoop the game gets harder that one looks like a tough game if you ask me and it is all about hand eye coordination pretty much and once again patience and self-control oh good job all right and it is a tough game I’ve been teaching that game and Mak that game forever and my record’s six in a row so it’s it’s a hard game when we were teaching Great Falls recently with the guy that was announcing it was teas and he’s like you go back there and see Sarah she’s really good she can get a hundred in a row with her left eye hand over her right eye and I was back oh no no okay um we also have stick game up here as well stick game um there’s a lot of different stories that uh about how this originated the one I know comes from the Kalispel Indians they’re cousins of ours they’re also speak a part of the Salish dialect they will live over towards at Washington Idaho now but the story as we know it goes there was a young girl who was supposed to marry an older man you know they set it up that way so this girl would be taken care of this man was already you know proven could hunt provide for his family so they set their daughter up with him but she was in love with a young man of course right so they’re they’re unhappy at the situation so the Young man and the and the girl they run away they run away we’re in love we’re out of here you know they took off they’re gone for a few days and I started realizing you know we can’t live like this we need our people we can’t survive without our people so they decided to go back you know because they knew like you have to have your people the way life was you needed people with you you had to survive as a group as a tribe so they go back and they go talk to one of the wise men maybe a couple of them you know and they hold Council what are we going to do about this these people are in love but she’s supposed to marry this man her parents want her to marry this man and what they came up with was this game it’s called stick game it is a guessing game it’s these are bones what they call them originally they’re made out of like the front legs of deer bones the very bottom down by the hoof and uh they represent a male and female female is the clear bone this is the male bone with the stripe and in the game it’s all a game of guessing somebody else on the other team is going to be hiding them and you want to catch the female that’s what you want to do you catch the female you get the the bones if you get the male bone that’s how the opposing side gets sticks like if I was to guess him here I’ll try to match him real quick okay this is my honey let’s see if I know him huh and I know him that’s my man okay but if I would have missed him he I would have had to give up a stick that’s how you score if you if you accidentally pick the mail bone you have to give over a stick the game’s played till all the sticks are one and that was the deciding factor he was looking for the female you always want to catch the female bone and that’s that was what they were doing okay and whoever had the most sticks won the girl in the end but that’s how stick game originated as far as I know the story and nowadays it’s play it could be huge now they play it at almost every pow you go to you’ll see stick game playing and they even have tournaments set up you know $20,000 grand prize stick game sets and you play with your team you know five people on each team it’s fun to watch you get people that have played against each other for decades you know two old men that have sat across the side from each other for decades and just keep faking each other out all the time they think they know some way you know it’s a lot of fun if you’re ever there go you know check it out go you can always bet there’s always betting going on Pardon Me Oh this the striped bone is the male and the clear bone is the female um we might even but I do we think we have enough time play a short game maybe yeah would you guys like to try to play a short game we split everybody up real quick or a few of you if you want to try it’s it’s a fun game no yeah no sure yeah all right well let’s try it out how about if we turn some of these chairs this way this will be our center of our field and let’s face each other coming in this way and we’ll play real quick okay I’ll give you a really fast really fast rundown down on rules and I’ll explain more as we go if we have any questions okay and as well there as well as it goes along with this game a lot of times they have people with hand drums and they have their own stick game songs so while they’re hiding the bones they got their people singing their good luck songs you know their good their good hiding songs it’ll be fun trust me it’ll be fun even if if even if it isn’t equal like I said sometimes it’s tribe against tribe you never know could be outnumbered okay real fast on this with the bone okay the first the first stick they go for is the kick stick this is the advantage stick basically okay you want the advantage you want to have one extra stick it’s the first stick that you play for okay and you get they get a set of Bones you decide you decide who’s going to point then you’re going to decide who gets to guess first on him he’s going to be hiding or under your shirt wherever you want to hide him at so they can’t be seen the pointer is like the captain of the team they’re always in control of who’s going to point they can pick somebody else to point and it can be really specific like they say all right I’m going to have my friend Joe point but he’s only going to point for Ed and I’m going to point for Sally or you know right okay so and this first thing they’re playing for the kick stick okay so you want to try to catch to the female bone you can match much want like I did I brought my BS out not until you ready to make sure you they know have to say that way that’s a legal point right cuz when you’re playing the game you’ll see people out there doing this and doing this just trying to fake you out you to show you what what you got you know but the thing is you have to St Hood make it legal anybody want to hide okay you’re going to be pointer on the side and you could be pointer on his side are you going to poin on his side okay you po expain the points okay points just your regular left right okay this is outside like if two like if you two both had bones uhhuh and if this if someone pointed you this way that would mean your two outside hands would be the open that’s what they’re going for this is down the middle that would mean your two inside hands that’s if both bones are on one side right now we’re just on either side like this or like that okay say at the moment of calling when you say h that makes sure that they know that that’s an actual call because sometimes you’re trying to fake them out to get them to show oh before they say the word unless you say hook and then no for sure that that’s the call never show until you hear him say and you’re looking for the female you want the female okay you can point him first he’s hiding decide which way it goes and you both get turn to try for this the kick stick so I can’t point oh we can match them if you want if you want to open like that can match them open them up he got see if if they’re if they’re laying the same way as yours when you first start you’re going to we’re going to try to get the bones yeah you want you want his you want to take his bones so just open up and say h and see if they’re on the same side then you get them now you have to open you have to open oh it’s a miss you Miss so now he’s got to try to match you and we’re going and if he matches you then he gets that stick but if he misses then you get another chance to get the stick the advantage stick then in order for her to open oh do it do this three times just straight across and the game starts she gets a b now she gets both sets of the both can everybody hear me pretty good without this okay want you use the mic fix up for the camera oh okay I’m sorry about that now you decide who else you want to hide the bones does it work across so um actually now that they’re hiding the bones now they’re hiding bones now that now that they’re hiding the bones one of us over here is going to be picking to try and get the bones back because we need okay so that’s where you push pick like both outsides or both insides or we want to we want to get both sets of Bones back so we can start winning some of their cuz right now they can start winning ours and we don’t want them to have them how can we win yours if you don’t have these things anytime if you miss we get a how do we get