Lemhi Shoshone Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Ken Thomas on Sacagawea and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:03 +0000

good afternoon how’s everyone doing today that was pretty wimpy let’s try that one more time for a full house how’s everyone doing today that’s more like it I hope you’re all surviving the heat it is getting a little bit warmer out there isn’t it well we we might find if there’s some extra seats up here in the front row might be a little bit cooler I’m not a politician well welcome to the tent of many voices part of the lisis and Clark traveling exhibit core Discovery 2 200 years to the Future inside this tent we have many presentations if you have not received a um schedule to printed on yellow pieces of paper I come see one of the Rangers or myself and I can grab one of those performances for you today at this hour we have a special guest Ken Thomas Ma and he’ll be talking about sacka Joi and with saying that he wanted to give his own introduction so let’s give him a round of applause and welcome here to the Tent today here you go Ken thank you all right from Jackson Hole Wyoming live on the south border of Grand Teton National Park lived there for 28 years Liv my first 47 years in Grand Rapids Michigan I’ve been a teacher and a school principal for over 50 years I’m still a teacher traveling all over the country doing storytelling and writing workshops and schools for children and adults I’ve written 10 books nine of them historic fiction about Indian children for children help to enjoy one book nonfiction The Amazing Story for this afternoon let’s go back in our imagination 216 years 1789 we have a new constitution George Washington becomes our first president president the very same year thousands of miles to the West in a mountain valley in a place we now call Idaho a tiny baby girl is born Shon Indian mother holding little baby in her hands the first time never dreamed she’ll grow up to be one of America’s most famous women ever known worldwide Indian girl born to a tribe then faced with a life of work and hardship the men were the Warriors and the hunters the women and children did all the rest of the work little girl at age three would get training from her mother the berries to pick the seeds to gather the roots to dig how to cut meat in thin strips hang it over racks in the sun to dry had to help her mother fill baskets with food for winter without it they wouldn’t make it through a mountain winner little girl will be taught how to cut up any size animal and use every valuable part she’d learned how to take the hides of large animals and scrape them clean soften and tan the hides to make clothing and shelter she’d learn how to carry red hot coals from one campfire miles away to the next camp or the new Fire she’d learn how to care for children she would have to learn everything by age 14 that’s when she’d start having her own babies an Indian girl could not wait only plan on 25 30 years of life average any kind of disease or childbirth problems no medical help no one lasted long little girl and her people were being held hostage in the valley where they live afraid to come out on the Prairie and hunt the Buffalo which they had to do afraid because on the Prairie First Trade had begun hundreds of European Trappers came for every fur bearing animal they could get the best price then would come from the beaver pelt stack up the beaver hides by his Camp take him to the Rendevous in the summer and the Trapper Cashes in Indian men catch on fast they know they can go get a stack of these hides and take them to that Old Trapper for the one thing the Indian wants most of all rifle gunpowder and bullets what a h that Prairie Indian was with his rifle he had a special horse he called his Buffalo horse one that he could ride into a stamp heed and HT a buffalo the horse would not spook or shy let him sit there with that rifle and drop any animal usually one shot faster easier and safer than a bow and arrow you know what else he can do with his rifle come out here to the mountains where the Shon only had a bow and arrow shoot the Shoni men steal their horses capture their children and take them to sell them into slavery slavery common most everywhere they especially wanted to capture the girls the girl would bring the best price every Trapper was in the market for at least two Indian girls to be his slaves and his wives the Trapper wasn’t going to do the work the girls will do all his work and he needs two of them one of them’s going to die and have to be replaced and he never wants to be without help that little girl and her people had to come out of the mountains once every summer there was no choice because out on the Prairie where the grasses grew there were 60 million Buffalo grazing like cattle an Indian man drops one Buffalo he has hundreds of pounds of meat for his family he has bones for tools he can melt the hoes down and make glue and boy they wouldn’t make it without the old Buffalo robe you take a look at a buffalo robe fur is soft and curly and comfortable you take a look at an elk his is long and coarse and rough the Buffalo hide three times the thickness of any elk hiide they wrapped it around them and it broke the wind they rolled up and knees at night and slept they took the fur off of a bunch of hides and built sturdy tepes withstand tremendous wind no other hide would do what that old Buffalo hide could do the Buffalo Food clothing and shelter little girl grows up she she’s 11 years old she comes out with her people right through here on the way to the buffalo hunt they’re getting near where the great Missouri River begins we call it Three Forks Montana today there they were attacked by hadu Warriors many Shoni men shot and killed horses stolen this 11-year-old captured and hauled hundreds of miles east to be held until she could bring a good price year she was captured 18800 the year Thomas Jefferson became president is number three of our tiny little country 15 states now in the Atlantic Ocean struggling to keep going and Thomas Jefferson one of the greatest minds of all the founding fathers one of the few who was a college graduate could read and write well was a man of action and a man of vision Jefferson had a dream for our country one day our country would go from that Old Atlantic Ocean across this continent to the Pacific Ocean and be a vast land of many states where there would be peace freedom and democracy greatest experiment ever tried on the face of the Earth wasn’t happening Spain controlled all the south in California British and the Russians were in the Northwest France claimed all the land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains this was all foreign land out here but Jefferson knew Napoleon was in trouble and needed money to fight England so Jefferson started working on a little real estate deal with Napoleon Jefferson wants to buy all the land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and tooon wants to sell it and neither Jefferson or Napoleon knows what’s out there no one has ever seen the land a blind deal the Louisiana Purchase almost a million square miles double the size of the country in one deal for $15 million 4 cents an acre anybody want to buy Iowa for 4 cents an acre I’ll take hire Jefferson to be a real estate man he said to his private secretary Mr Lewis we will soon own all the land drained by the Missouri River and that expedition you and I have been planning has to go now we need to know where that River comes from when you’re in the little settlement of St Louis I want you to head up that River find out where the Missouri comes from we have rumors there are mountains out there somewhere you find some mountains get over them and find the best water route onto the Pacific Ocean Mr Lewis you have to make it your president your country counts on you 29y old Maryweather Lewis being asked to go where no man has ever gone he has no idea how far it is how long it’ll take how many men he’ll need tools supplies equipment gunpowder medicine gifts for Indian people it’s a Monumental job and Maryweather Lewis was the man to do it he made long lists of everything he could possibly think of they might need for years even needles needed to sew new clothing because their clothing had wear out president said to him now Merryweather you will be the captain of this Army Expedition I want you to pick a co- Captain one of you men dies or gets killed the other man can continue the leadership we must make it Jefferson building in some leadership insurance so Maryweather Lewis picks his old army buddy 33 year-old redhead freckleface William Clark living in that Kentucky Indiana country William Clark the right man for the job cuz he knew how to pick people for the Expedition William Clark rounded up nine Kentucky back woodsmen good hunters and great shots one was a blacksmith one was a carpenter those two men could make and fix anything out of wood or metal the heart of the Lewis and Clark expedition nine young men from Kentucky now Maryweather Lewis has only one more thing to figure out how will he get tons of tools supplies equipment gunpowder medicine gifts for Indian people all the way to the Pacific Ocean ah he has that all planned going to have a boat built a river boat 55 ft long and 8 ft wide it’s going to be so large if you stood it up on end to be as high as a fivestory building he has it built in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania beginning of the Ohio River all he’s going to do is float her right down the Ohio River there to tip Illinois make a right turn on the Mississippi and head Upstream to St Louis make a left turn on the Missouri and head West he doesn’t even need a map the road has been there for centuries left August 31st 1803 the Keel boat we think going 13 ton Ohio at low water mud flats everywhere they had to practically drag that thing through the mud to Louisville Kentucky it took them a month and a half gets there he picks up William Clark and the nine Kentucky back wisman they get to the tip of Illinois now they can hardly get the K booat up stream on the Mississippi against a 3 mph current they get to that St Louis area take one look at the mighty Missouri coming out of the high plains 6 miles an hour Lewis knows he’ll never make it up that River with 15 or 20 men so he goes into the little settlement of St Louis surrounding area starts recruiting men of the United States Army going to have captains and sergeants and privates he recruits enough men he has almost 50 and he marches them and they stand inspection they take turns on guard Duty Around the Clock 24 hours a day Lewis says men this is military we have discipline or we don’t make it left May 14 1804 out of that St Louis area headed up the old Missouri at high water snow melting in the mountains and plains banks of the river caving in they had to row that keelboat until their backs ACH they walked along the deck with poles pushing off the bottom of the river they had to get out with ropes and pull off the snags and sandb bars they had two 35- ft boats they were rowing Upstream at the big boat more men more tools supplies equipment more boats Captain Lewis wanted to be the mountains by winter ice on the edge of the river last week of October they’re only halfway in what we call North Dakota today average a little more than 10 miles a day of back breaking work they came to the largest permanent Indian settlement on the continent over 4,000 th Indian people living in one place Hada and Mandan tribes Trappers living with them Captain Lewis says men this is it Rivers freezing Friendly Indians we stay here for the winter we’ll start out again the spring and Men we’re going to freeze to death if we don’t have a shelter start splitting those cottonwood trees and build us a fort gave that order the first part of November November 4 up walks Tucan shano French Canadian Living with the Indian people a deer dealer shano wants to make some money he says to the two captains better hire me you start up that River next spring get out on the Prairie and meet some Indian people I’ll help you get along with them I know how to do it I live with Indian people he said see what I have standing over there there’s my woman if I go she goes I don’t go without her she does my work and she’s Shoni and you’re going to get out to the shining mountains and the Indian people in these Villages tell me you are going to hit a a lot of mountains you’ll never get hundreds of pounds of baggage and gunpowder over the mountains without horses and my woman speaks Shon they have hundreds of horses she’ll be a big help captains look that over okay sharbono you’re hired we’ll pay you $500 you get 320 Acres of free land when we get back the woman can go not a woman standing there it’s a 15-year-old girl it’s the 11-year-old who was captured shano won her gambling when she was 14 three times her age what was happening to her then could not happen today she would be protected by our child laws back then she was nothing three strikes against her Indian woman slave going to do what she’s told and never make a sound three months she’ll have her first baby that won’t make any difference she’ll pack the baby with her now president Jefferson’s great Army expedition to the Pacific Ocean takes on a new human feature to be assisted by a teenage girl carrying a tiny baby you check out your history books and see where that’s happened in the United States Army before or since it’s a unique feature of this Expedition next time you hear about the girl we call saaka she’s in the fort February 11 the girl is crying out all day in pain on one of these Buffalo robes she’s trying to deliver her first baby and the men said the pains were terrible and they went on all day she cried out for help there is no help there’s no doctor late afternoon Captain Lewis is worried he’s going to lose the girl and the baby this could be very messy finally one of the men living with the Indians comes up to him and says hey Captain Lewis why don’t you just do what Indian people do to help her they just take the rattle of a rattlesnake and grind it up put it in a little water have her drink it that’ll do it Louis says I have a rattle I going to send back to Jefferson let’s try it they grind up the rattle mix it in some water says the drink this she drinks the rattlesnake juice 10 minutes later Jean Baptist sharo is born beautiful black hair and sparkling brown eyes named after John the Baptist nickname in Shoni pump meaning leader or firstborn and all a men would call a little baby pompy tiniest member of President Jefferson’s Great Expedition to the Pacific Ocean quite a beginning for that youngster’s life and can’t you see Captain Lewis standing there thinking boy I can’t believe what just happened we get back to Virginia we’ll just get a bunch of rattle we’ll grind them up mix them in some water we’ll bottle that stuff up and we’ll sell it out of every drug store in Virginia no OBG YNS needed anymore ladies are laughing louder than you men next time you hear about little pompy he’s an eight-week old bundle his teenage mother straps him on her back sack steps into a boat on April 7 1805 and starts up the Missouri River with 31 men for the Pacific Ocean the teenager will carry the tiny baby almost 5,000 m round trip a year and a half and keep him clean and warm and well fed every day the men will have great respect for the girl and the care she gives the child they learned about her skills right away couple of days on the river and they camped out Saka sees a pile of Driftwood on the ground tracks made by mice she knows what the mice did in that wood pile pulls the wood apart takes out a big pile of wild drw AR choke roots theice put in there for winter food roast them up they’re sweet and delicious and good for you wild onions wild carrots Roots berries stems seeds they said that girl could find food all over the mountains all through the Prairie even in drifted piles they watched her make her own fishing tackle get her own bait take fish out of every Lake and stream provided all the food she needed for herself and her baby and extra for the men they wrote more in their journals about her ability to find food than anything else they wrote about her found out something else about her on May 14th they’re now in what we call eastern Montana going up the river where the Missouri was a mile wide captains walking along the bank looking out at their little flotilla men rowing through 35- ft boats upstream and six canoes they sent the old Keel boat back to St Louis in the spring weren’t going to drag it another mile 6:00 p.m. a Micro Burst of wind hit that River ched up waves three and four feet high every boat and canoe started to go over The Boatman know what to do you get your bow into the wave so you don’t get him broadside and head for Shore every boat and canoe turned except the captain’s main 35-footer didn’t turn shano had the tiller panicked screaming and French to God to save his life Pierre crad a man in the front of the boat picked up a rifle and pointed it at him and said shano you turn this thing or I’ll shoot you he finally made the turn but Lewis on the riverbank looked out in horror all of his valuables washed overboard a bundle like this wrapped in hide had the journals and the maps he and Clark had prepared for the president of United States losing their Irreplaceable documentation over went to Medical bundle they couldn’t get along without over went to tools reading latitude and longitude and making Maps Captain leou said he was ripping off his jacket going to dive in the river and swim 300 yards out there to save his precious items 300 yards of ice cold Missouri he never would have made it he stayed on the river bank and I’m sure he smiled as he sees out on the back of the boat the teenager watching it all happen the journals came first and she reached out and grabbed that bundle and pulled it back on board then she grabbed the medicine and pulled it back and saved it then she grabbed the tools for making the maps and saved them Captain Lewis wrote in his journal later that girl saved all my valuables and he added these words of High Praise on the stricken craft the young woman showed as much fortitude and resolution as any man on the boat good as any man were the marks the president secretary gave her 6 days later Lewis named a river coming from the north sack his River to honor her they knew they were going to come to a waterfall Indian people in the village during the winter told Captain Lewis you’re going to hit a waterfall get your boat down go around a he think she can do that in a day or two they could hear the Great Falls of the Missouri roaring in the distance they weren’t coming to one waterfall they were coming to 15 miles of waterfall deep catara in the river with water going over rock 5 10 15 20 one Falls they measured 87 ft High Captain Lewis described it as the most spectacular feature he had ever seen on earth going to cost him more than a day or two he says to Clark wait here I’m going to go take a look be back in a few days he left June 13 with Saka seriously ill terrible pain in her lower stomach she’s burning with fever pulse is weak no doctor to call but they have Dr Benjamin Russia’s medicine Captain Lewis went to Philadelphia to get medicine from Dr Benjamin Rush for the Expedition primitive Medicine Dr Rush probably says something like this here it is Captain Lewis I got the box right here all the bottles in here labeled so you know what everything is he explains what each thing is he says now Captain Lewis don’t worry nothing in here can hurt anybody try whatever you think might work if it doesn’t work try something else something works pretty good keep giving it to him nothing works cut him and bleed them and expunge the Bad Blood ladies and gentlemen we’re going to give you an IV today to strengthen your blood we’re not going to take it away from you you need it Captain Clark tried all the medicine two days later sagage way is on her back refusing medicine wanting to Die the medicine didn’t work so Clark cut her and bled her and the next day she was worse he cut her and he bled her a second time Captain Lewis said he came back on Sunday June 16th he said what he saw was pitiful the girl lying on the bottom of the boat on her back her body twitching uncontrollably he couldn’t find her pulse knew she was near death he said to Clark if that girl dies what happens to four-month old pompy and how do we get horses we can’t let her die Clark said I tried everything including bleeding and Louis says well I went by a mineral hot spring there’s bubbling hot water coming out of the ground smells like it has suer in it back in Virginia Doctors claim mineral water has healing power let’s try some they get some of that hot water and cool it down Sunday June 16th 3 p.m. he says I could to drink this she drinks some mineral water he says okay drink some more she drinks it he says keep drinking it after drinking large quantities of mineral water all afternoon the miracle happened that night the fever broke less pain in the lower stomach strong pulse strength enough to sit up and hold pompy the first time in days little boy happy to have his mother back modern-day doctors who read the symptoms in the treatment are absolutely sure she was dying of severe dehydration they believe caused by a common lower body veneral infection given to her by sharbono the fever going 104 five and then Clark drains away the blood needed to fight the infection and makes her worse the Journal Record says she was up walking around 2 Days Later the journal also indicates the girl and the baby nearly died four different times serving the United States Army to get around the Great Falls was Agony they had to drag their canoes even bigger than Steve’s out there up a steep Bank canoes made out of trees weighing hundreds of pounds get them up on the bank build wheels and axles out of cottonwood trees put the canoes across the axles load them with hundreds of pounds of baggage and gunpowder and push and pull and drag them for 18 miles none of it left wheels and axles breaking mosquitoes eating them alive prickly pair of cactus puncturing their moccasins and their feet a hail storm hit them on June 29th with ice so big cut the men’s heads open cut their arms they had to dive under the canoes to escape the falling ice that storm caused a flash blood nearly washed Captain Clark sharbono sag way and the baby right out of a ravine into the river and over the 87t falls to their death June 29 not what you would call a good day middle of July one month of back breaking work and swollen feet have paid off they’re around the Great Falls and headed up the Missouri again July 22nd saak Jo looks around realizes where they are let’s Captain Lewis know he’s almost the beginning of the mighty Missouri River she said it’s made by three small rivers coming together in exactly the same place Lewis announced that to his men and he said they began hooping and hollering and dancing with a Sage Brush two two long years of battling the old Missouri River and success is theirs they’re finding the source of the great Missour trouble is when they get there July 25 which river do they take they all three look exactly alike do they take the left one the middle one or the right hand one they’re going to take three days to try and figure this out send men up all three streams to check them out for Miles while they’re doing that s joa says to Captain Lewis I was captured on this River the one you named for President Jefferson it’s my people’s River they took the Jefferson they taken the Gallatin River or the Madison River they would have had to pay $20 to get in the elone national park that’s where they come from and nobody had a golden age pass one week on the Jefferson and all of a sudden it’s made by three small streams right over there by Twin Bridges is now what do they do they’re going to spend three more trying to figure this one out Lewis is going to try the big hole even those know the Middle River is or people’s River and there’s a good horse Ro next to it somehow they ended up on the Middle River surprisingly enough it wasn’t long after that a little more than a day that Sak is pointing at a rock up ahead goes up to the river almost 200 ft high and she said I know that rock I’ve gone by it many times when I was a little girl my people call that rock the beaver’s head because it looks like that animal to my people she said beaver’s head on August 8 and named everything in southwest Montana I tell this story all over about Dylan you go there Beaver beaverhead River beaverhead National Force beaverhead mountain range beaverhead electric beaverhead meets beaverhead Historical Society the phone book is full of beaver heads just beage away a said it on August 8 that’s why you’re beaverhead and then she left Captain Le know that her people are either on this River or at the source he goes to the Setting Sun he find her people and horses Lewis looked at Clark and he said that’s all I need to know we haven’t seen an Indian in a thousand miles dring our canoes over gravel and rock hundreds of pounds of baggage and gunpowder last us more than a year we’re all done right here if we don’t get horses and get them now you said Captain Clark my friend we’re not going to fail he said I’m taking three men I’m going to leave at daylight and I’ll walk a month if I have to but I will find the Indian people with the horses have them come back here we’ll trade goods out of canoes for horses he walked all day August 9 and camped right near Dylan August 10 August 11 August 12 almost 90 miles and he said stop Man Standing on the High Ridge Lewis says men this is the top of the continent the water in the valley we came from close to the Missouri River and the water in that Valley down there goes to the Pacific Ocean this is the top of the continent exactly right Continental Divide border Montana Idaho today lmh high pass a road is up there hope to stand up there and look down and see a river that would take him all the way to the ocean no passable River down there we know which one it is you can’t get down it and what he saw to the West shocked him for hundreds of miles Nothing But The Bitter Root mountains higher mountains seen in his life he’s faing an unbelievable barrier and failure rolled and tossed on the ground that night could hardly sleep next morning Valley and there they were 500 Shoni Indian people over 700 beautiful horses he gave them beads and mirrors and ribbon and an American flag and he said to them if you Indian people come back the river with me we have wonderful things in our canoes we’re going to give you if you just let us choose some of your horses to get over these mountains and he said if you help me father in Washington who loves all of his red children will come out here and Stop The Killing and the kidnapping and the stealing we’re all going to live in a great land and Peace and Freedom as brothers and sisters all you have to do is help me that’s a basic speech Captain Lewis gave to 40 Indian tribes begging for their help for three years the Shon are suspicious they’d come out a month before to hunt Buffalo were attacked by Warriors and many were shot and killed most of these people thought he was going to lead them out there to a trap so of the 500 people only 28 men and three women dare follow him for two days scared to death of an attack came to the old beaverhead up there by Clark Port canoes and the men and in the water sag helping the men pull a canoe over some gravel she climbed out of the river that morning and started walking toward the engine people and suddenly sacka joa broke into a run and out of the crowd came a 15-year-old girl running toward her they met threw their arms around each other jumping up and down laughing and dancing and crying sack let Captain Lewis know he found her people and this was her best friend said they both grew up together and when they were 11 years old were both captured in the same battle sag said I was one gambling by the man who owns me and my friend who escaped and came home alone I read that living in Michigan and I said wait a minute here 11year old girl weighing 60 lb 1,000 miles through wild animals enemy Warriors bad weather Crossing wild rivers going where the Explorers didn’t dare go alone because you can’t kill a grizzly bear with one shot the 11-year-old girl was willing to face death for her Freedom think about that for an American them Americans still face death for freedom I knew I had a great book to write didn’t know the little girls so I gave her a name in Shon this is girl and this is ran little book’s been out 22 years it’s now going across the world it’s in Danish and Dutch and Norwegian and Eskimo dialect for Greenland Bengali for Bangladesh in Korean in Japanese and we think going to be translated into Russian an amazing little 11-year-old girl facing death for Freedom next person her own brother kamate took one look at him and began crying hand to him her head on his shoulder sobbing her brother had no hair on his head one month before i’ cut it all off shony men and women don’t cut their long beautiful black hair they believe their creator in heaven allows their soul to live in their hair only when you’re broken and saddened by death would you cut your soul off and throw it to the ground showing your creator your sorrow we know what he told her that day sister you’re one month too late our family was killed at the bubble they said the girl cried most of that day a couple times tried to do some interpreting would break down when she could speak she did the greatest thing for the country she would ever do she said to her brother these are good men I’m with save my life to my baby stop my owner from beating me help them they’re good men wasn’t speaking just one of the 500 Indian people of the tribe speaking to her brother the chief of the tribe Captain Lewis had the chief sister with him I makers that told me for that to happen that moment in American history was Millions to one like winning the lottery Manifest Destiny and providential horse trading started right away but went slowly Captain Lewis would say something English leish he would translate to French for shano he would translate TOA for S she for kamate would answer to his sister in Shoni she would translate Hada for sharo he would translate engl for leish and leish should translate or in the French for leish and leish should translate into English so in a week they only had 12 horses and they needed 30 and the Shoni children have no buffalo meat to eat they were attacked a month before they’re starving starving children are more important to Indian men than trading horses and the Indian men plan to leave in the middle of the night and go on the hunt Next Day Lewis wakes up no horses he’s in big trouble saak joa knows what’s going to happen she could understand Shon and went right to her owner and said tell Captain Lewis my people are leaving in the middle of night going on the hunt no more horses there’s trouble Caro hears him in the morning and waits all day late afternoon he comes over hey Captain Lewis my woman over there she says her people are leaving in the middle of the night they’re going to go on the hunt Lewis says to shano when you tell you he said this morning and Lewis wrote in his journal that he reprimanded Sho sever something like this shano you knew this this morning and waited all day to tell me don’t you understand that these people have my expedition in their hands without the horses were finished why did wait C down over to kit and said kit did you promise you would trade me the horses I need when I came here did you promise that K said yes and leou says come wait where I come from by what he says and come wa you think the great father in Washington is going to be happy when I tell him you left he’s not going to do anything for your people you’re a good Chief and a good man you will stay and do the promise mark it Down August 25 saki joa did the greatest thing of all saved the day when the horse trading was going to fail and she was the only one that could do it indispensable Lewis called her well we know she uh did the job because the horse trading started right away and it went fast and they soon had 29 didn’t ride him load him with tons of bags and gunpowder give him Toby and his son to lead him through hundreds of miles of the bitteroot mountains over 200 miles up one Ridge and down the next slide rock climbing over dead trees on the low low Ridge in September with snow up to their knees ran out of food started killing young horses and eating horse meat wormy and rancid and smelly they all came out of the mountain scurvy and dissenter open boils Soares all over their arms and legs starving to death and they met the finest Indian people they were ever meet the NES Pur tribe saw the starving people and brought them fish and berries and roots and seeds the NZ Pur tribe helped those men take giant trees 40 and 50 feet long gouge and burn those trees out to make Dugout canoes so the men could Pile in their baggage all the way to the Pacific Ocean the na Pur agreed to take care of all their horses and have them fattened up and ready to go in the spring when they came back now heard 65 horses CU they kept trading for more all along the way Captain Lewis said we have met the findest Indian people of our Expedition the net first tribe they can’t do enough for us strangers middle of October they’re floating that beautiful clear water river you can ride us2 right next to it it’s beautiful it goes into the spectacular Snake River and the Snake River goes into Eastern Washington and hits the great Columbia River border of Oregon and Washington headed for the Pacific Ocean it goes through a deep deep gorge with volcanoes on all sides November 7 Captain Clark shouts ocean and view all the joy made it to the Pacific Ocean November 7 spend three and a half months of misery on the Oregon coast 130 days it rained 118 the clothes rotted on their bodies they hang their elk meet up with no freezing temperatures rancid and smelly in four or five days ate rancid elk and spoil fish washed it down with water filled up their fort with smoke every afternoon to get the fleas out so they could get night sleep all of them were sick when they left March 23 headed home GL had to be rid of the Soggy Oregon coast first week of May back with the npers horses all fattened up and ready to go but that low Ridge came up out the clear water over the mountains not ready snow Banks 30 feet deep they sat there for six weeks watching snow M I come from Jackson Wyoming we have some of the finest snow Banks you have ever seen and all of us locals Every Spring are sitting there in our lawn chairs watching them go it’s really exciting you got to do it sometime while they’re there little pompy is sick 15mon old boy throat up noral size they said he couldn’t swallow anything and could hardly breathe and they feared for his life the man men love him they don’t want him to Die the two Captain take turns holding a little boy in their arms trying all Medicine Dr r two weeks near death and they barely pull pompy through riding the Prairie one day his little face Was Bitten so badly by mosquitoes his eyes were swollen shut not easy for a teenage girl and a tiny baby to serve that expedition thousands of miles when they get back to North Dakota country to leave sakaj there head on to St Louis the two captains agree sack rendered great service to the United States of America they rote it right in their own and they said shano was a man of little Merit they paid him his 500 on the spot he would come to St Louis later and get 320 Acres of fre land anything they gave SAA he’d take it from her as soon as they left they had to keep him from beating her Captain Clark loved bpy and said to P way and sharo let me adopt this beautiful promising little boy I’ll give him a Wonderful Life Education many opportunities parents agreed the adoption as soon as he was old enough to leave his mother Captain Clark’s name is signed in the courthouse of St Louis he became pompy’s father one month after death 22y old mother dying Fort Manuel South Dakota same put fever she had at the great fall left behind a tiny baby girl four-month old is it wrote about her death in the fort wrote these words today the finest and best woman in our Fort died the wife of sharbono finest and best more High marks given her we don’t know what happens the little liette we think she only lived six or eight months but pompy goes on to live a wonderful life he grows up well educated by Captain Clark becomes a hunting guide for weal men from one as a prince from Germany invites them to come to Germany and live in a Royal Palace travel all over Europe for the prince does it for six or seven years he comes back and serves in a Catholic Mission outside of San Diego California he serves as a clerk in a hotel outside of Sacramento he’s a magistrate in the courts of California settling legal issues and he dies at the age of 61 on the way to a gold Russian Montana dying of pneumonia average age of a man then years today we have three wonderful things going for us nutrition hygiene Healthcare us are here lucky to be here and wasn’t pompy fortunate his young mother carried and old Captain Clark fell in love with him and gave him a wonderful opportunity for a great life St Louis was a dead end for Sak nobody wanted to hear about her or the naspers Europeans hated Indian they were killing Indian people Indian people were killing Europeans the tragedy would go on massacres genocide for almost 80 more years not a very nice chapter in the history of our country well we’re in the bicentennial now n started writing about secondy and they just wrote a some wrote dirty filthy pornography Hollywood made an awful movie we exploit I wanted you to know the truth about her so I picked out all the mention and Clark made of her in their two million words over 70 times and analyze it put the maps in so you know exactly what happened to her and the baby book came out of 1997 the same year the United States decided to have a new dollar replaces Susan B Anthony gold color smooth edge new woman I got involved with the coin right away when there are hundreds of women sent this book to secretary of the treasur reuin told all the things that she did in the Expedition and nearly gave her life with her baby serving the Army and we ended up getting s on the dollar coin then aishman wanted to take her off CU he thought she was some obscure Indian girl and we had to fight him in congress with the help of Senator enzy and Senator Doran of North Dakota we had to De beat legisl twice went to the White House where there was a huge out ceremony Indian drummers and Mrs Clinton was the host of after an hour and 15 minutes of celebrating design of the new dollar coin she said I’m going to pull back the curtain to show you the design will’ll be the new dollar coin you’re going to be the first to see it she said to all of us sitting there pulled back the curtain every television camera the ferary network was running she unveiled the beautiful sideway a dollar coin the congressman who didn’t like it that she was going to be on there said nobody would like it was dead wrong came out January 2000 people lined up for blocks to get the first hours 600 million of them disappeared immediately lady in Idaho Falls has 2500 of these stashed away she won’t let loose of them and I’ll tell you why for her it’s greed sa them long enough sell them for a lot more to collectors later pompy 8 weeks old asleep on his mother’s shoulder that’s the only coin in the world with a baby sleeping on his mother’s shoulder this is our only coin where the person on it is looking at you all the rest of profile and look at the Gold tin so nobody’s allowed to use it except the tooth fa ladies and gentlemen Senator eny tells me buying tons of paper and cottoned into linen and running through a printing press making dollar bills that don’t even last a year and a half and it’s costing us 700 million in tax dollars this is the first County ever to declare itself the sagua dollar County your your Commissioners did that way back in 2000 these coins will last 40 or 50 years we used to only use dollar coins in Montana when I first came here in 59 we need to 700 million to help our troops folks we don’t need to be wasteful Americans we could help our troops more if we didn’t waste we didn’t have such a deficit and like there’s no tomorrow so let’s not just put a sticker on our car saying we support the troops let’s do I have enough dollar coins in here to eliminate every dollar bill in the I’m going to go over to that little book store over here and sign books I want everybody who’s got a good conscience to come over with your dollar bills and start using these it would be wonderful if you did make happy I can’t get Congress who elate to dollar bill Canada’s done it Australia New Zealand pound England the Euro they’re all coins no brainer except for Americans White House ceremony was over at 4:30 150 of us go to the treasury Department across the street for a happy hour a ballroom full of goodies and I knew there would be a lot of small talk I didn’t want to do small talk I wanted to say something uplifting about what we did that afternoon so this is what I said3 years ago two captains of the United States Army stood on the banks of the Missouri River looking at a teenage girl in her little saying goodbye to her s gratitude for what s had done for them and the United States America they said their one great regret they couldn’t do anything to show her their appreciation I said today we Americans on the banks of the pomac river in Washington DC and country is doing something wonderful for that girl and her little boy and it’s the right thing to do thank you thank you very much Ken you’re folks all the boys and girls I got all the boys and girls are here I have a special gift for them uh set t one of my books I’ve read aloud word for word and I’m celebrating the continual by giving children a little gift and I they can take me home with them so to speak on cassette tape I’ll be over there by little book and you you come up and you’ll get their facette tape Ken now go over to the bookstore to meet Ken and he’ll be signing books and invited all of you over there right now we have to get ready for our next presentation which is about rattlesnakes by Roger s I’ve said rattlesnakes from the East Coast all you women children will be up in the Raptors by now you all are tough out here in so stick stay tuned for that we we do have to rearrange some of the chairs so in that meantime please go see Ken over there at the small um book store and he’ll be