it back we wait till they hide and then some in order to get the bones back yet they have to catch the female Bon if they catch the female they have to give up the bones just one only the one they catch but if they catch them both at the same time or down the middle since there’s two of them would be on the yeah wow I’ll call one okay I’ll do you first uh oh missed one that’s one B see he got the mail on that one so we have to give up a stick on this side that was easy the you hide your B okay now I’m her now it’s your turn and you can go ahead and call call her do I have to say who yes you do I’m not going to open my hand if you don’t you got a point which hand you want oh and you got her so she gives up her bones no you keep yours cuz he missed you but she’s got to give up hers and she’s still going they still have opportunity to win sticks as long as she’s got bones when do we get the gift when they get both the bones back over here you hold them out so okay is that it oh just hook so we give up another stick we give up the bon no you keep the bones give up another stick come on let’s hear it for team okay like power they would have singers on their side hand drum singers while they’re hiding they’re singing up a storm on that side oh so exciting and there’s people making bets at all times too too they’re betting on one call maybe they stand there I got five bucks on this next call anybody going to match me on it you know so now is it still yeah they’re still trying to get her bones oh that time yeah all right so now it’s this turn this team’s turn to make some SS so who side do you want I want okay so why don’t you you do the they have over there can decide who’s going to point out oh you two which one oh got one both his hands cuz he he pointed that direction for his left hand oh left there’s still one more to catch he got to be able to catch so so we didn’t get a sticker there no the only point one at a time have Point him that was good do it again or they can either match or just individually yeah you can either match them or you can want a point or yeah well you have only one set now don’t yeah we got one oh he has so you you can either turn them and match him or you can have somebody call you want to match why don’t you call I can I call a how do I you just I want to match you guys well you only got one guy left I want to match the two of them oh you’re going to mat well you need the bones to be able to match them well he has them if you’re okay well you’re the the captain who decide who keeps the bones and has them if you want to match them you have to have the bones in your hand oh so you have to point either okay what you want who then I turn them up y okay so now’s your chance to win sticks again these guys get a mail bone then you guys win the sticks on there one of you one of them holds him out you want to call and you want to call okay okay do they do them at the same time I I indicate right I indicate that’s down the middle that’s both their inside hands all right okay show your left hand and your right hand yeah got one missed one so you hand over your bon sir and you hand over a stick on this side yay these guys are the he why he get B because he caught it he did catch the female so they get the B but they have no but they don’t get a chance to make sticks till they get both BS on their side you still have them she still has them oh Mr G oh hey team one to go someone else I’m cursed no they’re out aren’t they out no no we just and we still we still play for those ones as well even once you get all of ours you got to get all of yours too oh my goodness we won’t have time to play that long of game we’ll play a few little bit more okay now do chance to make back some sticks this will be our last side hide on want okay you yeah you go you just take one person okay you finally got so it’s your turn now to call I money on oh that’s one set we still have 10 still got him on this one still yeah still got to catch him okay who that left or right is that left or right you got the stri he got your right so we coming back come back the Home Run s we still have any you still got to catch him he’s still going you’re good L now we can start getting sticks if we now you can start getting sticks we got about two more minutes to play the game then we got to do some Q&A but you want do your no they have to call they have to call they’re picking you guys again your chance to win sticks oh he got them so you those bones back over c those ones I got these you what is oh it’s you’re doing it yeah yeah so you got to good job guys want try to get a couple more sticks got about a minute okay got okay you decide who’s point and who’s hid so thank you guys for coming and listening and talking to us today and we asked that help y went down both I missed them both I thought they had a mess I’m sorry I thought that was good cuz they mess no I thought you said got both his stripes yeah we got both his stripes oh so no so the sticks go this way and the bones stay on I like the way he plays be okay so the bow stay on this side yeah okay alth although if you were playing with the hardcore if you throw over your bones whether you’re supposed to or not you get them back well so they’d be ours right right if they would to gave him up like that you guys would have kept all right so now it’s okay one last time and we’ll wrap her up who wants to do it Miss are you guessing at the same time cuz you can guess them both at the same time now do what you could get you can guess them both at the same time but he’s still up and rning one more chance was at the same time okay well there was ack thank you ladies and Gentlemen let’s give him a big hand wasn’t that fun and we’ll be glad to take some questions now if some of you have questions about the traditional games from any of our presenters so if you would raise your hand and we’ll come around with the microphone so you can ask your questions that’s great all right also to let you know the traditional games out on the other side of the BLM tent in the grass today so be sure you go out and check in with them and you’ll get to play some of these wonderful traditional games as well was there a question back here right here is there a kid kind of kids game is there a kids game we have all kinds of kids games did you just get here y you come on over to where we’re at and we’ll we’ll play some games with you okay for a real quick kids game there’s one that’s called a run and scream game it’s about endurance and that’s the game is exactly what it sounds like you get a bunch of kids out there you tell them scream and start running and whoever can scream and run for the at the same time for the longest distance that’s who wins that round it’s about endurance yeah yeah as yeah we did as a matter of fact this year at Great Falls we had about a week long of traditional games and it was an invite of anyone International is it’s International traditional games we had people out of Canada people coming from all over for horse games as well as just our field games and it was yeah we do have inter triable games with each other it’s fun uh the society is about is about 3 years old now four years old 25 years old 25 years old okay that’s my bad totally I’ve been involved for about two years if my mom was here she’d smack me when we first started e Montana now we’re headquartered at a great BS but every tribe has their own traditional game Society at our at home on the flat at Salish coutney um we’ve been at it for about 15 years but they came into the society in the last five years and so all of our students that we had as kids are all starting to teach now so that’s how good it is and the international games at Great Falls were just like last month and they were awesome how many different tries how many different tribes do you know how many participated Montana yeah we all the all the reservations were represented out of Montana for sure I know spoke to somebody from Wyoming and a few people out of Canada out of Alberta and whatnot it was an amazing Gathering it was on television it was really fantastic yeah the horse the horse the horse games were broadcasted nationally as a matter of fact traditional horse games I missed them I was working I was teaching games do we have any more questions for our presenters of the traditional tribal games yes ma’am Which tribes are you three representing or four yeah I we’re all Salish bit Salish we’re all from let’s give them all a big hand thank you very much it was our pleasure having you here to talk about traditional games please come back and join