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Ron Snake: Shoshone Language, Culture, and Lewis & Clark Legacy

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:58 +0000

well good morning everyone and welcome to the tent of many voices the tent of many voices is part of the core of Discovery 2 traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit this is a multi- agency Federal exhibit with the National Park Service being the lead agency and what we do is we travel around the country primarily on the Lewis and Clark Trail and as we set up in these different communities we have this tenin voices where we can bring in a wide variety of presenters to share with us these different voices these different perspectives both on the Lewis and Clark expedition its Legacy but we also like to hear from the descendants of those indigenous Nations those American Indian peoples that have been living had been living where Louis and Clark traveled for thousands of years and that’s what we’re going to do this morning to start off we’re going to hear from Ron snake edmo Ron is a member of the sh shony banic tribe he is a uh veteran of the US Military and a warrior in the traditional sense he is a published author a poet he’s also a linguistic Anthropologist and he’s going to talk share with us some of the language and culture of the shishoni banak people so let’s give him a warm welcome here to the T mini voices thank you n DOA for Hall Knight I am a called snake I’m from Fort Hall that’s my introduction my language uh first off I would like to welcome you to uh this tent of many voices this tent is located in what we call Nua soia Nua means the people that’s what the Shian people call ourselves is the newer but other people call Shon and bionic and all that that stuff but our term for us is Nua soia means the mother earth Soo is the word for the land B is our word for mother and in our traditional ways we believe that the Earth is our mother we’re the same color we come from the earth we’ve been here forever archaeologists have gone down to the 8,000 foot 8 8,000 year level in their digs and it’s been been straight As shonan for that whole time there so we’ve been here for a long time when I was a child I was adopted out and lived away from my people for quite a few years when I was in my 40s I came back to my people and when I came back into our homeland I felt the spirits of my ancestors now uh we’ve lived our homeland our traditional homelands this is just one small portion of it our homeland stretched from from the Sierra Nevadas to the Black Hills from Canada to Mexico we have the largest homeland of any uh Indian peoples in this country but as you know now we only possess a small portion just a little drop of our homelands and that’s uh one of the things I’ll be talking about so anyway welcome to New hogia now I an anthropologist in other words I study cultures of different people I’m a ling istic Anthropologist so I studied languages how languages work what the meaning is and especially the part I work on is language preservation a people lose a portion of their culture if they lose their language now unfortunately English is the common language that all indigenous peoples in North America speak now some of us speak our own language but that’s not very many and that’s a problem because as our elders die they’re the last fluent speakers of our language when they die that knowledge is gone but we can only uh we can only express certain things in our language that can’t be translated adequately into another language because we translate not just the language but also the culture for example one of my poems is called on beichi beep in shishoni and that me that tells the whole story just the title of the poem itself and what it means is English translation of that title is stranger arrives when I write I always called the American stranger with capital S like John Wayne and his Pilgrim so that’s if you see my writings when I talk about stranger I’m talking about the American so andab beichi wo is a combination of two words a coined word it’s on the beach means people of another tribe and wo is enemy and until things change that’s how I have to describe the American but the second word bedp is a verb and our verbs are very active compared to English verbs and so Bida is the actual verb itself the p is the suffix but that what that p means is uh the Strang came the L and Clark expedition came into our homeland with just a few people but now that small group of people has grown into a large population so now we’re outnumbered by the visitors to our country so that’s I tell the whole story just with the title but in English of course I have to tell the story because there’s nothing there’s no equivalent in English of telling a whole story just one or two words which is unfortunate but English itself is a very complex language because has so many other languages that are a part of it that have been adopted or borrowed so it’s it’s you know even English itself is a complex language okay but what what is main thing is this this idea that we can only say certain things like with a couple words in our language or Express a whole concept but when we try to translate that word into English we have to tell the whole concept behind the whole culture behind it because like when I talk about soia to me she the Earth she’s my mother and when I die I’ll return back to her I’m of her I’m the same color as our mother and but when uh I but when I talk to people of different culture they don’t have that same concept now that concept is kind of coming into the American Viewpoint because of the environmental movement and the environmental movement is finally starting to get the message that we have to protect our mother we have to protect the Earth we have to protect the water that we drink we have to protect the air that we breathe and the closer you get to cities you’re going to find you can’t breathe the air because it’s so polluted uh you can’t drink the water in law places because it’s polluted with chemicals or other things so you know this is a concern for our people because we’re kind of stewards of the land because we’ve been here for thousands and thousands of years but our visitors that come into our lands it’s a concern for them too because they have to breathe the same air that we breathe they have to drink the same water we drink so you know you don’t want to poison your own self that’s essentially what that message is so the visitors that come into our land if they understand who we are are tied to the land then they can appreciate better what they’re seeing and like when you buy a piece of property you have a responsibility to protect that land you can’t just pollute that land you know there’s a responsibility because you’re only here for a short time and then you’re going to walk on to the next World and then somebody else is going to have that piece of property and it would just go in perpetuity but if you poison that land or you destroy that land then pretty soon it’s just Wasteland it’s not good for anything not even a plants will grow on it in some areas so this is things that we ask that everybody else that comes into our country to respect our land because we’ll be here we’re survivors and we’ll be here long after the American goes uh I don’t know what will happen that causes you go but it probably won’t be very good uh and since we live you live amongst us we’ll also be affected by that too so you know even though people pray we some of our people pray that you all disappear uh what would make you disappear will also probably make us disappear so you know it’s a a two-edged sword so to speak now another thing about culture uh the American government has tried to destroy our cultures over the years and even still going on today uh in my lifetime I was born 1945 in my lifetime I saw termination and relocation termination and relocation was a policy set forth in the eyes and how years and what that entailed was to remove all the Indians from the reservations move us to the cities and then take the land to give away to the non-indian people why they would want to take our lands from us what we got left is beyond me cuz they have everything else and another thing that was involved was taking our children from us from our people without benefit of law uh you could go in and just say I want that kid as a souvenir and take that kid that’s what happened to me I was taken by missionaries also uh we weren’t allowed to speak our languages in schools it resulted in severe beatings but we learned English and through the through the whip through that yard stick that those teachers used to have so this is so now for me it’s difficult for me to speak my language because I as an adopti I wasn’t around my people so I didn’t hear our language after I was 8 years old now today my hearing isn’t very well from being in war you know those artillery rounds and stuff like that they kind of ruin your hearing so to speak so now I can’t hear all the sounds when I’m trying to learn my language so I write my language better than I speak it or hear it because I can only speak what I can hear so I will never be fluent speaker because of that which is sad because I can’t pass on a lot of knowledge to my children and my grandchild so that means the elders today the 70 and 80 and 90 and 100 year olds that are still fluent speakers uh I if they talk to me I can’t understand what they’re saying because I I only have one good ear so that knowledge is lost when they die as linguistic Anthropologist one of the things that we’re doing we have a Shon language program at Idaho State University and we’re we developed a writing system we call as anthropologists and linguists call writing system orthographies know that’s a technical term but anyway we created an orthography that’s user friendly that can be used on a computer or if anybody still has them typewriters it was originally developed for typewriters but Technologies rendered those uh obsolete I’ve seen one typewriter in the last 10 years anyway uh our languages have never been written before so as a linguist we have to understand the rules of the language in other words we have to know what verbs know identify the verbs how they work identify the nouns identify the adverbs and adjectives and all that other stuff and then figure out how the sentences are structured and that is a the English and Shoni sentence structure is completely different English you have the subject your verb followed by the object that the verb is acts upon once sh sh we start out with the subject but then we have the verb I mean sorry we have the object and then we have the verb but the verb our verbs have a lot of prefixes and suffixes so you just we rarely use just the root verb itself but we modify that with uh uh the ad the uh prefixes and suffixes for example uh when we uh here is something or there is something uh we have different we have six different words that we use depending on the location of that object from the speaker it’s always from the speaker’s point of view in other words can touch something one uh word if it’s close enough but not close enough to touch then I’d use a different verb or different word location word like in In Crowd here throw there a different word then as far as I can see when I sorry they can’t hear you you’re covering up the transmitter here hold it up a can you can you hear me okay let me move this here not used to this new Fango stuff so anyway we have that distance uh verb or distance word that describes the location from the speaker’s position but in English there’s no you can’t tell where an object is located when you speak about it like I could say I’d have to say like okay on such and such a corner and salmon to give you a location but I don’t know my way around salon so I can’t give an example what’s where so anyway that that’s a a that makes translation difficult so we have to when we translate from shason into English we have to try to convey some of that distance that we’re talking about another word is to go somewhere well our word for go depends on the manner in which you go uh like if you go like I’m from Fort Hall right now that’s where my home is so I came here to Salmon but then I would return back to Fort Hall so I’d use one word for that to for go and so I like if I’m telling some I’m going to go uh somewhere but when I use that that verb to go they’ll know that I’m going to come back in a short time I’m just going to go do my business come right back but if I’m going to come here and then go to Missoula then build or somewhere else and then Yellowstone and then finally come back home then I’d use a different verb for that and you could tell just by that but again when I translate into English I’d have to say well I’m going to go to Sam and then to be and mulu whatever it was and finally back home again in about a month or whatever so that’s you know that’s what makes translation difficult along with the sentence structure itself we also have as far as person uh in English you have a singular and you have plural plural is two or more well in Shon languages we have three uh persons you have the singular then you have dual which is two and that comes inclusive and exclusive if it’s exclusive then say for example I use the Dual form and it’s exclusive then be just you two but not me but if I use the inclusive form then be you and me but he would be excluded then we have plural which is three or more and again you have that uh uh inclusive and exclusive and the inclusive means the speaker itself him or herself so again that that shows you the difference in our languages and so that again that has to be translated you know are we talking two people are we talking 20 people we have have to or three or more people we have to specify that in our translations then again certain things like soia our concept of our of the earth we have to explain the whole concept the whole cultural concept to people that don’t have that same uh Concept in their worldview in other words we have to translate worldview into a different worldview now if you’re a shy person that’s lived in the Shon land on the reservations your whole life and you’ve had very little contact outside of that then it’d be more difficult because in order to be a successful translator you have to translate into another culture but you have to understand that culture to do it so for me I thought it was unfortunate I was adopted but then it turned to be a positive thing because I understand the other culture Plus in my milit I was a Green Beret so I work with indigenous peoples throughout the world and so this learning a new culture uh was a benefit to me when I went to different different countries because working with indigenous people one of the things you have to do is do a cultural study before you go in so you know who they are what their uh belief system is what the uh government in their world is what their system is is there a conflict are we going to overthrow that government are we going to strengthen that government of course you know our government makes that decision but when we go in we do what the our government wants us to do but if you have people go in and they don’t have any idea about culture how important culture is then they might blow the whole mission and unfortunately the United States tends to do that quite a bit uh let’s see now also when I write in my language uh I can transform this is something I’ve been experimenting with in my Poes making Transformations from an Ordinary World to the spiritual world now in our traditional ways the spiritual world is just as valid as this physical world that we have here like we see some of us can see the spirits and hear them others they’re completely blind and deaf to that but I’m I don’t know if I’m fortunate or if I’m cursed but I I see things sometimes I hear things and things come to me so in that way uh some stuff I try to I can try to explain in my writing but others I just can’t do it because there’s no corresponding Concept in the American world but again so uh we live in two cultures you know we live with within our culture which is struggling but we’re also living within your culture but again even though like we have a town called Pocatello next to us but a lot of our people if they do go in town they just go in shop or unfortunately some go to drink but that’s the only contact they have with that culture out there but the people that live in poel 50,000 probably 90% of them have never been to the reservation so they don’t really know who we are either which makes it difficult because that causes problems because since we don’t know them and they don’t know us when we talk about a subject we might be thinking we’re talking about the same subject but we’re not so again uh we have to learn to talk with your culture and you have to learn to talk with ours to get good Communications and without communication you’re going to have hard hardship you’re going to have heartburn and everything else okay and what we’re doing right now in this location is there’s the Lewis and Clark expedition came through in the early 1800s and as they came through they met different Indian peoples and they went to find the Pacific Ocean find a way to there that was just the first of many non-natives to come into our country and there’s a legacy a result of that our the Legacy could have been different but unfortunately it wasn’t it was a more Legacy of Conquest so the Americans came in they took our lands they well basically what they happened they’d be on the Oregon Trail or California Trail and some just got tired and end up setting foot where setting up where they got tired at and then Town started growing then all these people like Fort Hall uh we have 50,000 people come through there in one year and when you think about that that is a big problem because when you have 50,000 people coming through on a On A TRU somewhere they have to eat so the early ones they find game right alongside the roads or the trails but the next group of people that come through they have to go a little bit further away and then pretty soon they have to go miles and miles and pretty soon there might not be anything for them to eat so a lot of these wagon trains the later ones they had lost starvation because there’s nothing to eat and like we were nomad so like we’d come to Fort Hall for the winter time and the lamh high people they’d be up here in the winter time because the rivers don’t freeze so you have water year round and the temperatures are pretty mild here compared to other places around here so we would winter here but then in the summer we’d be elsewhere we’d be out looking for sammon we’d be out hunting we’d be gathering berries C root and everything else that we need to survive the following winter or we be over chasing the Buffalo but when we come back all a sudden there’s a town here now what do we do we’re dispossessed without even knowing it so then we have to find somewhere else to live because if we try to stay here there’ll be conflict because we’re all competing for the same resource but where we used to Camp there’s a town so where we go and so that’s part of the aftermath of the leou Expedition the second aftermath is there is a we faced almost a century and a half of genocide and uh ethnic cleansing and part of was unintentional ethnic cleansing because like what just the example I gave you when we come back here uh there’s somebody else here and they are staying year round so we’re no longer here we have to go somewhere else or will be killed off because you know numbers count so that was the Legacy and then of course then the government wanted to assimilate us turn us into non-indians and so they took all of our young people and sent them to these boarding schools something like in the first 10 years of boarding school something like 20,000 kids died of disease and homesickness CU as soon as the kid went into a boarding school their hair was shaved off all the uh tradition additional clothing were taken away they were put in the uniforms and uh were forced to speak English males were forced to uh become uh laborers uh they try to teach them to farm uh the females were basically made into house servants but if if a a kid had a lot of intelligence unfortunately that intelligence was wasted because they were forced into menial roles so that the cultural uh genocide that was going on and unfortunately the boarding school system just ended in the last 20 years there’s young people today uh your age and younger probably that went to the boarding schools of course the brutality ended in the 80s or in the uh 70s in the 60s the brutality was still there God keep remembering about this and tan here so anyway that’s part of the Legacy but we are survivors too we have survived that uh and our population has risen since the 1920s 1920s was a bad time for us uh but that was good for anthropology because uh at that time uh the main idea was to Sage all the knowledge of the indigenous peoples because they was truly thought that we would become extinct because we’re at our lowest population uh tuberculosis is rampant uh people were starving to death because there was no food and of course right after the 20s came the the Great Depression and of course everybody suffered then not just Indian people but everybody and then you had another Mass migration with the the Dust Bowl occurring at the same time so you know there’s been a uh there’s been major Dynamics have occurred in our continent over the last uh few hundred years major uh pop relation shifts major uh land shifts and everything so and it’s still going on uh you probably all read about all these Californians comeing here to Idaho want to change things around to their way well if you go to California people as far as you can see if you go to the east coast it’s the same way it’s only in between that’s relatively empty but they’re filling up fast but where are they going to all go and they can’t big bu build big cities everywhere in the desert cuz there no water but again people are starting to learn well you you know you going have to start recycling the water because there’s only so much water available especially during a drought like we’ve had a seven-year drought here this is the wetest year we’ve had in seven years but we haven’t had any rain oh couple months now is this going to produce anything well for me I hope not because I have to ride my motorcycle through it but but we need that rain we need the water we we need everything cuzz I if I just read in the paper this morning the reservoirs are almost some of them are only a third full now and we’ve got a winter ahead before those things start filling up again so what’s going to happen you know are we going to run out of water again we don’t know so anyway you know our lives and your lives are all interconnected what about the future well I would like to to see the environmental movement become more educated about the world that they live in because some of them are really radical and they don’t really understand what they’re doing you know putting a spike in a tree to stop somebody from cutting it down is nonproductive uh poisoning animals so there’s no research that’s nonproductive you’re supposed to be trying to save the animals but yet you poison them or you put them let them out of their cages well these animals can’t live on their own because they’ve never known Freedom so you let a a a rat out of its cage well what’s going to happen is going to get eaten up by the first Predator that sees it so you know that’s some things you have to think what about uh things that you know what happens if the animal that you release if you’re one of these Peta people what if this animal is released has a communicable disease you might start a major pandemic so again you know the environmental movement has some crazes in that but those crazy es need to be policed by the environmental movement the environmental movement overall though is a good thing because government tends to be like a bulldozer they want to remove one tree but they destroy the whole Forest to remove one tree so and of course what happens when you do that you’ve destroyed everything that lives within that forest or is affected by it you uh pollute the water because the land that’s water that’s absorbed abbed in the ground now runs off and pollutes the rivers and eventually we have to drink that water so you know it’s important to have an movement what else do I see for the future I see the American people starting to think more like we do in other words being part of the world not being separate I see hopefully more tolerance of people other than yourselves I see hopefully the end to Wars unnecessary Wars some Wars are necessary to protect other people to stop an aggressor those are necessary Wars but like this current war that we’re in I think is totally unnecessary and I I’ve been to war I’ve killed people I’ve had I have people’s blood on my hands I have those nightmares those Ghosts of War will be with me rest my life and the people that decide to go to war should have that same experience because these are our children that we’re sending off to war now our grandchildren by people have never seen combat so it’s easy if you’ve never seen combat to say hey let’s go to war it’s big and glorious and you know we’ll project our power to some helpless people somewhere else well right now there’s close to 2,000 dead and I think I saw in paper something like 13 to 15,000 wounded but the UN the un uh counted wounds of that war are the ghosts that these soldiers male and female have to see their friends Blown Away the enemy Blown Away innocent people blown away and is there any real need for that war uh right now we’re kind of stuck in it but it should have never happened so I would you know that’s what you know my vision My Hope in F the future is that our Future Leaders will think many many times before they react with military force and of course as Native Americans it’s our Legacy to go to war no we’re warriors and a warrior doesn’t Sher his duty his or her Duty and so even though we don’t agree with the war we go because that’s what we have to do to be to live with ourselves but then one thing that happens with our peoples is when we come back we go through healing ceremonies which helps considerably I went almost 10 years before I got my healing but I still have the nightmares I still see those ghosts I will till the day I die but anyway I would like to uh conclude by welcoming you here and then also a question and answer period and how do we stand on time you got about 15 minutes so we have plenty of time for questions if you folks do have some questions uh please raise your hand I bring the microphone around that way everybody can share in the question we can hear them does anyone have any questions for Ron okay we’ll start right up here first of all it saddens me for the loss of the language and of course with the language is the associated culture um what is happening as far as are they recording or how are the elders and their language being archived and that well with language pre with language preservation uh it’s kind of been hdden miss years and one of the first things you do is you try to get a hold of the elders and tape as much as you can even videotape them and of course with new technology and stuff it’s getting easier and easier to collect information but the major problem there is uh in the 60s and 70s was termo turmoil for the whole country with that war and the uh hippie movement all that but the generation of anthropologists that are the teachers today or the old the oldtimers they were of the school where they’d come into the reservation and go right in people’s houses and and do their studies and they’re pretty arrogant as a result of that our elders today that were young people like my age back then they don’t want to talk to anthropologists and Native Americans going into anthropology there’s only a handful of us that are anthropologists and we will become the new anthropology new anthropologists know cuz who better study our people than us to explain our our cultures To The World At Large so but as but as we go in like if we we have elders and we know we need to record their stories we need to record the language and everything but some of them don’t even want to talk to us because of the abuses that occurred in the 60s and 70s so that’s the you know but that’s the first step is to collect that information the second step is to uh start teaching the language and all the different Indian nations have have these language preservation programs they teach but only the little ones the people my generation and my children you know who are in their 30s they don’t speak the language and we need to do it across all all age ranges not just that uh small you know the little ones and we only do it for a certain amount but see we’re write starting to write our languages but we have to write in our language and we have to have more than one or two people writing because if you teach people how to read and write but you have nothing to read and write you’re wasting your time and that’s the next step in language preservation is to develop literature in the language and that’s what I work on okay any more questions all right another question I’ll come around with the microphone do you know why the spelling of limh high changed from Li to l over the years that I don’t know in fact it’s that word was given by the the Mormons uh you know it’s one of their words our the people that lived up here they were called the AA in other words the salmon eaters they didn’t call themselves lamh high now today they call themselves lamh high but you know that’s not what they’re originally called it’s basically like you know that that’s came into common use you know in other words but it’s not what they would call if they had their choice they wouldn’t call themselves that uh a lot of things changed from the original spellings to today probably some person thought thought the I was a e so they wrote a e and yeah so you know like when you go from handwritten to typewritten somebody might have mistr know thought that was an e instead of a I so that’s how the lamh high came in then once you start having what lot of documents with that then that’s how it came in that’s probably how it happened I don’t know for sure but that’s why I’d speculate on all right do we have any other questions all right let’s please give a Ron a warm welcome or a warm thank you actually for joining us here in the 10 of many voices thank you again and remember folks we do have programs here in the tenam Min voices every hour on the hour our program schedule is located in the back please check that out our next program coming up at the

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Dr. Hope Benedict on Lemhi Shoshone History and Removal