The post Salish traditional games: lacrosse, shinney, stick game appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Mary Jane Charlo on Salish Animals and Culture https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-m09010506teg/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:50 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/tent-voices/tent-of-many-voices-m09010506teg/ A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

The post Mary Jane Charlo on Salish Animals and Culture appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> go we’ve been traveling since January of 2003 started in monachello and so we’ve made it here to Hamilton and uh it’s been a great reception here so far so thank you very much lots to do and see we have our exhibit tent over here replicas of the keelboat The Dugout and the proges um we are joined by our federal Partners the Bureau of Land Management with their little white tent uh the US forest service over there um the National Guard back behind us with their camouflage tent hope you can find that so anyway um please walk around and take it all in and enjoy yourselves and enjoy the fair the tent of many voices this tent was a place designed to uh bring in different people of professional backgrounds and cultures to share with us their knowledge and wisdom as it relates directly and sometimes indirectly with the lwis and Clark and Expedition and so for this hour I’d like to welcome Mary Jane Charlo uh she is the native Adventures manager and member of the um Salish cut tribe and so I’m going to let her tell you more about um the native Adventures program and she’s going to be talking about Lewis and Clark animals so let’s welcome Mary Jane to our stage good afternoon um I work at the people Center I don’t know if you know what that is it’s the cultural visitors center for the Confederate Salish and cutney tribes on the Flathead reservation which is north of Missoula uh Native Adventures is a tourism program for the tribes and that’s what I do I schedule tours tours and set up trips for group large groups and small groups and it’s pretty much wide open depending on on the person on what they want to do and how long they want to stay what I’m going to do today is Give the names and Salish of these animals hi Mary give the names of the animals in Salish and then do the sign language for them okay I’ve been I’ve been learning the sign language for about three four years since I finished a class with Johnny AR Le one of our cultural uh teachers up on the reservation I took a cultural leadership class with him for two years it was a two-year class and it was teaching the about the culture and the history through language okay through the Salish language one of the ways that he taught us the language and different words and how how to speak and stuff I’m not fluent by any means one of the ways was he talked sign language while he spoke the Salish so you were able to comprehend more what he was saying without the English kind of like being in Stuck in the Middle there um so that’s where I started learning about the animals my granddaughter who was who’s 11 years old we just finished doing the explore the Big Sky and Great Falls and she worked with me for 5 days straight 7 hours a day doing this okay she was supposed to come today but her cousin from Minnesota showed up she hadn’t seen her cousin all summer and it was her cousin’s birthday today so she ditched out on me so I’ll do this by myself okay so we’ll just start from this end oh let’s get this one down here I don’t have all of the puppets and I don’t have all of the sign language for them but most of them I do when you’re speaking sign language all of the sign hi R hey there’s my cousin there’s like all the sign language takes part right in between your waist and your neck this is the hand that is kind of like your base you use it for measuring and you use it for this hand to do the action on you know so right in between here and here unless it’s something specifically where you would use like today like that or this afternoon so like this hand you you’d use this hand on it going like evening and morning like this okay so I’ll start with the signs here okay this one is the black bear and flamp Cat and okay the sign for that black bear is his little round ears that’s what it is okay that and here we have a little black bear right okay the sign for that one is little black bear okay this M mahuya what is it yeah some participation here okay the sign for raccoon I take my I could see better if I put this over my glasses this is a mahuya his banded eyes and what do you think it is for little mahuya right little mahuya okay this one is the grizzly bearin we have a sound in our language that comes from your throat it’s written as an X in the international alphabet can you it’s just expelling air from your throat okay the sign for the grizzly bear is two signs it could be this one because they Mark the territory scratching trees or this so some okay this one okay this one is the one I have a hard time remembering all of them okay we don’t have the adult deer the Bucks and we don’t have the adult do we have the little deer so that just starts me out on on the black tail or the mule deer the the buck is pu pu for a mu there okay um how many of you hunt okay you know the difference between a mule deer and a white tail okay mule deer’s horns spread out they spread so this is a sign for the for the male black tail pu pu the male white tail got that X in there again A W sound is the white tail curved forward okay the black tailed D is St big ears the white tail D is because when they turn around they run they’re flagging their tail a danger okay the elk we don’t have an elk but the bull elk is tet and that’s just like a big like this tett and the cow SN well easy to remember okay don’t have the sign language for this but everybody knows what this is anyways this is um St everybody knows what this one is this one has all of our animals and all of um all of our animals you all have stories for all of them and in our creation stories animals came before people people which is when I was working with a lot of kids and and I always like to tell them our creation stories parallel with angl Christian Christianity you know animals came first right okay and people always say trying to say well leis and Clark followed old Indian Trails you know our elders say well actually they were animal Trails the animals knew the quickest and easiest routes to get somewhere you know they didn’t go over the highest mountain and all the way down the deepest valleys you know they were smarter than that so actually Le and Clark followed animal trails and this this little uh animal here has human traits you know like when somebody is nervous and they start to fidget you know their their foot’s going or or the they cut are going like this like this okay same thing this one does too when it starts fidgeting I think you’ve been there too long when you notice that when his little feet start going up and down that’s when you know you should have been gone okay everybody knows a sign for this Quai what’s the sign for this tatonka yeah I got it back there Tatanka remember universal sign with Indians tatonka okay this one here is what a horse good you’re so smart okay this one is a hard onea Sasa okay sign for that very easy you got this hand to do the movement on this is the horse that and I have a story about this one I don’t know what the sign language is for the name for this one is quick J okay okay the story with this little animal is that there was a young man who was considered slow you know like this story teaches people about every little thing every person no matter how seemingly unimportant has a place and a reason to be there so the story about this little animal starts with the young man who was considered slow you know he couldn’t keep up with the rest of the young men and he couldn’t run and play with them hunt ride horses or whatever and so he was always left behind and he spent a lot of time alone so one day while he was out alone and he kind of wandered back and he found realized everybody in the camp had left all the camps were gone and he he had no idea where they went you know and then he could hear some someone crying like sobbing and someone was crying like they their heart was broken he wandered down through the trees and there was this teepee he went inside the teepee and he peaked in the door and what he seen looked like with the back to him was like an old woman and she was crying her heart out and he asked her grandmother why are you crying you know and he asked her is there something I can do for you and she says my children they’re gone she said I I I kept them in a in our house in the chief’s pillow you know and so they’re all gone and he says well we can follow them you know it’s easy to follow them we’ll follow the trail and the old lady wanted him just to go get the children so he took off he followed the trail and as he walked along you know they could pretty easy follow because of travo and dragging the PO horses Footprints all kinds of different ways to follow the the trail and when he found them it was getting towards night time and it was getting dark and he found the chief’s teepee and he went into it you know cuz remember like he wasn’t like right on the ball with everything so this is something you don’t do if the door’s closed you know you don’t just walk into a teepee if there’s a door closed on there it means that you know you it’s it’s private or you know you’re supposed to let him know you’re there so he opened the door and he walked in and he was standing over there looking at the Chief and the chief was laying there he was sleeping the chief you know you wake when you when someone’s looking at you especially if you’re sleeping you’re going to wake up you know and he he woke up and he looked at this young man who was standing there over looking over him and he’s going uh what do you want and the young man said uh can I dig in your pillow and the chief goes well sure go ahead there’s nothing in there and so the young man dug inside the pillow and he found the babies and they were in like a little nest and he started leaving the chief asked did you find what you want he goes yes I did and he went all the way back and he found the the grandmother and he told her grandmother I found your children and she was so happy you know and she had tears coming down she was so joyful and he goes here they are he goes I don’t know if they’re all there because I didn’t know how many you had you know and she’s so happy and she counts the mom goes they’re all here and she said for this I’ll give you a a a great reward you know and what she told him what she gave him uh the gift that she gave him gave him a great ability all the young men whenever he went out on raiding party Hunting Party or whatever wanted to go with him they wanted to accompany him when the reason for that was the little mouse gave him the power to go in places and not be seen and to leave the same way so that’s the one of the story about the mouse do you like it okay everybody is all just really listening okay okay this one is messed up okay my what big teeth you have okay what is it okay it’s a wolf okay this is easy and seen andsen when you say the word cats the on the end cat okay anden that’s the sound that’s in in this word and seen is the wolf okay let me think I remember the oh yeah okay this is a sign for Wolf okay you change it slightly to it changes to Hunter all right okay and this is the wolf’s little brother coyote okay we call him Cula Cula to us is a real important person in in our cultural in our like histor histor historical stories our creation stories and everything you um and the beginning create I can’t tell coyote stories because we’re not supposed to tell them in the summer months until after the first snowfall and stop talking about him after the first Thunder but um in our creation stories uh long time before people were even here um there were spirits you know and people might think of them as U uh God or or whatever you know but there were Spirits out there and they created animals and the and God we call God or kultin or whatever people call everybody every culture has a name for God all right but cre the spirits um decided that they were going to have people so they created the animals first and they told these animals we’re creating you and we’re putting you on Earth because man is coming and he’s going to be born naked and he’s not going to know anything he’s not going to take care of himself and he’s not going to know anything so you’re going to be put on the earth to help him okay how do these animals help us all right everybody always heard stories about people going out seeking vision you know fasting and praying for 4 days or however days you know and and they get a vision and some people says it’s delirium you know and whatever you know but you know I believe in my tradition traditional ways and I believe you know we had our ways way before you know all of a lot of other things came along and I I believe in him and one of the one of the ways this Al also will teach you about something else that we do drumming and singing okay dancing and drumming and singing are very important in our culture you know we still carry that on today in pow all right we dance and we sing like how one question I like to ask to ask kids is um how many of you read the Bible okay how many of you have read the Bible okay quite a few okay I read the Bible I was uh on fireborn Christian door door evangelism at one time um I don’t do it anymore but um in the Old Testament it talked about David dancing before the Lord he’s dancing before the Lord naked you know what was he doing he was praising God wasn’t he okay you can draw that similarity with our dancing and our singing okay those songs were given to us by Spirits when somebody gets a song you know like you thinking of and they go seek a vision they seek counsel and they’re given a song song song makers and singers are very special that’s communicating between this world and that world okay people say we got a song of who’s your helper okay a number of animals could be the helper they received a song their helper could be from the wind or from the I have a very close friend her her song comes from the sound of melting ice you know water so there’s a lot of different things you know so with this uh little animal in the beginning of creation he was known as trickster he’s very important and who is he you know when you think about it and the the analogies drawn you know he’s us he’s he’s the foolish person who’s always done the things that he wish he didn’t do you know you know that’s that’s who this guy is and other times he’s so smart you know and he is cunning most the time it doesn’t end up in a good way because that’s who he is you know but that’s just an explanation of songs and animals trying to draw that kind of give you an idea about singing and dancing and connection between animals all animals have different traits for instance like this your animal here spell turtle okay I have a daughter that just really loves Turtles she’s 22 years old on her dance outfit she has all kinds of different little turtles that she’s received during the years on her belt I made her a turtle bag and in the middle of it it has a heart and I I told her the reason I made her that bag is because this animal stands for wisdom longevity and strength okay no matter what happens you know you heard about race between the hair and the turtle you know you just keep trying and you don’t give up okay and so on that bag on her back was that turtle and there was a heart on there because a turtle has a very strong heart you can try to kill it and they say his heart will just keep beating and beating and beating and also like because I love her I’ve also put a heart on it so there’s a lot of different reasons you know people make things for like their relatives or someone they care for and you’ll see goes oh that looks kind of crazy I wonder what that is for you know but there’s usually a good reason for it so this is SP and the sign for him is this then his little head coming in and up right and for some reason I can’t remember the name for snake but this is a an simple that need there’s something else too like with sign language if you want to ask a question is simply depending on the circumstances for instance if I was sitting in this chair Mary and I were sitting in this chair and we knew everybody that was in the room somebody walks in that’s a stranger you know and we see that person walk in together and I might go like this to her that means so what who who is it you know or if you’re buying something this is like talking for buying okay if you’re buying something and you really like it and you go quinch how much see so this is always the question or you might you might see somebody you as a you know I might see you walk in and get happy to see you but you’re over there and I go you know and go how are you you go good that okay this one here scal scal L scal what is it okay he’s got little teeth okay we know what that is okay sign language for that put your hand out okay why right he’s when he gets alarmed he slaps the water with his tail Dives they all dive down underwater to go into the into the house okay this is a frog I just learned this one I didn’t know the name of this was a very good sign for this one this has a sound in it called bardel okay put your tongue behind your front teeth and blow air out the sides kids can do it easy if you tell them go they they can do it pretty okay so this one is slam SL SL SL slam SL slam SL frog okay sign language for frog that’s easy it’s good okay and this sne sne real easy one this big eyes okay this is an interesting sign with this one this is not very easy to say man’s best friend okay a long time ago our dogs man’s best friend I don’t think we’re that loyal because they were wolves they were kind of like tamed they hung around you fed them you know and the dogs are called and Q sound comes out of your throat and kosam okay that was D dog sign for dog the Travoy used to tie on to the dog before we had horses so that’s sign for dog we were really glad to get horses you know you P put all your packed your stuff on one of these and he got to smell up his nose that he want to investigate he was gone so we were really glad to get horses okay this one here Mountain line okay this one here that’s a little one okay little te me out okay what’s the sign for Mountain line like a cat nose okay you make the cat nose and then the eye is watching because he’s always watching okay and we don’t have a bobcat but the B sign for Bobcat is also the same sign for house cat just push your nose up a little bit on the end that’s Bobcat or house cat all right this that’s a hard one it has that s with the X sound and a K on the end okay we all know what that is right it’s not a reindeer okay okay so moose okay sign for moose okay what else I think I’ve gone through my stuff okay are the oh this doesn’t have anything to do with my side language but here are posters um Tony and CA asked me to work with the Lewis and Clark commission and Clinton Blackwood came to me uh but about a year ago or two years ago and said he’s getting a little concerned because there was no participation from the Salish and so I said well they probably don’t want to celebrate LS and Clark because of the what came after you know it was not happy but um I told them what they would celebrate though would be if they wanted the Indians come down and have a celebration it would have to be an Indian celebration you know and I knew they wouldn’t the elders wouldn’t go for celebrating l Clark but what this PA is for is we have banded together with the ls and Clark B Centennial commission the circle of tribal advisers Sula and Darby ranger district and aerate Chamber of Commerce to put this power on and what this is for celebrating the diplomacy the hospitality and the generosity of Salish okay in this picture this picture was done by Jesse Henderson it was like $45,000 it’s hanging in I forget where it’s hanging in Helena but it shows Chief three eagles who is one of my ancestors um Charlo they the L goes from tanak before three eagles and three eagles then Victor then Chief charot then Martin and then my father Tony but it shows them here you know it’s called offering of the great clearing and so we welcome them we took care of them and traded them horses is what they had in the journal but our elders say no Sint Indian would have traded for those horses you know we gave them our horses and put them out to pasture in the journals it says we they traded for excellent saish horses so what this is going to be is not exactly a reenactment of that meeting but the whole idea behind it is for visitors to come and be welcomed by the Salish again in the bitat valley 200 years later for everybody open to the public and what we’re going to be doing there is Grand entry will be start Friday night at 7:00 it’s all free camping’s free you know you don’t have to pay anything to get in and there are going to be arts and craft vendors food vendors and Native guided po out tours that’s what I do back home as we have native guides take people through the PA explain the dancing and explain whatever is going on there you know and and help them so they can participate and become part of the celebration instead of just like somebody watching standing back watching on the outside okay and so that’s what we’ll be doing on the first night and also there’ll be viewing of uh Johnny AR Le’s video the L and Clark expedition meet the saor and Ponder Indians that was funded by loose and Clark Grant on Saturday we’ll start with the grand entry with the snake dance okay a lot of our names were given to a lot of our different things in English have nothing to do with they about what they really are okay like the snake dance has given that name has nothing to do with snakes you know what the snake dance it’s called that probably because in English when they danced in they came in this way in line dancing in okay what the snake dance represents is like a victory dance you know it’s a Warrior dance a long time ago way before Horses The Warriors would come back if they returned it was successful you know they would come in they would be tired starving you know they would be WIP pretty much wiped out they’d be staggered into Camp you know and the camp would be welcoming but they would be coming in like this and so what you see on this the only time we do it is Fourth of July celebration it’s the biggest celebration up on the reservation you have hundreds of dancers coming in for a snake dance on that and it’s very exciting okay we have I got permission from the elders to do it down here in uh Sula you know so that’s going to be something extra special to see and we’ll have the I think the I’m not sure if that happened yet do you know if they’re going to have that veterans ceremony okay we’ll have a veterans honoring C Cy right after that grand entry and then there’ll be dancing contest dancing and drumming and singing and then the welcoming ceremony is open to all visitors to participate and what we do we have what we call a giveaway dance and it’s a round dance where whoever’s having the giveaway is in the center and they give to whoever’s dancing because remember the dancing is like a really good thing to be doing when you go to Pawa you here the announcer will say everybody get up and dance you know get up and dance for those that can’t dance for those that have passed away and for those who are coming you know so dancing is very important to us so whoever comes down and dances with us you know will be honored and also at that same time we’ll have the loose and clarky and actors come out and be part of that and then about 5:00 we’ll have a buffalo feed none of this is is you know you’re not getting charged for any of this and then later on that at night we’ll have start again at 7 and then we will uh uh continue with the dancing and the drumming and and have uh I think we’re having Clint Clint’s going to stand up and say some words too Clint Blackwood uh is he called the director or the chair chairman of the Montana anyway he’s the head loose and clar guy for Montana but U so that’s going on September 9th and 10th if you wish you can come and get one of these posters to remind you if you wanted to go are there any questions anyone have any questions for Mary Jane all oh we got one over here hang on let me bring this over so everyone can hear when will that event it’s the 9th and 10th but it’s here in the bitteroot but where Sula grab a poster I don’t know am I hooked on to something here any other questions oh Eagle did we get the eagle the eagle sorry okay you were watching mil ands milk ands yeah okay easy sign just that’s we have two kinds of eagles the bald eagle and the golden eagle okay what Johnny told me in the class was the golden eagle is mainly the ones is the one that has to do with Indians more so than the bald eagle because the bald eagle is the one you always see like sitting up by himself you know all solitary the golden eagle you know if you’re watching you will see him in there with the animals you know and there’s different stories and pictures coyote stories of of a golden eagle sitting there surrounded by animals and they’re holding a council you know they’re have making decisions and stuff but any other ones any other questions all right well let’s thank Mary Jane for coming and sharing with us