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:53 +0000

well good afternoon everyone and welcome to the tent of many voices the tent of many voices is part of the core of Discovery 2 traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit this is a multi- agency exhibit with the National Park Service being the lead agency it’s been on the road since January of 2003 will continue to travel through 2006 during the four years of the B Centennial on that lisis and Clark expedition and what we do here in the Ten of many voices is we bring in a wide variety of presenters to share with us both different aspects of that Lewis and Clark expedition its history and its Legacy and that’s what we’re going to learn a little bit about this afternoon is some of the legacy of that Lewis and Clark EXP Edition we have with us Dr hope Benedict and she is a historian of Western history she’s a local here in salmon and is going to share with us some of the repercussions of the lose and Clark Expedition for the lmh high Shon so let’s give her a warm welcome here to the tenam mini voices thank you very much I know some of you of course were expecting Rosina George but because of the tragedy in her family in the last few days she was not able to be here and I was called approximately an hour ago and asked to fill in so here I am my I was born in lumai County as we’re my parents and grandparents so I have a long history here and then in order to not have to go very far away from home to do dissertation research I decided to write my dissertation on lmh high County primarily on the for of Community Based on mining and ranching but an aspect of my research was also focused on the LM High sh Shoni so my spee my talk is entitled The repercussions of a Lewis and Clark Trek for the lmh high Indians it whistled a minute ago made me nervous okay the repercussions of the lisis and Clark Trek for the lhai Indians for the lumai show shony tribe the the return of sakaja in the company of the core of Discovery in August of 185 may be the most renowned aspect of their history but it is only a short segment of their long tenure and their continued presence in what is now the lmh High Valley of East Central Idaho forced removal to the Fort Hall reservation in 197 ended the lmh high’s continuous habitation but not the connection to their ancestral Homeland commemoration of a Lewis and Clark B Centennial has invigorated recent lamh High efforts to return and some members of the tribe currently seek the creation of a new lmh high reservation others have worked assiduously with the lmh high County Lewis and Clark committee to create this exemplary Educational Center known as the sakya interpretive Center which we are all pleased to be in today 200 years after the Lewis and Clark Journey set in motion the process that led to the Lumis removal the commemoration of that same Trek could prove or provide the opportunity for their return the available recorded history of the lhis stems primarily from their recurring interaction with the Caucasians beginning with the arrival of Lewis and Clark as you are all well aware their dealings with these groups demonstrate a people interested primarily in peace and with a strong desire and determination to remain in their traditional Homeland from the late 18th century sakas people a group of approximately 400 to 500 spent the spring and summer in the Lum high and salmon river valleys calling themselves aadea or salmon eaters the Lumis relied on the seasonal salmon runs to provide their primary food source for the rest of the year they coalesced with other tribes or sometimes moved in smaller family groups through traditional migratory regions hunting Buffalo or gathering cam but by the second half of the 19th century the lmh high band of the show shony circumscribed by increasing intertribal Warfare White incursions and The Disappearing Buffalo spent the majority of the year in their lmh High encampment always a part of their traditional territory by 1860 this Valley had become their primary home once the core left for the Pacific Ocean the lmai Shoni so Shoni excuse me apparently encountered few other whites until the founding of the Salmon River Mission In 1855 depleted sources of beaver pelts did move a few fur Trappers and Traders into their area during the 1820s and the early 1830s but with minimal effect on the population as a whole the Mormons however were the harbingers of change for the lmis after establishing themselves in the heartland of the Great Basin the latter day Saints initiated the settlement of a protective ring of communities which could also serve as potential markets and convenient outposts for Traders and missionaries in May of 1855 Brigham Young sent 27 men North from Salt Lake into the region of the salmon and lmh high rivers to begin the process in that region among the six such settlements established in 1855 the Salmon River Mission had specific goals Paramount among them according to the directives issued by Young was to quote settle among the buffalo hunting Flathead banic or Shoni Indians end of quote or to get as close to them as tribal leadership would allow their prescribed duties included teaching the tribes the quote Arts of civilization end of quote such as Agriculture and peaceful association with other tribes and Caucasians receiving permission from the tribe to settle in the valley the missionaries began construction near the camping site of Lewis and Clark on the lmh high river and in what was essentially the summer home of the Shoni this area was also used of course as you know by the banck and by the NES Pur as they either pass through or use the region for fishing most historians familiar with this period in Mormon and lmh high history contend that the indigenous population seemed fairly content with this arrangement between the missionaries and the tribe asking only that the missionaries not kill game or catch fish for commercial purposes agreeing to those conditions the Mormons dug irrigation ditches planted crops built a Corral a mud fort and 13 cabins inside the fort walls they eventually added another 13 cabins a blacksmith shop Sawmill and they dug a well it was in essence of course becoming a community in a friendly gesture the IND indan tribes introduced the Mormons to the enormity of the salmon runs in the lmh high and salmon Rivers promises not withstanding the fish seemed so plentiful that the LDS could not resist the temptation to ship smoked salmon to Salt Lake that first summer they sent eight wagon loads within two years the missionaries had also developed an active trade with Fort Hall to the South and with Fort Owen in the Bitterroot Valley of the Montana territory by 1857 the mission had expanded to over 100 people in fact Brigham Young was so impressed with the mission that he visited the lmh High Valley with a large Entourage and encourag closer relations with the lmis themselves he also at that point offered to buy Fort Hall on his return trip with the Mormons increasing numbers the arrival of 200 head of cattle continued shipping of salmon to Utah extensive cutting of Timber for increasing fences and also of course for cabins and the apparent development of a permanent permanent Mormon settlement worried the indigenous population in addition LDS attempts to practice trade and diplomacy among the various tribes within the region without understanding the intertribal relations backfired on them during the last months of the mission the three tribes within the region at the time experienced a period of hostility that was exacerbated by well-intended mentioned Mormon interference rather than fostering peace they returned their incurred their wrath and distrust simultaneously the deterioration in relations between the United States government and the Mormon state of Deseret affected the trust and trade between the LH High Mormons and also the Mountaineers and Traders within the region suffice it to say the situation proved untenable for the LDS mission by February of 1858 bringham Young facing difficulties of his own determined that the Salmon River Mission should immediately be abandoned he sent 150 men to rescue those at the lmh high Outpost in March thus ending the first White Settlement in the area it is difficult to assess the effect of the Mormon mission on the lmis perhaps the lmis gained insight into the Diplomatic practices of whites perhaps they learned to distrust promises made but it would be unfair to say that the entire episode was negative the missionaries willingly and generously shared their provisions and crops with the lhis and it seems their intentions at developing a peaceful Association were genuine if at times misguided the Mormon Fort did have one obvious result and that remains True to this day and probably the most obvious for all of us here officially known as the Salmon River Mission when established the missionaries called the fort limhi Li mhi after an ancient Indian ch Chief who appears in the Book of Mormon the Mormons applied the name to the river near which they built their Fort to the mountain range and the entire region this appalation proved the most lasting feature of the Salmon River mission for although the spelling was eventually changed to LHI L mhi the next white settlers kept the Mormons n nomenclature the term is now generally applied to saguia people to differentiate them from the Shoni and banic of Fort Hall for the next 8 years after the LDS left and abandoned the mission the lhis again enjoyed relative isolation although this area has often been and usually was a Crossroads for people traveling through to different gold regions particularly in the early 1860s the discovery of gold in the mountains above the Salmon River however ensured change although population numbers varied during the first few years from 1,000 to 2,000 and of course it times rumored to be as high as 10,000 although that number was never reached the evolution of a core population of miners ranchers and service providers had a significant impact on the lmh high’s living conditions and set the stage for their eventual removal one of the first and most painful problems arose from the lmh high’s dependence on salmon in the first newspaper in 1867 the difficulties were chronicled miners supplemented their prospecting incomes incomes by setting up fish wear effectively cutting off the fish from the lmis in the June 20th 1867 issue of the local paper the semiweekly mining news the editor reported a disturbance at a lake 15 mi from salmon City evidently one of the tribal members had removed a San in an effort to improve their chances at catching salmon the sa’s owner reported that it had been found at the Indians camp and that when it its return was demanded one of the Indian men drew a gun he was shot without further conversation the final line of the article pointed to the outcome of future disagreements quote as we have no officers in this section of the country no notice has been taken of the affair end of quote the claim of no legal recourse however appears patently untrue as there was reference in the same paper to Legal actions taken by judge batty and in the August issue officers of the law were mentioned apparently Justice dependent at that point on the identity of the victim ranching two in many ways restricted the movements of the lhis and effectively curtail their usual patterns of gathering food and hunting between 1868 and 1871 federal agents forced the lmis to seed their claims to the salmon and lmh high river valleys and move them onto a provisional Reserve near the lhai river efforts then began to remove the high from the region all together first to the crow agency in Montana and when that failed to the recently established Shon banic Reserve at Fort Hall most of these efforts came from outside pressure particularly of course from the federal government in their attempts at trying to sustain uh the reserve Chief tendoy who had led the lmh high since 1863 struggled to maintain a peaceful relationship between his band and the growing White Community he managed to resist remove from the area for decades when tendoy and the lmis first refused to leave federal agents offered him as though it were Theirs to give the position of Chief at Fort Hall they asked in this of course as an enticement tendoy declined the offer at this juncture the superintendent of Indian Affairs requested on their behalf a 55 a $5,000 rather sorry appropriation for farming equipment the federal government however argued that maintenance of this Reserve was simply to EXP ensive the lmis had to go $25,000 was allocated to convince them that leaving was the best plan the lhis again refused this inducement in 1874 Colonel George L shup one of the first Caucasian Settlers of Lum High County between 1866 and 1867 and eventually Idaho’s last territorial Governor First State Governor and one of its first US senators he was very busy interceded on behalf of the Lis arguing that the lmis served as a barrier between white settlers and as he said in his letter quote other Indians who were not good end of quote shup asked that tendoy and the approximately 450 lhis be granted a permanent Reserve within the bounds of their Homeland John Haley Idaho’s territorial delegate to Congress responded with the surprise he said you must certainly have a much better set of Indians than we have in my county or you would be anxious to get ready of them end of quote again along the same lines of what Gary Molton said the other night it’s difficult to read some of these things because you don’t know whether to judge them from the time or from our own despite his misgivings Haley advocated their cause and President Grant established the lmh high Reserve by executive order on February 12th 1875 although Chief tendoy effectively restrained his band from joining in the nesp pur banic and sheer conflicts of the later 1870s while managing to elay the misplaced fear and hysteria of the white population the federal government continued its efforts to remove his people from their home by 1880 the pressure was so intense that tendoy took action and I think this is a very important point to note because he was obviously one of the best diplomats of his time with the assistance of Colonel shup and several other local business and political leaders tendoy and a number of his headmen traveled by train to Washington DC to discuss their situation in lumai Valley the outcome of the meeting was a treaty stating that the lmis would leave the lmh high reserve for Fort Hall but tendo reforced government acquiescence to a critical provision removal would occur only when a majority of all the adult males agreed to leave the LM High reservation however had never proved adequate for the maintenance of the lmh high population insufficient land game diminishing numbers of fish and inadequate farming conditions only 2700 Acres of the 160 square mile Reserve were irrigable kept the LM High impoverished forced to accept rations in order to survive in the limhi valley the lhis found themselves at the mercy of reservation policy and the Indian agents determined to enforce it agents withheld rations to force the lhis to Adept adopt white dress and religion they withheld rations to force School attendance they withheld rations to ensure peaceful behavior and some of the more unscrupulous sold supplies intended for the lmiv to local settlers surprisingly however only a few acts of vandalism were perpetrated by the lmis against reservation policy burning down a fence here and there uh it was minimal despite the best efforts of shup and his associates little was done to alleviate the deteran conditions to alleviate the deteriorating conditions on the reserve deprivation led to discontent and on December 5th 195 the lmis decided that in order to survive they would have to leave during a meeting with inspector James mlin of the Department of the Interior the Lumis were informed that the government intended to discontinue all assistance furthermore he told them that if they refused to accept those lands set aside for them at Fort Hall in the 1880 agreement they would lose all claim to that in response tendoy addressed the Gathering he reminded those present that he had always kept his promises that he had tried to live a good life he pointed to the agreement he had made in 1880 the lmh high Herald another local paper recorded his comments quote now I am an old man and my friends are all gone shup is gone and mcferson who was a local businessman gone away now we have none to advise us before I die I want to see my people provided for and fulfill the promise I made to the government end of quote he then explained that that the declining numbers of Fish and Game would ensure starvation and that Fort Hall was their only hope of survival when he finished there was no immediate dissension from the headmen although many of them later regretted their decision and some resented tendoy for his role in 197 June of 197 the remaining 474 lmis left for Fort Hall they didn’t all leave of course at the same time it took several years for the Indians to remove completely tendoy however was not among them after fighting so long and so hard albeit peacefully to remain in the lmh High Valley Chief tendoy died 1 month earlier than the June 7th departure on May 9th 197 along the banks of the lmh High River when I say they were removed it’s important I think here to note that they were not removed completely from their home to conclude that they were forced to leave and never return would be erroneous they still returned of course to this area year after year they had an encampment as you know uh many of you know of course who were from here uh near the outskirts of town they also attended schools here and of course um many members of the tribe continue to make a very strong presence here into the 70s and 80s and now with the efforts made here into the ’90s and certainly into the 21st century I had a couple of um quotes that I’d like to read to you uh from the newspapers when they did leave which I think is a very important thing to understand about their role in the local community within the county the removal of the lmis to Fort Hall sparked a divided reaction among the other residents of Lum High County the Lum High Herald reflected the myriad responses quote the removal of almh high Indians will affect the county and its people in many ways their presence has resulted in the distribution annually of $40,000 to $50,000 a year which will be cut off without much chance of compensatory relief indeed it is hard to figure out a plan by which the reservation will be able to produce so much in private hands there are some who contend that the departure of the lmis from these accustom haunts means an opportunity for some of the adj adjacent Cattlemen whose herds have been depleted by the marauding thieving Savage and others contend that the move will work a great hardship upon certain whites who have been actually doing the stealing and using the Indian for a kind of convenient scapegoat to settle the blame upon But whichever is which and whatever is what the noble red man will be greatly missed and he will have many friends here who will always wish him good fortune end of quote asserting that the removal to LM to Fort Hall was certainly a good one for the lmh high the editor of the lmh high Herald for all for all his apparent compassion must have missed their Exodus in 1989 one of the members of the tribe a granddaughter of one of those removed to Fort Hall in 197 recounted recounted her grandmother’s description of their moo quote she says their Tre when they were moved here Fort Hall she says was a pain a pain it’s a pain that they talk about about their voice you can tell they were hurt my grandmother says that when they were traveling she says there was child birth and she says several stillborns several babies that had died she says it was sad to leave your home and so she says when they were forced to move it was a terrifying experience it was sad to see all this area here Fort Hall she said it was mainly Sagebrush and constantly winds winds all the time she says but they had no choice end of quote Nora yurian Whitwell one of the wi wies of the earliest families in the area noted quote they trailed out through the valley with their families and pack horses dragging their Wiki Up hes they were weeping as they went the ranchers along the way could hear their crying for some distance before they passed their homes the ranchers were near to tears and some did cry end of quote now that was much briefer probably than you were expecting but on an hour’s notice and on behalf of the George family this was the length that I was able to prepare if you have any questions I will attempt to answer them and thank you for your patience at hearing somebody other than the one you were expecting all right if anybody has any questions for let give a round of applause thank you if anybody has questions for Dr Benedict please let me bring the microphone around so everybody can hear them we’ll start right here so you mentioned the spell in change but you didn’t say why do you have a idea was it uh animosity towards the Mormons was it uh for somebody forgot to dot the I and it turned into an e i I don’t think it had anything foret sorry I always think I talk so loudly that I probably don’t need this I I closer to anything would probably be forgetting to dot the eye and not being able to read some of those late 19th century documents also of course if you are familiar with anything written LS and Clark journals for instance and the spelling in the Lewis and Clark journals a word could be spelled five different ways on the same page and I think L mhi is just the one that they used most frequently just as a just as a mistake all right did anyone else have any questions all right let me bring the microphone up here before the move where were they where had they settled what area down here in the valley were they settled in before who had moved the lmis in fact had used of course this whole region but one of their primary and most important encampments was on the lmh high near where Lewis and Clark had been because it was one of the best fishing areas during the summer season but they used the entire area and of course they were located in Nevada and Wyoming and Southern Idaho and Nevada and so forth so this was all part of a migratory region while they gathered food Camas and so forth but then settling eventually in this region for many of the reasons that I mentioned all right did we have some more questions all right all right over here we’ll get this one and then we’ll go on over there I don’t have a question I just wanted to acknowledge that uh some of the descendants of Chief tiendo or here today with a demonstration down at in the park uh the the granddaughter and the great oh the great granddaughter and the great great grandsons excellent what time what time is that maybe you could tell everyone what time they’re all day they’re there at this point all day they’re all day down in the uh where you walk around they have a some TPS and display down there great in conjunction with his comment I would like to encourage all of you who have not already been there to visit the lmh high County Historical Museum we have one of the largest displays of lmh high Shoni artifacts that you could see anywhere and we also have a great deal of information and artifacts from the general history of lamh high County okay we got another question over here let me bring the mic to you I was just wondering are there any Indian burial grounds around this area and the chief that you referred to that died along the river is he buried somewhere here yes he is buried here and there is um a monument at Chief tendo’s grave and it is on the back LM High about what 25 miles from town and other burial sites there are some on the well we call it the bar here but that would be on the bench beh on the other side of the samon river but they are not designated um or you won’t be able to find them but they are there are burial grounds there and then all over valley all right do we have any other questions for Dr Benedict all right once again let’s please uh give uh her a warm thank you for joining us here and thank you for coming in such a short notice and filling in remember folks we do have uh programs here

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Carolyn Gilman on Lewis and Clark gifts and diplomacy

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:53 +0000

voices which is part of the traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit we are the only National Park that travels around the trail so thank you very much for inviting us to your community uh many of you have uh seen uh other presentations here so I’ll keep the introduction short but we also have a keelboat and we also have an exhibit tent and in the exhibit tent if you would like to take a 37 minute audio tour uh that’s a really wonderful audio tour if you want something shorter there are also long and short scripts and uh this tend of many voices allows different people to come in and share different perspectives on what happened on the Expedition and today we have um Miss Carolyn uh Gilman she’s going to be talking about the gifts of the Shoni and she’s from the M um Missouri Historical Society so let’s give a warm welcome to miss Gilman thank you thank you is my mic on can you hear me okay great great um I was the curator of the uh National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial exhibition that was organized by the Missouri Historical Society um it is currently in Denver and it’s going to be moving to Portland in November and then it will be closing at um the Smithsonian institution in Washington DC in 2006 um it’s it’s the um exhibit that uh brings together as many of the original artifacts as we could possibly track down during seven years of research um so my job during the seven years that we were planning the exhibit was to um investigate all the objects that Lewis and Clark either brought with them or that they saw along the trail or that they collected and brought back from their Journey so my perspective is from the perspective of um uh three-dimensional objects material things and that’s really what I want to talk talk about today and how those can um uh reveal new things about a very um familiar story now when you read about the 19 days that the um the core of Discovery spent with the Shoni Indians in August of um 1805 it sounds like one continual exchange of gifts um gifts were really the the kind of universal translators between the two groups they were like social solvents that dissolved the cultural boundaries the now this really isn’t a very surprising fact because in Indian nations all across this country gifts were essential to all diplomatic encounters they were part of a a set of elaborate and formal Customs that had evolved in N native North America to br bried the multitude of languages and the multitude of tribal divisions tribes used symbolic objects like wamp belts and pipes and um tomahawks in order to um communicate political Alliance and Military uh opposition to each other these gifts carried not only um messages They Carried moral obligations as well to accept a gift without reciprocating was dishonorable and so they um uh to offer a gift was to offer an invitation to opening a lasting Mutual relationship accepting some gifts meant taking on obligations that could be legitimately enforced by insult or by arms other obligations were so grave um that Supernatural Powers could be relied on to um uh punish people who um transgressed and didn’t live up to their obligations now gifts between individuals could create what anthropologists call a fictive kinship now uh today we still have fictive kinship relationships if you think about it a little you can probably uh name a few um there’s obviously adoption is a fictive kinship we still use today but the most important one we honor today is marriage and just think of all the um the the debates that are going on today about the definition and the nature of marriage and you will see how um how very charged emotionally and culturally charged these fictive kinship relationships can be now Indian tribes had far more fictive relationships than we do um there were father son relationships there were brother brother relationships there were Grand grandmother granddaughter relationships and all of these had were no less grave and meaningful than husband wife relationships and They Carried with them similar obligations and prohibitions Gifts were essential um to establish these relationships and so in this context the presentation of a gift was um meant to express deep feelings of respect and benevolence and Brotherhood gifts also played a role in uh acquiring knowledge young people were taught to present a respected teacher with a gift in exchange for being taught something even if the teacher was related to them so a girl who wanted to for instance know how to make a pot or weave a mat would give her mother a gift in order to be taught this skill young men who wanted to get songs um to help them in war or in hunting would give older men gifts for that privilege and these gifts taught students to to Value the knowledge that was given given to them but they also respect they expressed respect not just for the teacher but for the sacred sources of all knowledge in in a way the gifts were given to the spirits who had revealed the knowledge to human beings and the teacher was only an intermediary gifts also had an important role in establishing rank and power uh now in euroamerican societies um the accumulation of wealth was a symbolic sign of power the highest ranks were also the richest and and wealth was given respect it was exact opposite in Indian Society uh people achieved Power by showing generosity to their relations and to their allies early European Travelers often commented on the fact that the Indian chiefs tended to be the poorest people in the village uh because they were obliged to give away all they owned but what such observers didn’t understand was that those gifts came back to the leaders in the form of respect and loyalty and Allegiance now when Europeans encountered the native people of America they learned to adapt to gifting Customs but often they interpreted them differently than the Indians did they assigned their own symbolic meanings to the objects and to the acts of exchange so in a given interaction between Native Americans and Euro Americans we often find two different interpretations of what’s going on I think that that’s precisely what’s going on during the time that the core of Discovery spent with the Shon what I’d like to do today is to show you some of the specific gifts that were exchanged and to encourage you to think about their meanings for both sides now first I need to make a disclaimer um there were no Shoni accounts of this encounter until years later when some fur Traders and missionaries interviewed shoson people about what they remembered so I cannot speak for um for the Shoni um all I can do is to repeat what some modern-day Shoni people have told me and make analogies from other tribes that I’ve worked with and I do want to acknowledge the help of several people uh Rosina George Rosemary deini snookums hona Reba tan Roseanne Abramson and Diane yup now I hope you can see this this um uh slide that’s on the screen um the name of the painting is making presents to snake Indians uh it shows a gift exchange between a euroamerican Trader and some shony people that took place in 1837 and it was sketched by Alfred Jacob Miller who was the first major artist to portray the Shoni now you probably all know about the events that led up to Merryweather Lewis finding himself in a similar situation 200 years ago very near the spot where we are today Lewis and the rest of the core of Discovery were desperately searching for the Shoni Indians for two reasons first of all they needed horses in order to carry their tons of baggage and Equipment across the Continental Divide to what they assumed would be the navigable headwaters of the Columbia River second they needed to ask directions actually they needed that a whole lot more than they realized because the navigable headwaters of the Columbia River were nowhere nearby so Lewis and three companions went out ahead of the rest to find the Shoni inexplicably leaving their translator Saka jaia behind them so their first um sight of a Shoni man mounted on a horse presented them with a dilemma between the four of them Lewis Lewis’s group possessed EX L one word of Shoni and it didn’t mean what they thought it did so how were they going to communicate with this very suspicious person when they didn’t know his language well in this crisis Lewis Hit Upon A an an ingenious solution he had to improvise so what he decided to use was use do was use a symbolic object and what he used was a blanket now this was this is not the exact blanket he used obviously but it’s probably very much like it he got his blankets at the Philadelphia Arsenal and this type which is called a rose blanket was standard military issue in 1803 uh this particular one probably dates to about uh the 1790s now this is how Lewis told the story I discovered an Indian on horseback about 2 miles distant coming down the plane toward us un loosing my blanket from my pack I made the signal of friendship which is by holding the mantle or robe in your hands at two corners and then throwing it up in the air higher than the head bringing it to the Earth as if in the act of spreading it this signal of the robe has arisen from a custom amongst all those nations of spreading a robe or skin for their guests now you’ll notice that Lewis is very certain that he knows the meaning of this blanket gesture he’s using despite this the very next thing he writes is this signal had not the desired effect he suddenly turned his horse about gave him the whip leaped to the creek and disappeared and with him vanished all my hopes of obtaining horses so we have to ask ourselves what went wrong well when you look into it you find that blankets did in fact convey many meanings many messages in Indian Society but sometimes those messages were no more translatable than uh language was what I did was I put together a little quiz to see if we can do any better than Lewis did um in about 1905 an Omaha man demonstrated the robe language of his tribe for an anthropologist and she took photographs now this is the first of the photographs now if you saw this man I hope you can see him um if you saw this man what uh message do you think he’s trying to convey by the way he’s wearing his robe what mood or um State of Mind do you think that he is um he’s trying to uh inform you of anybody any guesses humility humility is that what you said okay nonaggression non-aggression yeah hiding a weapon hiding a weapon okay so there is there’s hidden aggression there so so some of you would be suspicious of this guy and um others of you would trust him okay what the man said is that this shows a hesitant State of Mind to an Indian audience to an Omaha audience um this man is showing that he hasn’t yet decided how to act he’s arranged his blanket so that people can see he hasn’t um decided what he wants to do okay here’s another one any guesses about this guy why would you react to him confid say confident he’s confident okay anybody else leer a leader he’s a leader okay you’re getting this one much better okay what this um shows is an orator who’s about to um address his people with an admonition or a warning and he’s wrapped his blanket in a Stern and formal way to show them that there’s um there’s a an admonition coming okay this is the hard one I would never know how to interpret this and if you saw this what would you think anybody he’s sick okay submission submission that’s interesting if I I saw this I would think um mortification or shame what this really shows is anger a man is hiding his face so that everyone will know that he is angry but he hasn’t lost his cool in public um just think of how dangerous it would be to misinterpret the body language of somebody who is expressing anger this way um Louis and Clark often talk about how Indian men are go away mortified or shamefaced after they’ rebuked them and I can’t help wondering if this wasn’t what they were seeing well now we don’t we can’t be sure what the sight of Lewis flapping his blanket meant to that shony man but we can be reasonably certain that it didn’t mean to him what Lewis thought it meant now Lewis’s next attempt to communicate was more successful this time he wrote we had not continued our route more than a mile when we were so fortunate as to meet three Fe female Savages they appeared much alarmed but seated themselves on the ground holding down their heads as if reconciled to die to reassure them Lewis tried the universal language of gifts he said I took the elderly woman by the hand and raised her up I gave these women some beads a few moccasins some peer looking glasses and a little paint I now painted their Tawny cheeks with some Vermilion which with this nation is emblematic of peace well this time his choice of gifts was absolutely perfect elsewhere he called these items Trifles but they had far different meanings to the Shoni for instance take the Vermilion which may have been carried in a Leather Pouch like this now Vermilion is a Mercury based pigment that was imported from China was very cheap for Traders to stock but to the Shoni it mimicked red ochre which is a rare and valuable colored herb that had sacred connotations to them on the plains uh women colored the parts in their hair red in order to show that um they um had passed through the Buffalo ceremony and they were protected by that animal’s power so for Lewis to anoint the women with Vermilion was very much like a blessing now the beads he gave them must have looked very much like these these particular beads were found in mitu tanka which is the Mandan Village across from Fort Mandan where they spent the winter of 180405 and they date from the exact time that Lewis and Clark were there now the Shon used beads like these for embroidery but when they um crossed the mountains to trade with the Columbia Valley tribes they entered a trade zone where blue and white beads were actually used as currency they were just like money and so these were as good as cash um it was as if Lewis had showered these women with gold now the mirrors he gave them caused quite a sensation years later when the shoson were interviewed about their memories of the visit it wasn’t Lewis or Clark they remembered it was the mirrors a man named pharaoh who is probably a child at that time um said they gave us things like solid water which were sometimes brilliant as the sun and which sometimes showed our own faces nothing could equal our wonder and Delight in Pharaoh’s story The Med meeting with Lewis and Clark literally gave the Shon a new way of viewing themselves well it was lucky that Lewis had um selected his gifts well because he soon needed the women’s good um Goodwill before they’d gone two miles he wrote they met a party of about 60 Warriors mounted on excellent horses who came in nearly full speed armed Capa for Action well this was a pretty risky moment any slip could have result resulted in disaster once more Lewis chose to communicate using a piece of cloth but this time he chose a piece of cloth that had great symbolic resonance in his own culture and this is what he chose a flag now there’s a lot of debate about the exact style of flag that Lewis and Clark had with them and the simple answer is nobody knows if anybody tells you they know they don’t um they almost certainly had different style of flag um for flying in different occasions there’s one style for their fort one style for the keelboat and a different style for presenting to Indian nations with whom they wanted to establish an alliance this one um this flag which is at Chicago historical society was probably a Indian presentation flag and it dates to about 1808 so I I would guess this is very close to the style that Lewis gave to cam this is how Lewis described what happened next when they arrived I Advanced toward them with the flag the women informed them whom we were who we were and exultingly showed the presence which had been given them the principal Chief cwe made a short speech to the Warriors I gave him the flag which I informed him was an emblem of Peace among white men and now that it had been received by him it was to be respected as the bond of Union between us well now Lewis is being a little bit disingenuous here first since they had no translator cwe no more understood his explanation of the flag than he had understood cwe’s speech second his explanation leaves a lot out the flag was first and foremost a symbol of the National Unity of the United States the 15 stripes in the bunting field um symbolize the 15 states and the Canton had the Great Seal of the nation it was a tangible object that embody the concepts of national pride and sovereignty here on the westernmost border of the Louisiana purchas raising this flag symbolized the United States claim to rule the shoson population and to own their land to accept it was to accept United States Alliance but also United States sovereignty you can’t help wondering if kiawe would have touched this dangerous gift if Lewis had fully explained what it meant well we don’t know what cwe thought of the flag but it’s very interesting to speculate the presentation of a piece of cloth a robe as a diplomatic gift would have not seemed strange to him uh many tribes practiced this in fact um Lewis and Clark themselves had been given a gorgeously painted robe as a diplomatic gift by the Teton the previous year this is such a robe thought to have been brought back to Philadelphia by Lewis and Clark this gift robe like the flag had hidden messages the paintings on it portray the military prowess and Imperial power of the tribe that gave it to the Explorers messages meant to warn and intimidate as well as to impress their new allies this is a Shoni version of the same thing uh from a later date uh this robe made of deer skins portrays the war record of wasaki the chief of the Wind River Shoni who was actually born in the bitteroot valley not far from here um only the year before Lewis and Clark arrived now cawe was familiar with war robes and may well have assumed that the flag had similar messages as it did but there is one detail that might have struck him with particular Force look again at the Canton of the flag here the flag maker has portrayed a symbolic animal kind of the totemic spirit of the United States it’s an eagle grasping arrows in one claw and lightning bolts in the other now no design could have been chosen better to communicate with the um uh the tribes of Western North America in Native North America the eagle was a powerful spirit being associated with the thunderstorm and War thunderstorm as in the lightning and War as in the arrows men who could evoke Eagle power to assist them in battle were the most feared Warriors in the west claiming Eagle power was something no one would do unless they um unless they really possessed it was far too dangerous so when Lewis gave the chief a cloth portraying an eagle there was really only one way kamwe could interpret it a later visitor among the Dakota put it this way the United States emblem of the eagle with outstretched claws holding arrows and the lightning is regarded by the Dakota as an appeal on our part to the Thunderbird and statements to the contrary are usually interpreted as white men’s lies to deceive the Indians and to guard the power now the next object that the that was used in the Diplomatic exchange between the shoson and the core was just as resonant with meaning but now the symbolism was mostly on the Shoni side and Lewis understood only a portion of it let me read you what he says they introduced us to an old leather Lodge had which had been prepared for our reception here we were Seated on green boughs and the skins of antelopes the chief next began a long ceremony of the pipe he lit his pipe at the fire kindled in this little magic circle and uttered a speech of several minutes in length at the conclusion of which he pointed the stem to the four cardinal points of the heavens First beginning at the East and ending with the north he repeated the same ceremony three times after which he pointed the stem first to the heavens then to the center of the magic circle smoked himself and held the pipe until I took as many as I thought proper now what Lewis didn’t know was the meaning behind these these motions that he recorded in such photographic detail tale kiawe was not giving a speech he was uttering a prayer or an invocation to virtually all tribes between the Mississippi and the Rockies pipes were sacramental vessels they were conduits of communication with natural Powers pipe ceremonies were rituals of social communion which um adopted Outsiders into the very heart of tribal culture the smoke was a visible prayer that called called upon the powers to witness The Binding of those who smoked together George sword a Lota born about 1847 explained the spirit and the smoke will Soo the spirits of all who thus smoke together and all will be as friends and all think alike it is like when the Christians take communion what is done in its presence is Solemn and binding this is Lewis’s sketch of C’s pipe it’s the most ancient style of pipe in North America called a straight pipe and pipes were usually um regarded as living things now there was also a bit of etiquette related to the moccasins um Lewis learned that he had to take off his moccasins in order to show respect to the pipe um these are not Shoni moccasins but they exactly match Lewis’s description of Shoni moccasins they’re um soft sold soft sold with um one seam along the outer edge now cit’s people would normally have um showered their guests with gifts since that was customary but at the moment when Lewis encountered them they were in Desperate circumstances only weeks before they had been attacked by the black feet whom they called pockies they had had to flee leaving all their belongings behind to be looted by their enemies now they were refugees and had almost nothing nothing to give and yet Lewis records how they presented the uh last remnants of food that they possessed to the young guests in order to make them feel welcome the most poignant story about Shoni gifting was told by Clark a week or so later when he was leading a party down the Salmon River Clark came across an isolated family that knew nothing about the arrival of these visitors when they were surprised by a large party of armed men the desperate barents quote offered everything they possessed which was very little to us the first offer of theirs were Elk’s tusks from around their children’s necks now to appreciate this you have to know that elk teeth were emblems of endurance and parents gave them to their children in order to express hope that they would bring long life so the Shoni parents were offering Clark the gift of long lives that they had given to their children in order to appease him these elk teeth are probably Shoni but they date from a a later period now in better circumstances the Shoni were well-to-do people who had the resources of both the Plains and the mountains at their disposal Lewis spent the next few days recording in his journal their styles of clothing arms horse gear and tools among the things that he um saw were Roots folded in as many parchment hides of Buffalo by parchment what he meant was par flesh like this container which is painted in a typical Shoni style a parf flesh was like a suitcase that they used to transport their many belongings when it was hung on a horse um the long fringes on this par flesh would swish elegantly to and fro but LS had come for horses um and he needed to persuade the Shoni to accompany him back across the Continental aide um to the headquarters of the Missouri where the rest of the expedition was laboring Upstream with all their equipment this was not very easily done rumors had been circulating that he and his men quote were in League with the pakis and had come on in order to decoy them into an ambuscade so what he promised them gifts he told them that white men would come with an abundance of guns and every other article necessary to their defense Comfort while the mounted men who set out with Lewis to meet the rest of the Expedition were still weary and suspicious and as they neared the headquarters of the Missouri the Warriors began to criticize kamade for leading them into danger and even the chief himself began to suspect a trap So In This Moment of uncertainty kamit made a decision to test Lewis’s character by giving him what may have been the most valuable thing kamama we possessed it was a gift that um expressed both Brotherhood and caution at the same time after receiving it only the most dishonorable man would have betrayed him Lewis said the chief with much ceremony put Tippets about our necks such as they themselves wore I readily perceived that this was to disguise us now there are no surviving examples of Shoni Tippets from this this period a tippet by the way is a mantle it’s just something you wear around your neck fortunately in 1833 Carl bodmer painted a black feet man wearing a very similar garment um Lewis described it as the most elegant piece of Indian dress I ever saw it was made from strips cut from the back fur of two or more otter and decorated with uh what LS called the shells of the Pearl Oyster you can see all the shells on the on the tipet on that this man is wearing uh but when this this one is fringed with um horse hair or human hair um but Camille weights had a fringe of 140 whole man skins formed into rolls now I’m not certain about the significance of the tippet among the Shoni but among neighboring tribes in the 1780s an otter skin mantle was a civil Chief’s insignum of office whoever wore it was either the chief or or deputized to act for the chief so we can assume that its meaning to Kamia waight was as profound as its value here is Lewis wearing it now we can be quite sure that Lewis valued this gift as highly as it deserved all the way to the Pacific and all the way back he carried it in his baggage when he got back to Philadelphia he wore it while the artist um St Memon painted his portrait Lewis then gave it to Charles Wilson peele’s museum in Philadelphia where it was mounted on a wax likeness of Lewis to preserve for all time the moment when he had received the gift now Lewis had nothing of comparable value to give to CIT in return but he did have something of comparable symbolism and this was it he wrote I put my cocked hat with feather on the chief now an officer’s hat called a shapo bra was also an insignum of office of command just like the otter skin mantle was it signified the rank that Lewis had attained and the respect his men were bound to Accord him his right to wear it showed his achievements and his dignity Lewis’s hat was probably decorated um right about here with a cade now the Cade probably had a silver eagle at the center as this one does if you squint really hard you might be able to see it the cockade was a a fabric Sunburst emblem it’s a little bit reminiscent of the feather circle design on plain’s Indian buffalo robes the Eagle at its Center showed which nation Lewis belonged to symbolized by the eagle it showed the fact that he commanded an infantry unit which was symbol by symbolized by the Eagle’s color and his rank symbolized by the metal the silver metal that the eagle was Eagle was made from the feather that Lewis mentions uh fitted into a socket that was behind the cockade his feather looked something like this although the color of Lewis’s feather was different this is an artillery plume Lewis was Lewis’s was an infantry plume now the fact that Lewis gave his hat and feather to the chief suggests that he might have understood that camit was not just giving away a piece of clothing he was giving Lewis part of his identity his honor to wear another person’s clothing is an intimate act that connects people on a deeply physical level but clothing also conveys explicit messages about its owner and this is a point on which cwe’s culture and Lewis’s agree in particular a soldier’s clothing revealed who A man was and what he had accomplished for example take the feather now Lewis wore a feather to show his Rank and unit plain’s Indian men also wore feathers that formed a complicated Ro code of Martial honor among the Lota any man who had fought in battle could wear an eagle feather suspended from his hair clothing or implements killing or striking an enemy earned the right to wear it fastened upright to his hair a wound in battle earned an upright eagle feather col red one like this which is notched on the sides indicated that the man had done Deeds of desperate daring in the presence of an enemy and it was worn dangling from the for loock or from the ear now this Feather by the way is from The Collection that includes the peel Museum artifacts uh lwis and Clark gave several Eagle Tail Feathers used in ornamental and warlike dresses to the museum and this could very well be one of them it’s from the peab museum today now another symbol of heroism that Lewis and Clark collected was this stunning necklace of bear claw it it’s the one that was recently found in the store rooms of the Peabody Museum where it had been misc cataloged and so lost for about a hundred years um they just found it in December of 2003 now we don’t know what tribe it belonged to but Lewis’s main description of bearclaw necklaces came among the Shon he wrote that they were worn only by quote Warriors or such as esteem themselves brave men it is esteemed by them an act of equal celebrity The Killing one of these bear or an enemy leis also described the Shoni war shirt which he called a commodious and decent garment now we have no shirts that we can positively identify as Shoni from this period but this shirt is the closest I’ve been able to come come by it matches is Lewis’s description perfectly and it was collected by a cousin of the explorer Alexander McKenzie in the 1790s probably in this area now the paintings on it gave its uh owners War honors um from it we learned that this this fearsome man counted coup on two armed enemies and killed 34 people with his spear The Fringe on the uh shirt is human hair symbolizing enemy scalps although often the hair was given by friends and supporters to represent the man’s responsibility to his kin it would have been worn with leggings like this painted with horizontal stripes symbolizing vanquished enemies Lewis and Clark collected a pair of leggings that must have looked very much like this now euroamerican men also went into battle dressed in regalia that symbolized their deeds and status this is a reproduction of the captain’s uniform for the first US infantry um such as Lewis would have worn now it’s full of symbols of rank unit nationality and Heritage the epet the gor the shoulder belt plate the sash the sword however there’s a significant difference from the Indian War regalia this was a uniform that is it was designed to make the Warriors of an army look uni form more all the same it didn’t advertise their individual Deeds so much as obliterate their differences their clothing shows the fact that when Europeans fought they acted not as individual Warriors but as a coordinated group following orders now the exchange of clothing between Lewis and cawe was a critical moment at establishing trust between the core and the Shoni symbolically L and Kamia wa had done more than wear each other’s garments they had exchanged identities this fact was confirmed later when Camille we gave away his name to his visitor Lewis seems to have sensed the profundity of the chief’s gesture he described himself in his shoson regalia and commented I wanted no further addition to make me a complete Indian in appearance The Men followed my example and we were soon completely metamorphosed listen to his Lang language here he is acknowledging a transformation in this moment he truly feels metamorphosed into a complete Indian now I think that in this moment Lewis really crossed a cultural divide and it’s very difficult to come come back from across a divide like that unchanged a weak immersed in Shoni world had left Lewis feeling uncertain of who he was or ought to be on his um 31st birthday 7 days after the first meeting he looked inward questioning his life he wrote I reflected that I had as yet done very little but little indeed to further the happiness of the human race I resolved in future to live for mankind as I have here to for lived for myself now when Clark arrived with the rest of the Expedition there was celebration all around zaka jaia and Kamia wa were um reunited food was now plentiful and more gifts changed hands Clark wrote that camir waight welcomed him into a council and immediately tied to my hair six small pieces of shells resembling Pearl which is highly valued by these people he was probably referring to Abalone show these Abalone ornaments were given by Lewis and Clark to the American philosophical society and they could be the very ones that kamit gave to Clark this shows the perhaps the most useful gift that the the Shon gave to Lewis and Clark information this is Clark’s root map showing fortunate camp where the meeting happened now the expedition’s last gift to kamwa was as loaded with meaning as their first one had been Lewis wrote we gave him a medal of the small size with the likeness of Mr Jefferson the president of the United States in relief on one side and clasped hands with a pipe and Tomahawk on the other we made them sensible of their dependence on the will of our government for every species of merchandise as well as for their defense and comfort and apprised them of the strength of our government and its friendly disposition toward them all of these messages were embodied in the metal now how Saka jaia translated Lewis’s speech we don’t know if she was tactful she left out words like dependence in a way the whole episode had been one long exchange of mirrors each party looked at the other and what they saw was their own faces reflected back in a new way sometimes their view was distorted by preconceptions but sometimes the participants saw themselves in a new light and this is really the gift that strangers can always give to us to see our own actions and our beliefs outlined in stark contrast against the background of another culture it was the most important gift that cam weight gave to Lewis and fortunately it’s a gift that we can still continue to give to one another thank you is there time for questions yes if anybody has any questions uh just raise your hand and I’ll be around with the microphone you can ask Carolyn do we know where she would have sakaia would have collected the IR tales that she gave to Captain Clark at the Christmas at um Fort classup no I’m afraid I have no idea um there’s a variety of places that you can speculate she got them but we we just don’t know another beautiful example of gift giving that was that was um according to um Euro American custom we give gifts on Christmas and and Saka jaia was was conforming to to um the customs of the people she was among any other questions okay oh are all these gifts now in the Smithsonian Institute or will be no um the Smithsonian has only one uh in their permanent collection they have only one object related to Lewis and Clark all the rest of these have come from other institutions and they’re not going to go to the Smithsonian um if those museums have anything to say about it um it there were over um 60 institutions that loaned artifacts to our exhibition because the collection of Lewis and Clark has gotten just extremely scattered um uh and there’s I have another hourlong lecture that I give on why that is and um how they got scattered and where they are today um but just take it from me there in at least 60 60 institutions all across the country yeah how come uh there Statue of Saka Jia was placed in the Rotunda of the of the C capital of the building oh we we we heard about that in the previous in the previous lecture will you hear them um uh I I gather I didn’t know about it but I gather that it was at the instigation of the Mandan Heda tribe and um I I would like to defend the Mandan Hada um uh I mean in the previous lecture we we we heard about them um in fact they um they do not claim that Saka jaia was Mandan orh Hada um that is there is an oral tradition among the Mandan that that is true but um the the modern-day people Tex Hall um the chair tribal chair and um Amy mset who is their RAB tourism coordinator um and does Saka jaia um impersonations they don’t claim themselves that she was hia uh they they acknowledge that she was Shoni but um uh they want to honor her and they um they persuaded the um uh every state gets two two um statues in the in the capital and North Dakota elected to make one of their two statues sakaa that’s how that came about okay well let’s give another round of applause to Carolyn Gilman coming up at 5 o’ we have blackoot um culture and music with Jack Gladstone so please stay around for that and in the meantime you’re free to visit our other exhibit

The post Carolyn Gilman on Lewis and Clark gifts and diplomacy appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Richard Stallings on Chief Tendoy: Shoshone Leadership and Survival