The post Mary Jane Charlo on Salish Animals and Culture appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Tony Incashola on Salish history and culture https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/tent-voices/aaron-gross/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:50 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/tent-voices/aaron-gross/ A recording from the Tent of Many Voices featuring Aaron Gross.

The post Tony Incashola on Salish history and culture appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> good afternoon ladies and gentlemen how’s the heat it’s not bad is it warm is it pretty warm in here we got the air on and if you get too hot remember we do have some fans just sitting in front of the fans should cool you off over here man I didn’t know Montana could be so hot and I’m from North Carolina it gets hot out there it it’s not even warmed up yet I don’t know how much hotter it can get out here let’s hope things cool off welcome to the T of many voices my name is Aaron Gross I’m a park ranger with the National Park Service and I’m on this mobile uh exhibit bringing this Bicentennial across Louis and Clark Trail bringing the stories of the people the local people and people are far away of the Lucen Clark Story uh what happened 200 years ago what’s happening presently on the trail what’s going to happen 200 years in the future and at this hour to talk to us about the Sailor perspective we have Tony inaa who’s the director of the cultural committee and he’s going to say a few words to you guys let’s give him a nice warm welcome heing the T of many voices there you go saying that hand over to you Tony thank you and it’s kind of warm to be sitting around out here I hope that air condition is working first of all I’d like to say thank you for being here I know there’s many things that’s going on around big city of Missoula I was born and raised here and well not here but in St Ignatius so and I had the opportunity to be raised by grandparents that’s probably a big plus for me reason why I I still possess my language and my culture the Salish people uh consists you know when you talk about the The Fad Indian Reservation you’re talking about the confederated Salish and cutney people the confederated Salish consists of uh the what we call the Salish or the bitteroot Salish and the upper Ponder or the upper Callis the lower CIS spell is in Eastern Washington this territory here has been sailor’s territory for hundreds thousands of years they have been scattered throughout most of Montana according to our elders who have passed on these stories from generation to generation that the Salish speaking family the the the the Indian people that belonged to the to the Salish language family consisted of one large group of people at one time and then as like everything else as as things grw the people went in different directions to find the food and to help uh provide for the people over this period of time these different bands of sailors that came from one became known to are known today as the different tribes that you see here in Northwest United States the cisel the in Eastern Washington the cordelan the Spokan Okanagan shushop uh Yakama kute quol all of those people all of those different tribes that we know today according to our elders came from the one one group of people and spread out so over the years as as people spread out as the Trib spread out and as they be further apart the dialects have changed some some of the language the sound of the language is the same but the DI dialects have changed the area the people in this area the most the the Spokan cordelan the lower Cal spel the upper H spell or the Ponder and the bitter Salish can all speak and understand each other today but as you go further west to the other Salish tribes you could see the hear the dialect change and therefore the some of the communication is not as as easy with other tribes back in the early times as I Elders have talked about creation stories uh although I can’t tell any now according to our tradition creation stories are stories that tell the beginning of time for the Salish people and these creation stories uh for every tribe have different main characters if you will in in their creation Stories the people here that the Salish people here their main character uh for the Salish people is the coyote and the uh Fox different tribes like the Alaskan tribes their main character is the Raven so it all depends on what sort of animal in those areas are are the main characters of the people when I say main characters these are the people the animal what we call the animal people who were put here first by the Creator to rid all evil and as these animals went through here and got rid of all the the evil things that’s in here although they didn’t succeed in completely getting all of the and evil things as they went through they left land formations and these land formations today are reminders to our young people about uh the creation stories and what took place in those areas for those of you that live in this area might be familiar uh with the medicine tree down in a bitot that’s one of the creation stories there’s uh a couple of figures just outside of LOL is another creation Story down in the bitterwood area just east of Coralis is another area of creation stories and up there on the what is now the Flathead Lake the southern edge of the Flathead Lake is another creation story so needless to say that the elders are are not too happy with what’s taking place up there uh with the road construction the road construction has taken part of the creation story that that remained there that creation story is probably one of the older ones because because it dates back to the time that is describing uh probably the end of the Ice Age so the stories that we have are talk about the animals at that time who were again I I shouldn’t be getting into these stories because I I’ll get in trouble but this creation story talks about a period of time where there was a there was a a struggle between certain animals in that area and what they were doing were they were struggling over day night warm and heat and so you look back at the time of the Ice Age when the the the ice was going back and the water was going back and forth at that time last ice age when the dam when it broke out was part of this creation story uh someday you’ll hopefully you’ll get a chance to to hear the complete story what took place there like I said that traditionally we aren’t allowed to tell creation stories during the summer months uh we only are able to tell them from the time first snow until the first time you hear thunder in the spring it’s the only time you can tell we’re allowed to tell although uh the elders have never really specifically you know we tell you why you can’t do that it leaves you guessing the only thing they say is if you tell a story out a season during the summer months he will be visited by a snake so because of that I don’t tell those anyway this area the story that goes from there and it comes through as as the as the the evil was destroyed and then the next that was the humans that were put here and at that time the Salish peop as I said came from the one group and spread out into the larger many different tribes as you see today we I belong to the most eastern uh band of sish speaking people I I am a combination of both the bitter Salish and the uh upper Ponder or upper Callis Bell as time goes on the younger Generations like us we become kind of the H 57 if you will because over the years as history progressed and as as it went on tribes came together and that’s why I belong to not only do to the vited Salish uh I have relatives of p i have relatives that are npers I have relatives that are Spokan the bands of Salish that lived in uh in the southern I guess if you if you divide the the U Montana the way it is sit now kind of like the bottom half would be the would be occupied by what we call the bitteroot sailors their main area was in Three Forks Mont what is Three Forks Montana that was their main area of concentration and they hunted and and they did all that was necessary in their lives and that period from that area the the the other bands were in the bitteroot area this the the western part where we at where we’re at now was mostly a wintering area for the Salish people this vast area all the way from what is now buildings up north to the sweet grass Hills in parts of course Canada northern Idaho Eastern Washington parts of Wyoming into the Yellowstone that was the the vast area that the Salish people occupied and used in their lifetime their lives or was around that so as time went on the bands that were over here we had a band of like I said the main area the the midate Sailor the upper Ponderay or the upper Callis Bel along the Flathead Lake what is now the Flathead Lakes there was several bands of of ponder in that area and there was another band south of that what what is now if you’re familiar with rll and Dixon between those two areas there was another band east of the mountains there was a band uh in the Helena area and there was a band in the Great Falls area the band in Great Falls the one band of Salish there was known as the T band of Salish that band of Salish became extinct through mostly through small pox that band that disappeared was in the just around the in Sun River area by Great Falls the cutney the Confederate Salish in the cutney part the cutney have seven band there seven bands of cutney that their main area was in the tobacco Plains with up there what is now Canada there was another band in northern Idaho around boners Ferry and then the one one band that came here around the Flathead Lake they would come through the Flathead Lake area and then up by where is Browning that was their main area up then back up to Tobacco Plains and then some of them in East from from browning up down south to the uh uh close to the Sun River also so they were overlapping with the other band of sailors in that area over the years as a small pox in first infested the at the band of Salish there the tan they moved from there and moved up to the area where the kutney were up in what what is now Browning now Browning there was no other tribe there was no black Fe in that area as we know today from browning they were hit again by small par then they moved back down south to the relatives down there by what is now St ignacius and for the third time they were hit by small pox and from that time they moved out one more time there was only about they say a handful left from that group of people they started coming back east and as they came back East towards Billings in that area area they kind of disappeared what is known later is that they they disappeared and melted in with other tribes in that area the One Survivor that we know of ended up with the shishoni tribe and became a leader among the shonis that was the last known from that B from that one band that was left and the rest of them all got killed or wiped died from the mostly from small pox the other band of Salish or the Ponder r p mostly was up in the north and they would hunt down along the muscle shell River others from the back from the other bands of pondre would come over the over the mountains through a lot of the trails that go through here through hel into helna and on over would get together and they would hunt the muscle shell all the way back in Leon area that’s where they hunted the Buffalo one of the main Buffalo jumps they used prior to horses was uh right there in Great Falls it is it now has a Blackfoot name it it’s called ulum pishkin which means deep blood Kettle in with the Blackfoot language but that area again was utilized by the Salish people long before the black feet and the crows moved in the black feet were mostly up here in the what parts of what is now Canada and they moved in to Montana from that direction the crow moved in from this area from the south and then you have the Sue that come in through here as these larger tribes moved into the territory of the Salish these small bands of Salish started getting pushed back further and further back to where we’re at here to mountains and over time the the risks and the danger with the fighting with those tribes became so much that the western part where we’re at now the bot and the fatka lake became permanent areas instead of mostly winter area because the Buffalo was one of the most important part of the of the Salish people at that time and as the bigger tribes moved in because these tribes here were in contact with Trappers and Traders way before the Salish people were so therefore they had access to horses and to firearms before the Salish people actually the I think the black feed I think it was almost 30 or 40 years before after the black fre got their uh rifles Firearms before the sailors were able to get some from the sou South here and that kind of leveled the plane field a little bit but because those tribes were so large a lot of times allies other allies of the Salish people the npers um the cordan the other bands of Salish would band together to come and form a larger group to come east and hunt the Buffalo because you know larger numbers was were safer the black feed wouldn’t attack when they seen a large number of saish people the the the change prior to uh the white man was again the the disease was one of the epidemic the epidemics that nearly wiped out the Salish people a lot of the historians and and people