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:50 +0000

e good afternoon welcome to the traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit we are the only National Park in the entire country that is a traveling exhibit so we’re very honored to uh be in your community and to have you come to our tent of many voices I’d also like to tell you some other things you can do besides seeing presentations which are held every hour on the hour we have a keelboat a child-size keelboat which is very interesting you can uh get an example of how Lewis and Clark went up the Missouri in that we also have an exhibit tent which we’ll tell you the story of Lewis and Clark we have scripts and if you’d like to we have a 37 minute audio tour which is really good the pictures in there are just incredible um what we have uh today um right now is we have a speaker um Richard Stallings he is a former congressman and he’s going to be talking about uh Chief tendoy the unsung hero uh Richard Stallings is a um now A city councilman and he teaches at Idaho State he teaches Idaho politics and politicians so let’s give a warm welcome to Richard Stallings thank you very much it’s it’s it’s great to be here I just telling the folks it’s been a long time since I’ve been in salmon and I just so pleased with with the uh Center here and the and the tremendous tribute that’s being paid to uh sakaia and to the limai shonis because this is this is truly an important place in this nation’s history because had it not been for this group of Indians the Lewis and Clark expedition probably would have had to turn back or would have perhaps not have survived and so this Valley this group of inhabitants that resided here essentially were were pivotal in the success of that great event so I’m deeply honored to be here and to participate in this I’m a great fan of the Lewis and Clark Expedition have read on it uh have followed some of the trails and uh uh just think it’s it’s it’s such a great story in fact when I see our efforts into space I I think that today’s efforts sort of pale by comparison with what the Lewis and Clark expedition were about now one other item of business we have a number of members of the uh salmon Rotary Club that are here and uh I’m I’m again I I I appreciate that because I belong to the Centennial Rotary Club in Pocatello and now I’m going to claim this as one of my makeup meetings so thank you very much for that well they’ve asked me to talk on tendoy uh as we drove up we went through the little village of tendoy U one of the really incredible Native American leaders he’s been compared with some of the really great people of all time his greatness is somewhat in dispute because to some he sort of sold out to the whites to others he was so very very instrumental in in keeping his tribe intact and surviving through some very very difficult times so let me just talk a little bit about his life and then towards the end we can we can raise some questions and and let’s you sort of help me with some kind of evaluation as to uh tendo’s greatness first of all he was a very very fine warrior in fact he was recognized by some mountain men as one of the greatest warriors they had ever known his whole purposes during his chiefship was to maintain peace with the whites to uh get along with them to make sure that uh all problems were resolved with the white Community he was determined against some very very heavy odds to keep his tribe here in this Valley there was great pressure from the United States government to move the limh high band to uh Fort Hall down near Pocatello he resisted that in fact he when the tribe eventually went in the first part of the 1900s tendoy had passed away he he did not want to leave this Valley and and you don’t have to spend much time here to understand why and finally he was a kin he was a relative to Sakia and as we talk a little B about his life I I’ll try to tie in this together and and we can bring the Notions of uh his relationships with with Sakia and her extended family uh into Focus well tendoy was born along the boisei river in about 1834 his his name was kentaki Yak at the time or or his family was kentaki Yak his father was a banic his mother was from the sheeper tribes as a boy he was given the name of an Yuen uh uh tendo t n d o i p an tendo and that comes from his eating habits he seemed like you know as you boil meat the blood is drawn out and and it comes to the surface and and forms in sort of a gel well he really liked that broth that was sort of his favorite and that’s what uh an tendo means he who likes broth it was then shortened by the white man to just tendoy and it’s spelled two different ways t n d o y or t n d oi as as two words as a young man he joins his father who was a war chief under snag now during one of these Hunts uh his father uh was killed in a battle with the black feet and as a result uh tendoy now takes over his father’s role as one of the sub Chiefs under snag in fact as I mentioned before his his fighting ability was was rather significant a noted Frontiersman Lewis mallat said and I quote tendoy was the bravest Indian I ever saw his exploits were renowned he acquired distinction in battles with Flathead Crow and Sue and was endowed with an intellect far superior to that of any other member of his tribe tendo was a big man husky man he was taller than the average Shoni he was straight as an arrow with a fine physique he was of light complexion and had a well-shaped brow a Roman nose and large dark eyes he impressed people with his bigness of character as well as his bigness with stature during his lifetime tendo will take three wives in 1857 he marries Kora these by the way the three wives are all sisters so it made it a little easier uh 1857 he marries Kora of which they have seven children one dies in infancy uh 11 years later he marries the younger sister Laura in which they have four children which two die in infancy and then Sarah and we’re not sure of the date of his marriage with Sarah but they have five children one dies in infancy and two dies uh as young children now to tie them into sakaj jia’s family um kamwa was Chief when Lewis and Clark arrived the name kamwa is essentially means not inclined to go and it is believed that he was given that name because of his relu to cross over the Continental Divide uh at at Lewis’s request in search of Clark if you remember in the story uh kamwa was was afraid that this was some kind of trap that perhaps this was a blackoot or some kind of uh trap in which they’d get him away from the village and and kill him and so he was not inclined to go uh as a result not sure if this is the origin of the name but that’s sort of the expectation uh after the Lis had CL Expedition leave uh Kam continues to to lead the tribe until he was killed in a Indian battle with the black feed on the bloody dick Creek uh battle over in Montana and about sometime between 1855 because In 1855 the Mormons send an expedition into this Valley and when the Mormon uh missionaries and and Pioneers settle around limhi uh snag is the chief and so we know that the power has been transferred I mean with with kami’s death snag now becomes the chief snag is the uh son of remember Saka jaa’s brother Kam they had another brother and snag is the son of of the other brother uh this other brother is not mentioned in the Lewis and Clark expedition because he apparently was not in the area of the time uh but as a result now snag becomes the chief and uh he gets along very very well with the Mormon in fact the relationship between he and the Mormon settlers is is really first class um snag name comes from similar battle when Kam was killed snag apparently hides behind a big stump to avoid the bullets from the from the black feet and hence the name snag is is attached to him uh it kept him alive but uh I’m not sure the name was was necessarily a blessing or not for the 3 years the Mormons settled in this Valley between 55 and and 1855 and 58 snag and and the tribe snag and the Mormons uh get along very well in fact when briam young travels to this Valley in 57 visits with the tribe uh is is deeply impressed with Chief snag and encourages Mormon settlers to take Indian wives to try to increase the relationship between the the tribes and and and the the church the next year however Mormons are pulled out of the valley and as a parting gift they give Chief snag thousand bushels of wheat which is was really a significant gift snag and a number of the tribal leaders then weep at the Mormons leaving and he is uh uh but the good news I guess is that’s the Mormons go snag and the limhi tribe pretty well have the ballet them themselves for the next several years until the early 60s when gold is discovered well in 1863 snag and some of his sub chiefs were riding down grasshopper Creek which is over on the Montana side saw this nice Cool Spring it’s it’s it’s a hot summer day so he decides to take a bath gets undressed gets into the water and splashing around when this white guy comes by gentleman by the name of buck Stinson he rides into the group sees snag in the water pulls out his gun and shoot shots him kills Chief snag uh shoots at some of the other tribe members takes a couple of shots at tendoy who was with them but now it’s just a subchief well snag is killed because of this the uh Buck Stenson brags that he had just killed the chief for no other purpose to add another notch on his gun well snag as he was dying requests that tendoy be made chief he had some more aggressive sub Chiefs but he thought tendoy was the best man for the job and so now tendoy becomes is elected chief of the tribe before he dies snag says I’m going to have you selected Chief but I want you to promise me something I want you to promise that you will do everything in your power to maintain peaceful relations with the white Community because by this time he had discovered some gold in this Valley and the white Community was growing rather substantially tendo agree says I will do what I can now you’ve got to understand the tribe was very very outraged at the murder of their Chief I mean snag was deeply loved and respected by the tribal members and and they are ready to go on the war path tendoy intervenes says we’re not going to do that and he avoids Bloodshed now the day after he becomes Chief I almost need my glasses here because there want to read the the these circumstances of this event the day after he is it’s like the chief he dresses in his finest regalia rides his War Pony into banic Montana He stopped in front of the General Store I remember he’s surrounded by a number of his sub Chiefs it looks like a pretty ferocious group he he stops in front of the General Store and waits for some of the leading Town’s people to gather he then called their attention to the ruthless manner in which they had killed his uncle and of the sorrow of the tribe of what regard what they regarded as a calamity he called their attention to the fact that holding the position of Warchief under his uncle he had protected them and all white people within the reach from assault from hostile Indian tribes he told them that he had come to inquire of them now why they had killed his uncle did it mean that they had declared war against the Indians who had been their friends if so he accepted the challenge with deep regret as he much preferred to be friendly with the white Community he was a assured by the better class of minors that the past service and friendship were appreciated and that killing of their Chief was the act of a few desperate gamblers who unfortunately had found their way into camp and that they deplored the act the interview was protracted for some time when tendoy withdrew to the camp of the Indians who were determined to avenge the death of their Chief tendoy addressed them addressed his followers with an able speech after cond condoning with them of their loss they had sustained he called their attention and this is really the significant part he called their attention to what the war with the whites meant and what the results would inevitably be now as a as a followup to that the next year Buck Stinson and his ally Henry plumber who was sort of a guy that was both a Marshall and a bad guy were uh C taken prisoner by a group of Vigilantes and subsequently hung so the Indians found some relief in the fact the white whites had taken care of these guys Now understand this this whole territory was part of the idowa territory and to get any kind of law enforcement over here was from from Boise or from Leon actually where the capital was was virtually impossible and so the Vigilantes was really the only way they could go and the Vigilantes took care of of Mr Stimson well from 63 to 1875 tendoy builds the tribe from groups of sheep eaters Shoni and bancks the high point the tribe numbers about five 100 originally knowed as tendo band they decided that wasn’t politically correct that wasn’t wise to be tendo band and so they take the name of the river that they’re situated on and that was the limhi so they became known as the limh high band of shonis in 1866 gold was discovered and of course the the whites pour in tendoy understands that only by cooperating with whites could the tribe survive and in fact throughout their history this tribe has boasted that not one of them had ever shed the blood of a white man they had never shed the blood of a white man in September 24th of 1868 tendo signs a treaty with Virginia City which provided the tra of land for reservation here in the valley unfortunately the US government failed to ratify it in Fall of 1871 tendoy learns that a band of bancks from Fort Hall had attacked and had captured a Mule Train 47 animals and wounded a white man and I quote when tendoy learned of the incident he went in search of the Wounded white man and His companion and plac them under his protection then Gathering his Warriors about him he rode to the banic camp and demanded the return of the stolen horses and mules the bancks denounced the chief as a traitor and threatened to fight him tendoy thereupon called upon all the bancks who were friendly to the whites join him as a consequence a large group of under the subchief major Jim AB banic joined with the limh high and forcibly retook the stolen animals tendoy returned the stock and the white man to boisey where the governor of Idaho presented him with a flag and some supplies as a reward for his faithfulness to the cause of peace from this point on that there is attempt to move the tendo down to Fort Hall outside of Pocatello for variety reasons the government felt that uh it was too costly to to maintain the tribe off the reservation the panics were going through some internal problems of their own their death of their Chief targi had had created a bancy and the in the chief ship the son of targi was also targi but he was only about 16 or 17 and so he was not really suited to run the tribe and so the agents decided here’s a way to get tendoy down there to take over the tribe that would make everybody happy we’ll get him out of the limh High Valley tendoy refuses in 74 the Indian commission sent an agent to H her with with orders to move the tribe this brings into a play a prominent settler in this Valley a man by the name of uh George shup known as Colonel shup in the valley because of he he was one of the few people that had some military experience and Sh ran between Idaho and Montana a variety of trading Goods he was a very substantial citizen in this Valley and in fact was recognized Statewide as a a great man of great leadership shup eventually became appointed governor of the state of Idaho and then when Idaho became a state in 1890 shup was the first elected governor of the state of Idaho and then shortly after that he was appointed one of the senators of Idaho and so during this time of of of territorial status shu and tendoy become very very good friends when the government tries to move tendoy and the band down to Fort Hull shup intervenes and as a prominent salmon Valley resident he uh writes the territorial delegate a main man by the name of Jim Holly Jim Haley excuse me Haley Idaho is named after him and uh Haley’s a little surpris because most communities they didn’t want the Indians around most communities were more than happy to see the Indians go Haley gets a letter from shup saying leave tendoy alone we like him here in the valley he’s been very very significant to us we need to keep him here Haley writes back had I known the white settlers in the limh high were so anxious to have the Indians remain I could have had the appropriation different but knowing that the people of northern Idaho and the people of Southern Idaho were anxious to have the Indians in their part of the country placed on the reservation and kept there I took it for granted that the people of the limh High Valley would like to have had the IND moved from that from there to the Fort Hall reservation in this it seems from your letter that I had been mistaken you must certainly have a better set of endings in your country than we have in our country or we would have been anxious to be rid of them so Haley was a little surprised by this Valley’s reaction to the tribe and and and how what kind of friendships they had finally in in February of 1875 the limh high Indian Reservation was established here in this Valley uh by the presidential order of ulyses Grants and the significance of this was that the government spent about $50,000 a year keeping the the tribe going and and boosting the tribe which was significant in this Valley in terms of Economic Development because the tribe would spend the agents would spend the Indians would spend most of their money here in the valley well the real test between the tribe and the valley came first of all in in 1877 these are the Indian Wars 1877 18 78 and 79 there are three different Indian Wars that will really test the relationships here the first Indian war was the NZ Pierce many of you are familiar with Chief Joseph Joseph was up in the wall of a valley in Washington he had been in conflict with the whites in there the tribe had been given some land and the whites had moved in and and and some blood had been shed and so Chief Joseph and his sub Chiefs are the government tries to force them on a reservation they refused to go and for the next several months Chief Joseph leads his band of of NES Pierce essentially on a war party but but bringing the entire tribe across Idaho and in the fall actually in in June of 1877 this they they they begin their March they arrive or the beginning groups start coming into this Valley in August of 1877 the valley is very very concerned because even in in in tendo’s tribe there are a number of people that believe this should be where they make the stand they’ve been pushed around and abused by the white population and many of his tribal members are suggesting they help the NES Pierce and in fact a couple of the NES Pier sub Chiefs Looking Glass particularly comes to tendoy and asks for help wants them to help and and the people in the valley know that if this is a sizable force and that this Valley could be just ravished by by Indian Wars if if they’re not careful tendo’s reaction is to tell Looking Glass to take his people and to move through the valley they don’t want to any part of them and he will then assign about 40 of his Warriors to work with shup now who’s become Colonel shup in the local militia to try to defend us and and there are some pretty tense moments between the NES Pierce and some of the settlers here a quote from the local paper said during all this time of stress tendoy stood Faithfully by the whites he was busy with intertribal disputes and some of his own tribe members he was besought by the Waring tribe to join them it was a trying time for him but T tendoy held his forces intact he stood between the settlers and the Waring tribe and he counseled with Colonel Shu he was ready to help defend the settlers he was indeed a friend in need then he goes on to conclude with this statement I think he’s probably pretty accurate without his Allegiance and diplomacy the entire salmon in limh high valleys would have been laid waste and their H inhabitants put to the tomahawk so tendoy essentially saves the Valley from from a bloody bloody war the next year as you know that that Chief Joseph n Pier’s cross they go through the ellone country get up into Montana where a military force from uh the dtas come over and intercept them only they they were trying to get to Canada but only a few made it most of them were then captured and Chief Joseph makes his final statement I will fight no more forever and it becomes the title of a a book of that fact uh great Chieftain but uh just didn’t have the technology and had too many uh women and children and and invalids with him that to really make a the kind of fight out of that he normally would have the next year are the banic wars now this becomes even more critical because as you remember Chief uh tendoy has a number of bancks in his tribe the banic war breaks out when the white man encroached out on the cus Prairie the cus Prairie had been a major food source for a number of tribes in the area is they would go out and dig the cus rout and the tribe would would go out to this country and in four years now there it’s somewhat blamed on on government bureaucrats because when the cus when when the Treaty of Fort Bridger was signed um the cus Prairie was spelled k ansas and so they thought well that’s the Kansas Prairie and no one knew in Idaho the Kansas Prairie was and it’s because was spelled wrong but uh so the whites start moving out on this C Camas Prairie and when the tribe goes over there to gather food and they would do it at the same time of the year the bancks from Fort Hall with the shones and and the tribe from this Valley would go over to the Camas Prairie to gather chroots they found not only the whites that settled but they had pigs out there rooting around digging up these chroots and the bancks just went nuts they said this is this is outrageous you have just violated all the tenants of our treaty how can we trust you on anything and so War breaks out the bics uh start engaging in violence they they kill a number of people tendoy sees what’s happening moves his tribe out of the way cajoles threatens convinces his tribe to come with him and they move back to this country make it very clear that they’re not part of this battle and uh the violence between the banic and the white is is is very very stuff General Howard the one armed General from from the Civil War is the one that Chas chases down uh Joseph now gets engaged in this in this battle defeats the bancks and again puts them on her brings them back to the reservation uh badly subdued the third war was the Sheep eater War the following year again there’s not much involvement on tendoy in this part but he does have some sheepers in his tribe and again he keeps them out of the war he just spends all of his energy keeping these folks not engaged in in in battle and and and safe from from the Whits because he recognizes he has a small tribe four or 500 people they do not have any of the kinds of equipments that are available he sees the Power of the United States government and he recognizes that if you fight these people you’re going to lose you’re going to lose and so his goal was mainly survival of his tribe now the next series of events in in his experience is with the railroad Utah Northern Railroad starts coming out of out of uh actually the Brigham City area in in 1876 they start building the the railroad from Ogden to Brigham City up the Canyon from brigam City to Logan and then from Logan to Franklin Idaho Franklin becomes the first stop of the railroad in Idaho company’s about to go bankrupt so in 78 the company’s reorganized and B begins extending into Idaho now remember this is when the banic wars were fought this creates a great deal of fear not only among the owners of the railroad but also among the workers here to the rescue comes chief dantoy uh he camps in some of the areas he protects the railroad uh he protects workers and a quote uh quote from this time says many and many a Time Chief chandoo saved the Utah northern from being destroyed by other Indian tribes when his son wice tendoy dies there’s an obituary notice that states and I quote there never would have been the town of pogell except for the work of Chief dendo in helping the whites through that part of the country and aiding them while so many Indian tribes were hostile so the the whole Southern Idaho was was under tendo’s protection in fact ta tendoy camps one whole summer in Beaver Canya averting many attacks and always keeping the background although the workers who were building the line knew that there was some Force protecting them so the the success of the railroad is is granted to tendoy in 1880 he is invited to go to Washington the government wanted to close many of the smaller reservations they invited tendo to Washington to sign the treaty in May of 1880 he is he signs the treaty that seeds all of this land that the tribe had here in the valley uh to the government nine years later the government approves it but the catch to this was it did not take effect until a majority of adult males in the tribe agreed remember this signed in 1889 the adult Mills don’t agree to that till about 196 so for the next 15 years is the tribal still lay stay in this Valley while uh the government is trying to get them out because of his efforts Senator SH now goes to the government and proposes tendoy be given a pension he pushes legislation in 1892 that tendoy receive a pension from the government of $30 a month house always being cheaper than the Senate reduced it by 15 and pendo now has given a a pension of $15 a month well the last years of his life there’s a certain conf he gets in constant squabbles with the Indian agents they resent him he’s way too powerful for the Indian agents uh they don’t like the fact that they can order the tribe to do something and then tendoy can counterman it and the tribe’s going to follow tendoy for example the government wanted Chief dendo to send his kids to school uh he wouldn’t do it he didn’t like to do that uh he wanted the kids to go out and hunt and enjoy life as he had government will lock up the agents will lock Indians that are breaking the laws T will go release them from the jails one of the issues was the lack of response to Christianity in a conversation about Christ This is a quote from the uh one of the Indian agents of the time tendo says and I quote me no Savvy Christ white man Heap smart Indians no see their idea is a happy Hunting Ground where all Indians will go and their real God is their stomach however is less attention was given their body and more to their souls they would be better off so for tendo’s so-called lack of understanding was really really bright but the fact that they wouldn’t accept Christianity upsets the Indian agents they don’t like that they want these they sort of had the idea that the tribe should be sort of white people uh and and and ignore their own traditions and Trends the inan agent was unhappy because the tribe lacked interest in farming they say again a quote much depends on their Chief in whom they have implicit Fai faith and has to extend of farming on this reservation his influence is seldom used for the upbuilding of these people all efforts to of the agent are consequently greatly counteracted so he’s got a a contest here with the with the uh with the tribe it is clear to my mind that these Indians will never be a progressive people and that now this really bothers me but this was the mentality of the late 19th century it is clear to my mind that these Indians will never be a progressive people until their tribal religions and customs which are firmly held intact by the chief are broken so the idea is just is to destroy the tradition destroy the religion and and make again sort of whites out of them for as long as the Indians recognize his authority confi confide and rely on him and follow his leadership they will never exercise the individual thought and action necessary to become successful Farmers I mean that that is just absurd how ignorant these people were of of inan traditions then he goes on to conclude their success or fa failure then in a great measure risks on the supremacy of the agent or of the chief in other words who’s running the show if it’s the agent we can we can make these people into white folks if it’s the chief then he will he will continue to have them live with their own Traditions way they finally break the indan resistance in all of these issues is by withholding food when the Indi would go to the post for for supplies if if they were not behaving as the agent expected them to behave they wouldn’t get their food supplies they would be cut off and finally hunger forces the tribe to comply finally the government uh forces the tribe to move to Fort Hall in 19 the chief is is asked essentially directed by the government to convince his tribe to vote to remove themselves to Fort Hall in line with the treaty that tendo had signed tendo gives a very persuasive speech the the the community the male vote Community votes the REM removal eventually takes place in 1909 now the tribe felt they were misled they were lied to probably were deceived tendoy does not make the move but because I mentioned earlier he dies May 9th 197 ten tendoy and his son uh tup pompe black hair were riding in the Hills above the reservation with the white man Joseph Jeff well Jeff had brought along the sizable supply of liquor and the group gets very very drunk while returning tendoy falls off his horse into one of the streams the son is too drunk to recognize his father’s distress or his problem and and continues on down expecting his father to pull himself out the river get back on the horse and come down it doesn’t happen next morning they sent out a search party they found that tendoy had got out of the river but had died on the bank his death causes a great deal of sorrow in the limh High Valley in commenting upon his the life history of tendoy and this is a quote from the again in the newspaper in in com commenting upon the life history of tendoy we can Overlook his imperfections because his heart was right he had all the virtues of the Indian race but few of the vices of the white race if we were to compare his mode of life to that of the cultured white man he would be found wanting but as a member of an untutored race we must conclude to him a place among the heroes of the ages since the Advent of the whites in the salmon Valley he was always been their staunch friend even when it he was importuned by the members of his race to make war when his Services were required for the protecting of the settlers of the valley he was never found wanting tendoy had his faults but who hasn’t but he talked straight from any standpoint Teno tendoy was a grand old man with a strong personality and an indominable will his influence over his tribe was always for good now there’s a number of conclusions you draw from this gentlemen first of all I know of no other indan tribe in the nation and I not do not have an extensive knowledge all the tribes in the nation but I know of no other chief that had the longevity of this guy remember he takes over the tribe sometime around 1858 and he dies in 197 that’s nearly 50 years as a chief uh it just was very very unusual as I said his his record is somewhat in dispute to many of in the communities I mean in this community he was conceived as one of the really great guys uh a monument to him here in the valley town named after him he was really conceived as as one of the truly great among some of the Indians on the other hand among the Native Americans he is conceived by many as as an apple red on the outside but really A white guy that did everything he could to to keep his tribe alive so I think you have to ask the question by whose standard is he great in my opinion he was great because he he fought for the survival of his tribe he s fought for the survival of his way of life and for this Valley that he loves so dearly and I think that uh by any standard as time progresses he’s going to be one of the truly great tribe Chieftain again there’s not a lot written on tendoy but I think that this man’s life Warren’s great study because he is truly uh a man who intervened in opportunities that were awkward for him but uh the whole Community benefited from it as a result uh he was he was deeply loved when his when he passes his tribe is is devastated and again I don’t know if they ever did come up with a chief to follow this kind of lead because tendo was a hard act to follow well as a Carl Professor I am always geared to speak 50 minutes and so I’m rather than do that let me stop at this point and see if there’s some questions or some comments or please respond to this idea of greatness I I just think that tendoy has a has a merits they said in the in this local newspaper here he could comp with great people of all ages and I I strong believer in that if if you raise your hand I’ll come around with the microphone you can speak into that most accounts say that uh he died of blunt force trauma to the Head he was found that way uh I choose to believe that the whole uh story that you related of the drinking and falling off the horse that was all a pretense uh the man was actually murdered that’s what I absolutely believe and there is good evidence to to to substantiate that that is not I mean that is an an issue that many people subscribe that that we’re not sure exactly who was behind it whether it was his son that tried to do it or what the uh motive was but uh there’s ample evidence uh that uh would would suggest that that he was killed that way now the official report was he fell off the horse and that’s where you get the blunt force trauma I not sure I disagree with your lady at the back there how do you know if it was his son that was trying to kill him maybe it was the white guy that did it exactly it could be went and got him drunk uh thank you for pointing out my uh assumption that may have not the things that I’ve read was that the sun was the nearest to him that uh if if the sun the sun saw him go off the horse and had he wanted to he could have intervened at that point white guy went to jail Jeff was was arrested and and prison for a short time for providing alcohol for the Indians which was illegal at the time but again we don’t know which one was responsible I again I I misspoke when I said it’s assumed that the sun did that black ha other questions or observations please Jeff was just a look the question she asked was who was Jeffrey she’s a local Rancher here that apparently had a pretty good relationship with the tribe and uh because tendoy had no fear I mean remember he’s a very old man at this point he has no fear of of getting on the horse and riding up into the High Country with this guy so he was apparently a friend uh probably had done some business with him over the years and uh we don’t have any you know not a lot written on the guy does anyone besides me find it rather incredulous to say the least that this great country was founded on the principle of religious freedom and yet when they would not conform to the Christian religion food was withheld and they were abused and misused and everything possible for that reason isn’t that incredible it is it is embarrassing I mean you read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and it says you know you have your right of Freedom or religion but at that point we have a very narrow concept of what Freedom religion means and and to these people since it wasn’t Christian it probably wasn’t true religion and I find that just appalling that they would treat these people that way that yeah it’s just it’s disgusting and and I think we but I think if you look at the whole history of our dealing with the Native Americans it’s it’s embarrassing we we talk about honor and nobility and and yet we did not treat these people with the kind of respect that we would any other people thank you yeah exactly right yes I enjoyed your presentation very much but in studying the Lewis and Clark Trail and everything else uh don’t you find it it’s rather disappointing that our government still subscribes to the same policies that the Indian agents did back then and that as a country still haven’t learned to live from our mistakes the past as a historian I find that very troubling that that we’ve had 200 years or more of of of poor policy dealing with these folks and we still I mean you look if you want as a former political type if you want to see an agency that’s Rife with corruption it’s the Bureau of Indian Affairs I mean they have got probably the longest history of of I shouldn’t get too harsh because I I find it really sad because no one really watches them and most of the community says well it’s just in it it’s no big deal and I find that just appalling that that somehow this group of people are are set aside and not given the kind of attention respect they deserve our federal government is still doing that today absolutely government is still doing that today you’re right you’re right other questions anybody else well listen let me let me conclude with with comment you don’t have to spend much time in this Valley to understand why tendo want to stay this has got to be one of the most pristine beautiful places on Earth uh and I can understand why some of the folks in this Valley resisted this Saia Center because in many ways Idaho is one of the best kept secrets in the nation that uh as long as people don’t know you’re not going to have a lot of these crazy Outsiders come in here and create problems but folks this is a secret that’s going to get out it’s going to get out you got to make sure that it’s get out to the right way and and so I just I’m just so pleased with what’s taking place here and the and the beauty of the area and and this saage Center and to think that 200 years ago that Lewis and Clark expedition came across here and ran into this band of of shonis and were brokenhearted because they looked to the west and thought they would see the down slope into the Pacific they saw about 10 more ranges of mountains and thought God we’re not going to make it this is this is deadly but what a great Expedition what a great event and and to the park service thank you for doing this great service for the Valley and to the people of salmon and Lim High County thank you for helping Host this because the community is really better off and to to get this secret out thank you stay pretty close to time okay ladies and gentlemen that was um Richard Stallings on Chief tendoy the unsung hero coming up next at 1:00 we have beaten Trail remnants of historic tread along the trail by Steve Wright of the Bureau of Land Management and in the meantime if you’d like to go see our kbo or go see our exhibit tent uh feel free to do that and um come back for the 1:00 show so thank you very much