some of the elders that have some information that we have say that at one time there was anywhere from 30 to 40,000 Salish people before the disease of epidemic of the small pox hit and the dwindle down the numbers to less than 2,000 before started getting ground again so at that time when the small tops swapped them out and the black feet the comp you know the the compound Ed by the black feet and other tribes competing with the food few uh food resources the numbers of sailors kept dwindling finally back in the 1600s the Salish people was able to acquire horses from the south from the shishoni tribe once they required again I said is level the plane field a little bit that made it very easy to travel long distances short period of time but it also brought more conflict with tribes because there was more contact with the other trib so war between tribes become more intense there the rating become because the horses were provided did so much in transportation in labor that they were prized possessions so the the more horses you got the the higher status you were so back then stealing was a big thing that was a good thing today that’s different so today as they go out and raid and steal horses they became higher ranking and status with the tribe they were looked at as brave warriors compared to today our young children go out there and do some raid and we don’t look at them as brave warriors so times have changed a little anyway the horses the guns small Parks all had an effect and all had a change in the way of life of Salish although this conflict with other tribes was going on it still was a natural everyday way of life for people they still continued to do the things that was necessary to survive it was until uh they had glimpses of white people prior to 18 05 there was word there was people other there was people that said they they witnessed and seen people uh of another color but it wasn’t until 185 if it wasn’t when Louis and Clark came into this bitot area that really made a contact with the Salish people at that time in September the Salish people were gathering getting ready to go East to hunt to get the Buffalo and so there was naturally there was probably quite a few probably 400 or more people down at Ross’s hole where where the people gathered and camped and were ready to move out and as the Scouts in those days because of the enemy the scouts were always active watching and and making sure that uh the people were being looked after and as the Scouts went out that’s when they encountered Lewis and Clark and his expedition coming down to Ross’s hole there was a lot of confusion at first by the people some of the people their first time they they witnessed uh people they didn’t know what to do as the Scouts went back they went back to the main camp and reported back to the to the leaders to Chiefs they had to decide quickly what to do they had naturally they had two options whether to go out and destroy or to kill but we all know what the the option was was they went out and they brought him in they brought him into camp and they actually when they described the when the scouts described the the the visitors that were coming the act the leaders of the camp almost felt sorry for these people that they were they thought they were sick because their skin was so light and pale so as they brought him into Camp they set the robes down and they were going to feed him and they put blankets on them and they started feeding them they were still trying to decide what to do and at that time they noticed this fell who was again of different color and that was again York York to the tribes that to the people there represented a very something very powerful because in our culture there’s a period of time during the winter months at what we do where we we have medicine dances medicine dances are a very important part of not only ours but all tribes medicine dance is kind of a time for healing a time for people to kind of I I guess uh bring the sick and and heal the people it’s I always have a hard time trying to explain this part because medicine men and women were so powerful that that what they were able to do to us a lot of us today we would not believe is unbelievable but the witnesses and the people that say it have seen this know that it’s true but to be a medicine man or be a Woman it’s a gift it’s something that is given to you by the Creator it’s not something that I decide today that I want to be a medicine man and I go out and and and go through the process and become a medicine man it doesn’t work that way it’s something that is giving to you it might be when you’re young it might be when you’re older first of all these songs come to you a gift of song and then the dreams and then there it just tells you what to do it tells you what medicines to gather it tells you how to use these medicines so these medicine men and women become I guess experts or Professionals in in certain Fields it’s not everything it’s like today’s doctors we have specialists in we have bone Specialists we have heart specialist we have Specialists all over here today medicine men and women at that time were the same they they were specialized they specialized in certain areas so whatever AED you you couldn’t go to a certain one you had to go to a certain one rather in order to get help you couldn’t go just anyone but anyway once these people got the the gift it was a LIF lifelong commitment from that period on that the rest of their lives was committed to this one function is that to be medicine man and woman and during that process of his lifetime he continues to gather and continues to be told what to get thus you have a medicine bundle those medicine bundles are very very sacred they’re they’re they’re things that only the medicine man knows what’s in them or should know what’s in them and that’s part of his power that’s part of what makes things happen and without that he couldn’t he was unable to perform the things that was act for him so these during the winter months would get together and they’d have medicine dances medicine dances where they come down they build lodges and there were ceremonies that were performed one of the ceremonies were these strong medicine men what they would do would take charcoal from a fire fire and they would Block in their face they cover their face hands representing and these people were called in our language they were called which means blue jay so they were called Blue Jays in our language the power they had so as Lewis and Clark and his group came in to Camp there was this one person that had dark skin and so the first thing a lot of the thought was this guy was a very powerful person that he was a medicine man must they thought that must it must been their medicine man so naturally the Curiosity they they had to they had to see if it was and but the charcoal didn’t didn’t rub off of him so I don’t I don’t know exactly whether they believed or whether they it added more confusion to the people there why that happened because communication was very hard at that time there was a lot of sign language that was mostly taken care of but that was how you communicated back then but anyway it was decided to help these people because they they thought they needed to help they thought they were hungry and that they were sick on top of that their horses weren’t looking too healthy either so that’s when they traded horses and that’s when they stayed there for a few days and that’s when they guided them and showed him up to the low area they they rode with him partway from the Ross’s hole and took him up here and got them in the right direction and then they went back then they continued their hunt to to go hunt buffalo hunting that was their brief encounter with Lewis and Clark little they know that that that that would be the change would even be more once once that took place once they had I think that was a lot of the confusion was that they didn’t know whether that was going to add more to what was taking place already with their their Wars and their their conflicts with other tribes or competition with for the resources that here but they let him go and let him go on and as time went on and as more and more people moved into this area again forced the tribes into smaller groups then In when homesteaders moved in looking for homes looking for land to to put in their Gardens and their their to plow 1855 as uh after after the U Governor went through here the territorial Governor went through here and seen the need for the homesteaders that was when he came to try to make agreements with the tribes that’s the 18 the Treaty of 1855 and the Treaty of 1855 although some it’s some the land that the Salish people occupied in order to retain part of their life part of their way of life they seeded over 20 million Acres of Aboriginal territory that they utilized they hunt and lived in for promise that 1.2 million Acres would be set aside for them for the for the tribes uh explicit use for them only but as we know as time went on things changed more land was taken at one time the tribes owned because they were taken from outside and and were trying to be taught to live a different style of life to be farmers and to be ranchers very few people survived very few people accomplished that Feit we had a few people that made it and became U Cattleman but the rest of them uh failed so in the process like everything else um the the meranti the people gave them the implements and the seeds and whatever is necessary for to to create a a a farm they did they weren’t Farmers so they didn’t know how to do it so naturally they their crops failed in order to pay for the implements that was given to them they sold land land and so they started losing their land and it wasn’t until 18 1935 when the reorganization Act was introduced that put a stop to that the the after the the the when they were put on reservations when they were when they seated all this land and retained the reservation for their Homeland the allotment act the Dos Act was introduced and each tribal member at that time was allotted either 160 Acres or 80 acres depending on what part if it was on a low land it was 80 acres if it was a wooded area then it was 160 when they did this then they decided there was there was a little over 2,000 members at that time and after that was allotted the rest was declared Surplus and then and homesteaders were allowed to buy and again I said it wasn’t until 1935 when the reorganization Act was put in place that this stopped by that time the reservation there was the tribes ownership of the reservation was just little over 30% of land ownership the rest was all lost today with the reorganization act the tribes have been purchasing land whenever they have money available they are now back to a little over six what 62% ownership of the reservation so that’s a a quick shot from the beginning of time from creation and the land was utilized and was part of their life part of the life of the Salish people to live and to survive to today back down on the reservation where survival is very hard now the the culture is still strong the culture is part of survival and that’s my my job is is very difficult to try to convince our young people the importance of the language the importance of culture because language and culture is important to any race whether you’re Japanese Chinese German swed your language and your culture is important to you because that’s where you your identification comes from that identifies who you are where you come from where you belong where your where your values are at and for me it’s very difficult to try to convince our young people that because what they see out there what they grew up with is a lot different than a lot of the elders have grown up with but we continue to try and it’s getting very difficult because of the influence of other cultures especially although we we live and die by modern technology today I I think a lot of the times uh we’re dying by it our children especially we have a hard time competing with modern technology they you know that there our children today would rather play games watch television than sit with someone and listen and learn so that’s one of the biggest today as one of our biggest competitors is modern technology we’re trying to take that and turn around and use modern technology to incorporate and to to teach a lot of people we’re trying to develop games for the children in the Salish language or the Sal culture so we’re we we’re learning a little bit but we got a long way to go so that’s time is about up uh I better see if’s any questions they have pay for that yes it was just like anybody here when when you’re given farm farm equipment and and you need farm equipment you need seeds uh the only places available was the merkins that was kind of sparse throughout that they offered and they gave the they had that’s where they bought the seed that’s where they bought the equipment from and so naturally if you borrow something and you can’t pay it you have to pay it somehow so the only thing that they had was land so that’s what they sold the land to pay for their debts any other questions I know it’s a short short short time to try to cover thousands of years uh I always have a difficulty trying to pick out which wants to share with you thank you very much one beh have of the National Park Service sir thank you for coming under the Ten of many voices with us today you sh you don’t have any questions all right well the next program