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Dr. Oland Swigan on Sacagawea and Cultural Identity Theft

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:49 +0000

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen nice sunny day today my name is Aaron I’m one of the Rangers traveling with this traveling exhibit I see a lot of familiar faces so I’m going to keep this introduction small small but I want to welcome you here to the tent of many voices this is where we have a lot of presenters come every hour on the hour and if you’re interested in knowing the rest of the week’s schedule we have schedules on the black boxes that hold the speakers on each side of our tent so you’re welcome to take a look at those at the top of this hour Dr orland swingan is here from Washington State University to share sakaia cultural identity theft so let’s give him a nice warm welcome did you say warm welcome the last time I was in um Sal and I remember going down one of the streets and seeing a bank U thermometer registered 100° and that was maybe two years ago so uh I’m glad it is an 100 degree uh warm welcome it’s it’s much much nicer plus it’s in the shade and there’s actually some um some um some some Breeze here well listen I I want to uh Begin by um doing a bit of background to bring you around uh but it is a short paper but by way of background let me just say a few things about uh Power about beliefs um about expertise because it’s it’s crucial to my paper when I I’ll wander around here for a few minutes and you might think you know boy he’s going off in lots of different directions and I am admittedly so if I seem like I’m wandering I am uh this is kind of a paper in progress uh I the paper I’ll read to you is is pretty straightforward but what occurs to me is I’m sure watching television you’ve seen these commercials about identity theft and I’m I’m sure that you see people uh a man will sit there and all of a sudden there’s a woman voice and this woman’s voice says how much she enjoyed U Las Vegas and she enjoyed it because she was using your credit card and it was a woman’s voice and a man and Lady Luck or whatever you know and and so we we’re surrounded by identity theft and if you go on Google just put in identity theft and you get you know just scores upon scores upon scores of hits how to avoid it what to do oh it’s awful it’s worse than um uh what is that psoriasis or eczema you know all of a sudden identity theft is going to you know be you know top that um and I just you know just jotted a you know a quick uh comment here it’s identity theft it occurs when someone wrongfully uses your personal identification uh to obtain credit loans Services even rentals and mortgages in your name they may even commit crimes while impersonating you so have impersonation we have uh we have in a sense an appropriation of your identity what I’m here today to talk about is the appropriation of identity through a cultural means cultural appropriation of one’s identity because that’s what’s happened in large part with with sakaia I I uh I commend you all for being here because uh what you see here is a lmh high version of who sakaja is and you notice if I’m saying sakaja I’m not saying sagaia if we’re up in North Dakota at Fort Berthold You’ be hear everyone saying sagoya or you know some guttural form of that I don’t and I’m here to ask us you know how do we how do we form our beliefs about who Sakia is what what goes into this and when you ask yourself how do you form a belief let’s just kind of ask ourselves I mean some of these things are pretty self-evident but let’s give a couple of comments we form beliefs number you know maybe two ways uh if there’s is a you know uh Divine stroke of U inspiration that might be a third way but but generally speaking in the rest of the world there are two ways generally it’s a self-generated form where we go through experience we experience something and uh you know maybe we learn our multiplication tables and we go through back and forth and we experience them we come away and we understand them and then we reflect on them we think about them and so after we we we after we experience something and after we reflect and think and consider and Ponder we form beliefs and those beliefs probably are the ones that are the most important to us because they come to us without a filter they come to us directly they don’t come to us from from somebody else but those are the ones that are probably the minority most of our beliefs and and I’m going to you know I’m going to hammer at these most of our beliefs are externally generated beliefs and I’m going to look like I’m accusing you of of being being filled with nothing but external generate I have lots of them myself so I don’t I don’t want you to think that I’m you know trying to act holier than now in this case but when we when we talk about externally generated beliefs what we tend to talk about are beliefs that we learn from somebody else a belief we learn from an expert um the ones that would resonate the most probably for some of you might be Dr Phil Dr Phil well Dr Phil said such and such has to be true my gosh he’s got got this big program he carries himself wonderfully he’s well spoken he’s charismatic he’s got to be right he’s got a degree my Heavens or maybe it’s Judge Judy Judge Judy has more of an effect on me than Dr Phil I think I watch her carefully I’m beginning to tell my kids Life’s a contract kids talk to Dr Judy or judge Judge Judy uh for some of you it might be Dr Laura if you’re riding down the road in your car you might list a Dr Laura or maybe it’s Oprah or maybe some of these other experts are doctors maybe they’re lawyers maybe they’re accountants you ever you ever do something opposite of what the accountant told you to do no takers wise or if you do keep it to yourself and you got away with it right accountant says yeah that’s a good deduction or that isn’t I I don’t say I want to see the rule book I just I take it I I take them at his or her word um um a number of things I mean in terms of uh you know a doctor lawyer a banker uh or if someone is talking to you about about financial assistance you go in and ask them for their advice you know uh what should I put in the stock market or should I put at mutual funds and how old are you well I think that given your age and your income this is best and you walk away and you do it you know you’re you’re using them as as as the expert the other way that we deal with externally generated beliefs has to do with authority authority and we’re getting closer to my paper now many times we tend to believe someone because of their Authority it might be their position it might be their charismatic power many in many cases we really don’t ask them for proof we we simply take them at their word you know we could peel things back and check out the accountant we could peel things back and check out the um um you know the doctor we can get a second opinion those are pretty common but when it comes to Authority we we you kind of don’t what’s an example of authority a manager you have a manager my manager is my is my Department share in my Dean and when they say do this you know I generally just do it because at the end of the year that department chair is going to be writing my evaluation and I want a good evaluation because at WSU we’re not unionized and my my uh raise if I ever get one is based on Merit do you think I want someone writing a letter for me who dislikes me or thinks I don’t believe him or or someone I Buck it’s not in my self-interest a priest or a clergy if your minister or your priest tells you something and you Embrace that person you’re going to go say excuse me father I’m I’m going to go get a second opinion on that how many Hail marries was that 15 I might shop around and get five you do that of course you don’t do that you don’t do that you accept that person for what what he or she has to say and maybe the best example of authority is being a parent is being a parent I’ve got three kids and I’ve mastered that art of saying Molly do this and I’ll stare at her and she’ll say nothing and she’ll agree to it I’m grumpy I’m tired I don’t want to argue Molly do this Greg do that Christopher why didn’t you do this there’s no argument oh there is sometimes in a light-hearted manner but there’s a certain time as a parent the look oh my mother my father could just just freeze me in a position at even at my age right now with a look that’s called Authority where you don’t even question it well when we get to this topic cultural identity theft we can ask ourselves what what happens to Authority well I mean Authority can be good and Authority can be bad and there can be all kinds of Shades in between and when we look at American Indians we can say can we spot Authority absolutely uh look at uh a tribal leader they might not strike you as as as symbols of authority but all you have to do is you know walk in the reservation and shop around chitchat a bit spend some time and say what’s your tribal chair make they’ll tell you they’ll tell you there might be U you know economic uh depression on the reservation but the tribal uh Council chair and members are going to make pretty decent money um I would guess that a range up in this part of the neck of the woods 60 70 maybe 75 880,000 so you’re making lots of money as a tribal chair do you think that translates into Authority the answer is yes yes first of all the person’s elected then they’re elected to an office that has all the accouterments of the office plus this person’s well paid and then a little secret a little bit of the camel Under the Tent if you really want to find out if someone’s a really powerful tribal chair knows around because most of them will carry with them a tribal credit card because when they’re out doing business for the tribe they can’t be out there you know looking powerless maybe there’s a big uh uh gaming issue at stake maybe they need to win friends influenc people so you need this uh nice credit card and so nose around NOS around ask you’ll be embarrassed you probably won’t learn but I’ll just tell you without naming names uh so I have lots of deniability the biggest I heard was $250,000 credit limit is that Authority yeah it’s big time Authority but in a Indian non-indian situation you know non-indians tend to wear the hair shirt and simply feel sorry for all Indians victimizing them as Hess creatures who can’t do much for themselves that’s really unfortunate you haven’t been to a res in a long time if that’s the way you think because there’s lots of stuff happening in a reservation and there’s all kinds of authority figures there’s all kinds of um uh Power relationships when we when we think about getting closer and closer to my concept here of culture identity theft what we we need to understand is this to to perpetrate some kind of cultural identity theft which I’ll talk about an institution a tribe or an individual must in some fashion legitimize his or her Authority you have to legitimize it and once you do your Authority becomes very influential because once you have a legitimate form of of authority the kinds of compliance you get is remarkable it’s remarkable when you’re in a position of authority what people will automatically do without questioning you I do it myself if I see someone’s uh a policeman’s uh um light in the back I I pull over and pray that he’s after somebody else and goes by me but uh if it’s me I I pull over CU I think you know it’s better that I do this face the music while while while I while I while I can in other words we all in a sense fall prey to this but especially when we have institutions with strong hierarchies the stronger and the more visible the hierarchy the clearer It Is by way uh uh by way of complying and tribes do have hierarchies it might be called the tribal uh uh Council might be called called the tribal Business Council they all have positions of authority people know who’s number one and they can work right down the pecking order um and and frequently they they suffer from what some uh Scholars refer to as capitis ever hear the word capitis anybody any pilots in the group here no Pilots One Pilot back there one p i got a pilot here and add what Captain itis is I think he does okay you if he nods his head I have it right the flight Captain is is in the cockpit he’s a head honcho you can tell it the way he dresses the way he walks right sure you know anybody can spot him mile off they make lots of money they’re in charge of the craft and so if the pilot uh decides to make a decision that’s faulty uh uh does his co-pilot or Navigator or anybody else Rush up and say captain I’m afraid you’re making a mistake do they do that they don’t do that how come he’s the captain he’s the captain they’re unwilling to confront this man of Authority or this woman of authority whoever it happens to be it that’s called capitis suggesting you know something of illness that we will willingly go along with somebody in charge even when we know that person is wrong a couple of other uh Scholars have talked about what they like to call the symbols of authority and they like to use 3ts titles tailor and tones titles tailor and tones for Authority what do I what do I mean by title there’s nothing like like the simple title Dr period doctor doctor you don’t feel well you go to the doctor he tells you to do something and you do it maybe a little closer to home I mean who else would you walk in with this person a total stranger and take off all your clothes I still am stunned at that I’m stunned at that and that’s not the end of it once your clothes are off me there’s a reason for taking your clothes off because they do unnatural things to you and you let them you don’t even know the person’s first name that’s called Authority and nurses I mean some doctors just make a reputation of being total jerks and having nurses run around doing whatever this you know crazy doctor wants done um we also can talk about tailor uniform Personnel have a real impact on us you got 1 2 3 4 if these people told you to open and Evacuate the room would you do it just like that you do it quicker for them than you would for me me if they said uh ladies and gentlemen we’ve had a technical difficulty and we want this room vacated please vacate now you’d be up and out of here in 30 seconds because these people wear uniforms they’re they’re they’re in charge they introduced me I’d do what they say too I’d be off this thing quick as a flash remember Dick Morris remember the fellow that used to be the used to be buddies with President Clinton now we see him in Fox News you know he crossed over right Morris the uh political guy he got himself in a little bit of trouble too um Dick Morris uh uh is the fellow who persuaded uh President Clinton to give up those Dapper light colored suits remember when Clinton would appear in kind of a light tan or a light brown suit sometimes real colorful ties uh Morris came along and said you know I don’t think that’s you know he he sort of intuited what other psychologists had to say they said you know a study was done and uh when a man was wearing a blue suit and a red tie and jaywalked people were three and a half times more willing to follow the jaywalker wearing the blue suit and red tie as compared to the person and Casual street clothes what the blue suit said was follow me and so what happened with Clinton gave up his you know Dapper tan and flower ties and went uh blue suit and you you won’t look at the president the same way when he really wants to command respect take a look at what he’s wearing good standard funeral clothes tone tone tone has a lot to do with how one communicates is one charismatic is one persuasive is one compelling is one sympathetic or is one abrasive many times you find people who who are in Authority will speak with a great deal of confidence stirring Charisma sympathy understanding and they wind up being compelling they wind up being believable because in the end we want to bind the expert we want the expert to help us we want the expert to give us DeTour for complex thinking listen you’re the banker I pay you to do all this I don’t want to get a ree in in banking I want some okay I hope I made my point about Authority and I hope it will translate and transfer to my paper so now is the boring stuff and I’ll do my very best to keep you on the edge of your seats and in times like this uh I have a PowerPoint and I forget what’s on it so I’ll it’ll be kind of you know I know what’s on it but for whatever reason I get up in a group like this I don’t have a clu um what we have here is the the lhai Shon Aboriginal territory and if you’ll what you’ll what you’ll discover there is the uh Aboriginal territory this is the territory p large which the uh lahis were eventually compensated by the Indian Claims Commission late’ 60s early 1970s uh a claim which in their case was 4.5 million I may talk about that later on so keep that figure in mind and what this does is just bring you up to date on where we are here and you’ll I hope you can can you see that or is it too small see see it okay what you’ll see is a is a location based right down where we are this is good meat and potatoes Louis and Clark stuff because it brings you right where we are right now we get you into L High Pass lost Trail Toby uh LHI sacka um uh Lewis and Clark I mean if if you’re into this you you should have Goosebumps right now looking at that map cuz that’s where that’s where all this happens if you look to your far right you’ll see Three Forks of the Missouri and the Three Forks of the Missouri over there in Montana the Madison the Gallatin and the Jeffers that’s of course the area where uh sacka Jia at age 12 was captured so this is an important story to us and this map is around 1805 thereabouts I’ll come back to that like I said my I put this together but each time it’s kind of a surprise to me so in in the February 16th 1996 edition of the Idaho Statesman lmh High leader Rod arow asked a question that underlies the importance of my paper presentation quote the government is going to spend $1 million to reintroduce the wolf and the salmon what about reintroducing the people he asked referring to tendoy field and I hope that you go take a look at this if you can an ancestral site southeast of salmon um a white declared that these are our sites our Arlington National Cemetery with these words arow White and the fort lihigh Indian Community inaugurated U uh its efforts uh to restore Federal recognition for the lihai people whose Aboriginal homelands lay 200 miles north of their present location in or at the Fort Hall Indian reservation right near Pocatello on February 12th 1875 President Grant established a 100 square mile executive order reservation for the lumai people in the lumai valley right here it’s the first time I was able to do that reading this paper right here known as The lmh High Valley Indian Reservation the executive order established the reserve for quote the exclusive use of the mixed tribes of Shashi banck and she Peter Indians the agadas and the tadas and the banic almost from the outset the government federal government and local residents began efforts to resend the executive order reservation the president had barely allowed the ink to uh to dry and people in the federal government and people out here the the few settlers who were out here opposed it so it was under Fire from day one they ultimately succeeded in 1905 there a long story here I’m truncating this tremendously and in 190 7 the lmh high began what many had called the lmh high Trail of Tears which saw their Forest removal from their ancestral lands here uh to the Fort Hall Indian reservation in Pocatello now I I’m cautious about uh making uh comparisons but I mean let me just ask the question would you rather have some property around salmon or would you rather live in pocatella banished from their home Homeland in 197 and seeking return ever since the lumai people create a dilemma for the nation as it commemorates the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark core of Discovery the United States needs to reassess its commitment to the lumai People to sakaj jia’s People the obligation of the nation acknowledges uh the obligation the nation acknowledges toward uh wolf and salmon recovery efforts is dwarfed by the responsibility it faces in treating fairly the people who played such a crucial role in advancing the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition throughout my work for the restoration of federal recognition for the lumai shonis I’ve emphasized as one of my sub things the lumai shishoni tie to sakaia her Origins as an aadea born near samon Idaho my argument goes is one more compelling reason for the federal government to restore to the to the lay Shoni Federal recognition Salmon River Country is where she was born and raised and it was from that region that she was kidnapped at age 12 but as the nation moves further into this Bicentennial business it has become apparent that the lumai shonis the people who raised her until she was 12 have been overlooked ignored and disparaged by a host of people not the least of whom are other American Indian people meanwhile non-indian academics people I hang out with have either knowingly or unwittingly damaged the historical understanding of sakaia by trivializing her they do so by focusing on the princess theme by wrapping their rhetoric in to myth and Legend uh and Legend genre and by concentrating on how this kidnapped woman gave her blessing to the march of Westward Expansion by accompanying lisis Clark I mean she’s kidnapped uh they probably killed her mother took her off to North Dakota and and then we are blaming her for coming along and giving the Indian blessing to westward migration restor expansion that doesn’t make any sense we academics are much too pleased with ourselves as we smugly poke fun and over and over again at say Donna Reed uh in her 1955 performance in the far Horizons we look back at this and and uh and and and again we we again poan and and sakaia is is trivialized and seen as unimportant and and an adornment an accouterment and we also refer to her as Superwoman or maybe the Madonna of the trail one of Sak’s many monikers one of many labels quote the ultimate American history mystery woman is loaded with drama but ultimately clever dismissive cliches as this uh diminish This Woman’s importance this is after all much more fun and much safer for non-indians than stepping into the quarrel and using historical and cultural methodologies to offer an academic assessment we want to do that but even more damaging than pompous academic cleverness and cunning is the Discord that exists in Indian Country over saku’s identity which academics and non-academics alike virtually ignore we think it’s an Indian problem at least three groups of American Indians lay a claim to her the Mandan hadat of North Dakota the Eastern shason of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and the limhi Shon the refugee band removed from samon country and now living 200 Mi south of here with the Shon banx at the Fort Hall Indian Reservation some believe she died and was buried at Fort Manuel Lisa in 1812 around 25 years old While others hold on to the conviction that she lived into her 90s and is now buried at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming with a curious sense of spinelessness most academics describe the controversy in the most guarded in general terms refusing to wait into the fry and offering an assessment as they backpedal from the Indian dispute saying let let let Indian folks sort this out of these three tribes two are federally recognized possessing substantial status through treaties through executive orders substantial land bases quasi economic independence limited sovereignty political governance status and influence accorded to tribal organizations all of those things are absent from the lihis the lmis are minorities down at Chan but they’re important minorities down at Chan one group however has none of these advantages as I say the Lumis and currently the tribe perhaps with the strongest hold on sakaja is the tribe the kidnapped her the group with the most tenuous the weakest tie is the one that raised her to age 12 the only group of these three without Federal recognition and the grip of the Mandan Hada is getting stronger and their defense of their position is becoming increasingly shrill territorial I was going through some of my stuff I I got a little bag from the some of the Hadas and I don’t have the bag with me but you know little pencils little promotional things just a just pencil but it reads uh Manden had AR Nation home of sagoya if there were lihis in the the group here they’ they Grimace they’d groan they’d be troubled by that for example in an August uh 31st 2001 Proclamation um the Manden hadat and ration proclaimed the oral history of the hiat origin of sagaa to be the official position of the tribes it was approved and and uh this is the resolution it’s very carefully written out about nine points to it and if you take a look at the bottom it’s signed by the tribal council prominently displayed is Tex Hall uh it was approved by the tribal Business Council of the three affiliated tribes of uh the Fort Berthold Indian reservation in North Dakota many of the nine points in the proclamation are standard claims that few people would refute but two points in particular elicit a strong negative reaction because they fly in the face of history and culture and because they reject out of hand any other Indian and non-indian perspective point three reads in this fashion the contributions of our ancestors Hadas to the success of the Expedition have largely been overshadowed by The Legend of sagoya as a shishoni captive what’s that saying that’s shorthand that’s a nuanced suggestion that that this business of her being a captive is a legend and and i’ I’ve heard I’ll I’ll I’ll hustle I’ve heard people even say that she was really captured by the lihis and that they were just going back to pick her up next we see that um um the uh It also says it is a duty and responsibility of the tribal Business Council uh to affirm and uphold the history and culture and traditions of their membership in order to strengthen the cultural identity of all members and for members of the Manden hadat and so on to accept the United States history widely held belief that Sago we was a Shon is to deny the words and oral history of our ancestors the Proclamation was signed by teex Hall and six other members by dismissing Sakia Shon captive status as a legend and claiming that she was not Shon the hadat has created for themselves a painless official identity change resolution the rights of the tribal council to uh to pass and write such a thing can’t be questioned of course they can do this others however are free to ask about the accuracy and the motives of such claim and can they be questioned and refuted the battle over saak J’s tribal affiliation her identity has been ongoing but a Brazen Proclamation such as this represents a rejection of historical accounts and a cruel dismissal of lumai shon oral tradition and one question needs to be asked has the Manden hadat a position been effective indeed it has it has gone largely unchallenged by academic and the public at large take for example the recent dedication of the Chicago WEA statue in the US capital on uh in October of 2003 the AP ran a story by Jack Sullivan describing the events of the dedication this 11t statue that now stands in the capital of rotunda representing one of the two figures that North Dakota can have as part of its history the story explains that the statue quote Bears the name sagaia the spelling preferred by North Dakota and her tribe the Hada another version of his story explains that s Sago WEA was a Hada teenager when she joined the Expedition the story was accompanied by a photo showing Tex Hall and Governor John hovin riding horseback on a street in Washington DC with a capital in the background Hall was wearing traditional clothing while the governor sported a cowboy hat ribbon shirt and jeans Senate majority Bill Frist and house Speaker Dennis hasard officially accepted the statue on behalf of Congress but what of the um Loni or Traditions what about the scores of references to saki in the journals uh Louis Clark journals how does one refute her value as a Shoni speaker who assisted in obtaining horses to cross the Continental Divide how does one dismiss the lineal descendency traced by the liai Shoni today and the lack of any descendency uh by the Hadas how is it that lmi’s oral tradition lhai descendency lines and countless references are trumped by the hadat claim that she was not aadea she wasn’t a snake and she wasn’t a shishoni the answers lie in a complicated case of cultural identity theft that a polite or timid academic public is afraid to address a neocolonial style seizure of saak identity by the man in had has been carried out and it appears to have flown undetected under the radar of academics politicians and the public the proclamation by the affili council does represent after all a recognized tribe federal laws favor recognize tribes and such acknowledgement lends a great sense of legitimacy to what uh to their actions and any form of cultural or political transmission of ideas is made easier by a large membership and the frequency of well publicized official statements and acts tribal com a tribal Proclamation a Governor’s involvement and a grand ceremony in the uh in the Rotunda cultural transmission of ideas and arguments also favor those who are able to build strong coalitions and the Hadas have proved themselves to be Master Coalition Builders while they’ve made their claim to Sak’s identity their Proclamation represents a powerful cultural blending of the three affiliated tribes next to most remarkably they overcame an historic antipathy by American Indian tribes to State Authority and jurisdiction and join forces with the federal with the uh state government so to uh do the Hadas have an advantage when it comes to featuring tribal person personalities of high political status teex Hall the tribal Business Council chairman is the current president of ncai National Council American indias arguably one of the most important uh influential organizations the United States another prominent figure is Amy mosset director of Tourism and as director of Tourism uh uh she’s a recognized um um um figure in terms of the um um saak story with her life-size image featured international airports mosset has become a cultural entrepreneur whose promotion of the’s version of Saka has become Legend and in summary powerful Coalition Builders and cultural entrepreneurs such as Tex Hall and Amy mosset backed by tribal and state government authorities and acknowledged by federal leadership have reached the point where they are able to dominate and mold ingroup status relating to Saka jaia no one doubts that AK is correctly categorized as American Indian woman but giving her the Hada attribute has empowered Hall and mid to separate sagoya insiders from sakaia Outsiders by tampering with sakya’s category and attributes of identity they have affected in neutral language an identity change involving a change in the category of self-description put more bluntly they perpetrated cultural identity theft the success of the hadat is teex Hall and Amy mosset has been stunning the adops has kidnapped Sak as a 12-year-old girl near Three Forks Montana in 1800 and his stoical records and limai Shon oral tradition notwithstanding they’ve stolen her once again and enshrined Her Image in the Rotunda of the United States capital thanks I if there are questions I’d be happy to please put hand up so we can all hear your questions any questions at all all right are there any actions um being taken to write this wrong in this community are there any actions being done to write this wrong um lots of things have have been done um I I wish I could report positively um I’ve worked with Rod arow and the LH High Community for some time now and we put together reports uh historical data um um and and if Rod era white were here I think this is what he would say I don’t know for certain uh but we’re I think Rod would say that we’re afraid to give them uh give bar uh our our petition for fear that they’ll uh provide an expedited review and reject it and it’s you know once you’re you know once you’re uh uh convicted of something you know to to if you’re an attorney once the level of evidence after you’re convicted is much greater and so if if the Lumis petition was rejected which we think it would uh the next time around it would be even harder we’d have to have even more compelling evidence um I know the AOW white has worked hard uh trying to get the Idaho delegation to be interested uh he’s worked with a number of other organiz gations and um um while there’s interest uh we don’t I I wish we could say that there’s great success there hasn’t been yet and that’s that’s really unfortunate because I I just uh my worst nightmare of course is that this Bicentennial is going to come and go and the lmis are going to you know be these Refugee showbands down at Fort Hall and they’ll come up to Salmon once once a year in August and find you know and and and that that’ll be the end of it that’ll that’ll really be a failing that’ll be a failing I mean I don’t know how you I don’t know how a person has a celebration like this when the people who raised her are treated in the fashion they’ve been treated I’m a student at um boisey State University is there any kind of um Road or action or anything that students could get involved in to um um support the Lim eyes you bet there’s lots of things you can do first thing um if you if you have internet in your Motel uh tonight uh or when you go back to Boise State um uh uh go to Google and and uh hit lmh high- uh um um l-com and there’s a website that uh U young Mr Kell Arte has put together it’s really quite a nice uh website and there’s there are things you can do there I mean you can read about uh the activities and there’s a a petition that one if you scroll down and you can you can you can fix your name to this to this petition but um there are just other things a person can do too I mean you know letters to influential people maybe uh maybe you play golf with Simplot I don’t know maybe you know somebody with lots of power influence and Authority because Authority is what the lihis have they don’t have it they don’t have buddies like uh the governor they aren’t off uh you know hanging out with Bill Frist and Dennis hasard um um it’s it’s tough to to find alhi quoted uh in DC but there’s lots of Adas lots of showand lots of other recognized Indians who have no tie to lay shonis how how much pack money are they the this Tex Hall and his Bunch giving uh Frist and hassard and that Bunch oo you know your question is better than my answer good question I have no idea and um um listen Tex Hall is an important guy he’s an important man he has a lot of authority uh when you want to be important in Indian Country invite Tex Hall out and hobnob let let uh if if you want Indian voters to vote for you bring teex Hall out um yeah there’s a there’s a a fat cat political Arrangement there I believe there is you don’t see uh you don’t see people trotting out the arow whites the tendo or the George sisters uh these people are pretty much forgotten uh and are the showbands helping you know have you read the newspaper where the showbands have said by golly we want the lhai shonis to be recognized haven’t seen it yet folks do you want to know why do you want to know why if there’s any money that’s going to come out of the salmon recovery dollars for the shishoni banic you know who that salmon recovery dollar flows through lay shonis they’re the ones lived up here they’re the salinator they’re the ones that have the the dollars connected to them and when the showband uh uh received the 4.5 million ICC settlement that uh should have gone to the Lumis did it go to Lumis heck no when of the showband general fund so if you’re thinking the showband are going to be jumping on the bandw to make certain that the Lis get recognition don’t look there either Dr spin thank you very much for coming let’s give him a big round of applause if you have any other questions to address to Dr sang and you’re welcome to address him in the back of the tent in the meantime we’re going to set up for our next program Mrs Gilman’s going to be here to talk about the gifts of the Shon so stick around for that one e