The post Tony Incashola on Salish history and culture appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Clark: August 12, 1806 https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/journal/clark-august-12-1806/ Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:52 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/journal/clark-august-12-1806/ Thursday 12th August 1806 I set out early this morning and had not proceeded on far before Shannon discovered he had lost his Tomahk. I derected him to land his…

The post Clark: August 12, 1806 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Thursday 12th August 1806 I set out early this morning and had not
proceeded on far before Shannon discovered he had lost his Tomahk. I
derected him to land his Skin Canoe and go back to our Camp of last night
in Serch of it, and proceeded on my self with the two wood and one Skin
Canoe to a large hottom on the N. E Side above the head of Jins island and
landed to take brackfast as well as to delay untill Shannon & Gibson
Should arive. Sent out Shields & Labiech to hunt deer in the bottom,
at 2 P m. Shannon and gibson arived having found the tomahawk at our camp
they killed 3 Elk &c. one of the Canoes of Buffalow Skin by accident
got a hole peirced in her of about 6 inches diamuter. I derected two of
the men to patch the Canoe with a piece of Elk skin over the hole, which
they did and it proved all Sufficient, after which the Canoe did not leak
one drop. The two hunters returned without haveing killed any thing. at
meridian Capt Lewis hove in Sight with the party which went by way of the
Missouri as well as that which accompanied him from Travellers rest on
Clarks river; I was alarmed on the landing of the Canoes to be informed
that Capt. Lewis was wounded by an accident-. I found him lying in the
Perogue, he informed me that his wound was slight and would be well in 20
or 30 days this information relieved me very much. I examined the wound
and found it a very bad flesh wound the ball had passed through the
fleshey part of his left thy below the hip bone and cut the cheek of the
right buttock for 3 inches in length and the debth of the ball. Capt L.
informed me the accident happened the day before by one of the men Peter
Crusat misstakeig him in the thick bushes to be an Elk. Capt Lewis with
this Crusat and Several other men were out in the bottom Shooting of Elk,
and had Scattered in a thick part of the woods in pursute of the Elk.
Crusat Seeing Capt L. passing through the bushes and takeing him to be an
Elk from the Colour of his Cloathes which were of leather and very nearly
that of the Elk fired and unfortunately the ball passed through the thy as
aforesaid. Capt Lewis thinking it indians who had Shot him hobbled to the
canoes as fast as possible and was followered by Crusat, the mistake was
then discovered. This Crusat is near Sighted and has the use of but one
eye, he is an attentive industerous man and one whome we both have placed
the greatest Confidence in dureing the whole rout.After Capt. Lewis
and my Self parted at Travellers rest, he with the Indians proceeded down
the West Side of Clarks river Seven miles and crossed on rafts 2 miles
below the East fork 120 yards wide, after Crossing the river he proceeded
up the North Side of the east fork and encampd. here the Indians left him
and proceeded down Clarks river in Serch of the Tushepaws. an Indian man
Came up with Cap L. from the W. of the mountains and proceeded on with
those who had accompanied us. Capt. L. proceeded up the E. fork of Clarks
river 17 ms. to the enterance of Cokahlarishkit river or the river to
buffalow, he proceeded up on the North Side of this river which is 60
yards wide crossing Several Small Streams and the N. fork, and passing
over part of the dividing mountain onto the waters of Deabourns river in
the plains and in a Derection to the N. extremity of Easte range of rocky
mountains which pass the Missouri at the pine Island Rapid. from thence he
bore his Course to the N E untill he Struck Meadcin river near where that
river Enters the rocky Mts. and proceeded down Medicine river to the
Missouri at the white bear Islands at the upper part of the portage. this
rout is a very good one tho not the most derect rout, the most derect rout
would be to proceed up the Missouri above Dearborns river and take a right
hand road & fall on a South branch of the Cokatlarishkit R. and
proceed down that river to the main road but the best rout would be from
the falls of the Missouri by fort mountain and passing the N. extremity of
that range of the Rocky Mountains which pass the Missouri at the pine
Island rapid Course nearly S. W. and to the gap through which the great
road passeds the dividing mountain the distance from the falls to this gap
about 45 miles through a tolerable leavel plain on an old indian road. and
the distance from thence to Clarks river is 105 miles. The total distance
from the falls of the Missouri to Clarks river is only 150 miles of a
tolerable roadCapt L. arived at the white Bear Islands and encampd.
on the West Side of the Missouri and in the morning he discovered that the
Indians had taken of Seven of his best horses, drewyer prosued the indians
two day’s on the rout towards Clarks river. he Saw their camp on Dearborns
river near the road on which Capt. Lewis & party Come on a by place
where they had left only one or two day at this encampment he Saw great
appearanc of horseson the return of Drewyer Capt L. took Drewyer
& the 2 fieldses & proceeded on his intended rout up Marias river
leaving Sergt. Gass, Thompson, Frazier, Werner, McNeal & Goodrich at
the portage to prepare Geer and repar the wheels & Carrage against the
arival of the Canoes and he also left 4 horses for the purpose of hauling
the Canoes across. The Canoes arrived on the 16th, and on the 26th they
had all except one across, the Plains becom So muddy from the emence rains
which had fallen, that they Could not get her over the portage. on the
28th they joined Capt Lewis at the Grog Spring a fiew miles above the
enterance of Marias river From the Falls of Missouri Capt. L. proceeded on
with Drewyer & the 2 fieldses Courss

On the 26th of July Capt Lewis Set out on his return to the enterance of
Marias river to meet with the party with, the Canoes from the falls. his
course was through the plains

S. E. 5 Milespassing a Small Creek from the mts

S. 70° E. 9 Miles to a principal branch of Marias River 65 yards wide not
very deep at 7 mile. this last branch is Shallow and rapid about the Size
of the former from the S W. both of those Streams Contain a great
preportion of timberhere we find the 3 Specis of Cotton before
mentioned

N 80° E. 4 miles down Marias river and met with 8 Indians of the Blackfoot
nation with about 30 horses, those Indians professed friendship and Set
out with him and encamped together the night of the 26th of July, thy
informed him that there was two large bands of their nation in that
quarter one of which would be at the enterance of Marias river in a fiew
days. they also informed that a french Trader was with one of those bands,
that they traded with the white people on the Suskashwen River at 6 easy
days march or about 150 miles distant from whome they precured Guns Powder
Lead blankets &c. in exchange for wolf and beaver Skins. Capt Lewis
gave them a Flag Meadel & Handkerchief Capt. L. informed those Indians
where he was from & where he had been and his objects & friendly
views &c. of which they appeared to be well Satisfied.

“on the morning of the 27th at day light the indians got up and crouded
around the fire, Jo. Field who was on post had carelessly laid his gun
down behind him near where his brother was Sleeping. one of the Indians
Slipd. behind him and took his gun and that of his brother unperceived by
him, at the Same instant two others advanced and Seized the guns of
Drewyer and Capt Lewis who were yet asleep. Jo. Fields Seeing this turned
about to take his gun and Saw the fellow running off with his and his
brothers, he called to his brother who instantly jumped up and prosued the
indian with him whome they overtook at the distance of 50 or 60 paces
Siezed their guns and rested them from him and R. Field as he Seized his
gun Stabed the indian to the heart with his knif who fell dead; (this Cap
L. did not know untill Some time after.) drewyer who awoke at the first
alarm jumped up and Seized & rested his gun from the indian &c.
Capt L. awoke and asked what was the matter Seeing Drewyer in a Scuffle
for his gun he turned to get his gun and found her gorn, he drew a pistol
from his holsters and prosued the Indian whom he Saw in possession of his
gun making off he presented the pistol and the indian lay down the gun.
the two Fields Came up and drew up to Shoot the Indian which Capt L.
forbid the indians then attempted to drive off all the horses. Capt L.
derected the men to fire on them if they attempted to drive off the
horses, and prosued two fellows who Continued to drive of his horses he
Shot the indian who had taken his gun and then in possession of his horse
through the belly, he fell and raised on his elbow and fired at Capt L.
the other made his escape into a nitch out of Sight with his bow and
arrows and as Capt L. guns was empty and he without his Shot pouch he
returnd. to the Camp where the 2 fields and Drewyer joind him having
prosued the indians across the river the were now in possession of the
most of their own as well as the indian horses and a gun Several bows
& arrows and all the indians baggage the gun & Some feathers and
flag they took and burnt all the other articles. and Saddled up a many of
the best horses as they wished with Some Spear horses, and Set out for to
intersept the party at Marias river and proceded on a little to the S. of
East 112 Miles to the Missouri at the Grog Spring. here they met with
Canoes and party decending joined them leaving their horses on the river
bank, and proceeded on to the enterance of Marias river opened the
deposits, found Several articles damaged. 3 Beaver traps could not be
found, the red perogue unfit for Service, from thenc they proceeded
without delay to the River Rochejhone See cources of Capt Lewis rout in
next book.”

at 2 P.M. Shannon & Gibson arived in the Skin Canoe with the Skins and
the greater part of the flesh of 3 Elk which they had killed a fiew miles
above. the two men Dixon & Handcock the two men we had met above came
down intending to proceed on down with us to the Manclans. at 3 P M we
proceded on all together having left the 2 leather Canoes on the bank. a
little below the enterance of (Jos) Shabonos Creek we Came too on a large
Sand point from the S. E. Side and Encamped. the wind blew very hard from
the S W. and Some rain. I washed Capt L. wound which has become Sore and
Somewhat painfull to him.

The post Clark: August 12, 1806 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Clark: July 5, 1806 https://lewisandclarkresearch.org/journal/clark-july-5-1806/ Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:40 +0000 https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/journal/clark-july-5-1806/ Saturday July 5th 1806 I rose at day light this morning despatched Labeash after a Buck which he killed late last evening; and I with the three men who I…

The post Clark: July 5, 1806 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]> Saturday July 5th 1806 I rose at day light this morning despatched Labeash
after a Buck which he killed late last evening; and I with the three men
who I had Sent in Serch of a ford across the West fork of Clarks river,
and examined each ford neither of them I thought would answer to pass the
fork without wetting all the loads. near one of those places pointed out
by Colter I found a practiable foard and returned to Camp, ordered
everything packed up and after Brackfast we Set out passed 5 Chanels of
the river which is divided by Small Islands in passing the 6th & last
Chanel Colter horse Swam and with Some dificuelty he made the Opposite
Shore, Shannon took a different derection from Colter rained his horse up
the Stream and passed over very well I derected all to follow Shannon and
pass quartering up the river which they done and passed over tolerably
well the water running over the back of the 2 Smaller horses only.
unfortunately my trunk & portmantue Containing Sea otter Skins flags
Some curiosites & necessary articles in them got wet, also an
esortment of Medicine, and my roots. about 1 mile we struk the East fork
which had fallen and was not higher than when we passed it last fall we
had not proceeded up this fork more than 1 mile eer we struck the road by
which we passed down last fall and kept it at one mile we crossed the
river at a very good foard and continued up on the East Side to the foot
of the Mountain nearly opposite flour Crek & halted to let our horses
graze and dry our wet articles. I saw fresh Sign of 2 horses and a fire
burning on the side of the road. I prosume that those indians are spies
from the Shoshones. Shannon & Crusat killed each a deer this morning
and J. Shields killed a female Ibex or bighorn on the side of the
Mountain, this Animal was very meager. Shannon left his tomahawk at the
place he killed his deer. I derect him to return for it and join me in the
Vally on the East Side of this mountain. gave Shields permission to
proceed on over to the 1st Vally and there hunt untill my arival this
evening at that place, after drying every article which detained us untill
1/2 past 4 P.M. we packed up and Crossed the Mountain into the vally where
we first met with the flatheads here I overtook Shields he had not killed
any thing. I crossed the river which heads in a high peecked mountain
Covered with Snow N. E. of the Vally at about 20 Miles. Shields informed
me that the Flat head indians passed up the Small Creek which we came down
last fall about 2 miles above our Encampment of the 4th & 5th of,
Septr. I proceeded up this South branch 2 Miles and encamped on the E.
side of the Creek, and Sent out several men to examine the road. Shields
returned at dark and informed me that the best road turned up the hill
from the creek 3 Miles higher up, and appeared to be a plain beaten parth.
as this rout of the Oat lash shoots can be followed it will evidently
Shorten our rout at least 2 days and as the indians informed me last fall
a much better rout than the one we came out. at all events I am deturmined
to make the attempt and follow their trail if possible if I can prosue it
my rout will be nearer and much better than the one we Came from the
Shoshones, & if I should not be able to follow their road; our rout
can’t possibly be much wors. The hunters killed two deer this evening. The
after part of the day we only come 8 miles makeing a total of 20 Miles-.
Shannon Came up about Sunset haveing found his tomahawk.

The post Clark: July 5, 1806 appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

]]>