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Lois Tyler Nava and John Mann on Lemhi Shoshone Identity and Homeland

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:48 +0000

ladies and gentlemen I’d like to welcome you 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 the reason it is called the tent of many voices is because people come from various backgrounds various walks of life to tell their side of the Lewis and Clark Story it is a huge story the story of of men that went across this country a young woman that accompanied them but it’s also a story of the people who were already here who had inhabited this country for centuries so with that said I would like to introduce you to our next presenter and this is Lois Tyler Nava and I would like for all of you navo to stand please and we’ll have a word of Prayer before she starts with her presentation foree fore oh that’s all H I wasn’t uh born here but uh I was uh born down Fort T and I’ve been running back and forth here and down for and I also uh like it here cuz my my father and my mother they were from here and my father he has his picture in that little law cabin uh second from the left I guess and and my uncles they both are there and chief tendo son was the first one that was standing on the left and my father and my two uncles and uh a short guy uh uh they called him quam movie that means uh uh Eagle NOS Eagle no but later they uh called him uh uh n n or something n so I’m proud to be here and and I cuz my people were from here and I like it here I was the last one to move to Fort tall from here cuz I like it here and uh uh my people are kind of proud people you know they lived in Lam High we had everything they helped the white people helped them there and gave them wagons and uh uh seeds to uh plant the turnips and carrots and cabbages and and they my uh uncles they uh always go every year in the fall they go to Montana uh over the Divide there they go to Montana and then the uh uh uh West Mont uh Yellowstone they uh get uh out from there and uh they uh when they get home uh they had the horses and pack horses to bring the meat over and uh the women’s would uh prepare to dry it and then and put them in the uh leather suitcases you know the they the lace it up when it’s dry and they pound it and they lace it up and use it for winter and everything we get from here uh all the berries they dry it they dry it and then they have it they use it in winter time and I’m glad that the uh the uh Montana people took care of the our chief here tiendo they uh erected that Monument there for him I’m always glad to see that and always go up there and we from back from going back home and and uh and I’m glad that I stayed here long enough uh when I was uh running back and forth to from Fort tal to here and uh we uh all the merchants here long time ago they helped us and the store people they bought our gloves and whatever we made they sure helped us lot and then the man folks would uh work for some people uh like uh cleaning dishes cleaning dishes and uh working on potatoes and and they like it here and there’s lot of lot of deer around here that’s that’s our food and salmon and this town is called that means salmon Waters uh and uh it Forks right down here the lamb high and uh the Salmon River and that’s how uh they call it the uh the salmon goes both ways up lamine up uh uh Salmon River and up Stanley and we had the lot of uh places to go when we was here and and so I thank I thank everyone uh that helped us when we was here staying up here our our grandchildren went to school and they uh they played basketball and played football and when they went down for T they nowadays they got a job over there so the teachers over here sure to I help them and I’m glad of that uh and then when I see the kids over here your kids I know they’ll be you know take care of you people us people here when they get old when they get to go to school and be uh they’ll take care of us here in Salon you know take care of you people too so I’m always glad to be here and now I’ve always uh when they have meeting here I always come take we are meeting his I always come with them and I be you know kind of glad that uh she was uh from and and uh she had a a brother here came away that’s how come she wanted to come back I’m always glad to uh think of that and and finally uh uh when I was in for T at my home there’s people that come ask me about uh LS and Clark so I don’t know I’m 88 years old but I was born in uh Fort Hall and I don’t know too much of that but I heard something uh about that my people were in lamb and there’s one one uh Indian that went over lost Trail and he was uh hunting or he was went to Montana to uh Viber had the around there and and one time he that time he seen uh strange people he said strange people they had horses and pack horse with them so he come tell his people come tell his people that there’s a strange man strange people back in there so he got home and they were expecting them and I guess they came over the the trail and went into their reservation there and I guess to trade horses they didn’t uh the chief wasn’t the uh he read them nice and gave them horses and I guess he gave them M too on the ground where they were going he uh traced some where they supposed to go what they got here uh he took his finger and told him uh you go this way or that way that’s that was nice of him uh my people and that’s how I remember what they said and and I’m always glad I’m here I’ve uh I’ve also worked around here on in potatoes in and I’ve made gloves sold them to Mac person and that’s how they helped us to get our uh grub and I can’t do those things nowadays can’t stretch deer hides can’t do a lot of things nowadays so I’m glad I’m here to see uh this interpretive Center here what they done for my people and for our people so so I’m always glad I guess that’s all I got to say just a moment ladies ladies and gentlemen we have just a few minutes for questions for Lois if you would like to ask her questions at this time it’s a rare honor and a treat for us to have an elder with us and we appreciate you coming out very much so some of you might wish to ask Lois some questions at this time if you’ll raise your hand I’ll come around with the microphone yes ma’am are you grandmother to the arrow whites ah no I’m not what were your children’s names or what are they now oh they’re uh uh my sister’s grandchildren um Grandma Lois had one son he died real young and his name was Nathaniel he was about one or two so she only had one son and she was married two times um Alfred naville he was raised here in salon alsoo and he’s buried up here and they named a ruled after him the city of salmon because Lois and Alfred were the last two to leave here to go to for I noticed you uh pronounced it sakaj I wondered if you could speak about the different pronunciations of sakaj jia’s name and your take on it Ros how she says it um my people know uh they called her SE for Indian and then noways I hear I guess it means uh she played with a lot of uh mud the mud and you know throw them and then they call her seg Jag seg means B you know and I don’t know I’ve heard I don’t know what happened so it’s I haven’t uh I guess it was early in years that uh they she was taken before I uh my people didn’t uh say anything about it uh they but nowadays we heard uh uh stories about her and the fine thing she did to come come back to his to her people always thought she wanted to come back CU she has her brother here and I don’t really know where she is buried you know when she died I’ve never heard in in Wyoming they say but I never knew or my parents didn’t know a little bit to add to that we were talking about it there was you know Grandma and other people in our family and she said that we she just got interviewed for Utah State Journal or something like that and um we were talking about it cuz the lady asked her the same thing about Saka jaia and we’re related to her in a way you know but she said it’s like being married I mean being related to someone famous on TV we didn’t think they were going to be a big star or however you want to say it nowadays we didn’t know of her like that we just thought of her as a neighbor or someone we knew in the camp it wasn’t someone famous that we knew she was going to go out and be be someone that’s how she explained saaka joia to us and that’s why she’s saying we don’t you know we didn’t know at that time that’s the way she looks at it I had a question back here we met this lady coming over with her granddaughter she’s a lmh high Shoni can you tell us uh when you had to go to and they and the government basically forced the Shon to go to the Fort Hall reservation down by pocatella can you tell us anything about how that happened uh I guess the government wanted wanted they wanted my people to move over I want this that’s how I take it you move over grandma if you could tell them a little bit about what happened to your home um she told us and as far as our family knows she went down to visit in Fort Hall because like she said she wasn’t born here but she always was raised here and uh the city of salmon that this man promised her and her family that they could live there in her home but she went down to visit in Fort Hall and somehow they got word that their stuff was in storage and her house was knocked down so now she resides in Fort Hall in the 1980s 98 1998 some other questions all right one more and then we’ll go on to the next part and he talked about his son do you remember what his son’s name was uh tendo’s son John John tndo I think and I can’t even remember his uh Indian name either uh he’s saying was it Joe yeah I think it is Joe Tindle he’s the first one on that picture standing well I was going to say actually this might be a nice segue into my portion of the presentation but I think that he had more than one son uh there’s a book for sale here though in the gift shop by Crowder which has the tendoy family tree in the back um all right ladies and Gentlemen let’s please give Lois Lo Tyler nvo and we would like to thank you very much for coming and at this time if you’ll give her one more round of applause then we’re going to turn it over to John man got it yeah seems to be working can you hear me okay this one okay I’m going to stand up here uh place to put my notes I think that in the course of my presentation I can address some of the the questions that were raised here and at some more length first though i’ uh I’d like to Echo the sentiment uh what an honor and and a pleasure it was to hear from uh Mrs uh I should explain at the outset uh how I wound up here um when I was a graduate student at Washington State University I worked for uh the lmh high recognition project uh a project to restore Federal recognition to uh the lmh high Shon and this ended up becoming my dissertation and uh I’ll be a Shameless self-promoter here also a book which is on sale over here at the uh uh interpretive Center but in the course of my research I ran across her name uh very frequently so it was really uh really an honor for me to meet her tonight having uh read about and and then written about uh her life and her times here uh in Salmon uh I wanted to start off uh with the the Sakia coin um and you’ll see that I’ve got uh the spelling that the mint chose in uh in in uh quotation marks here um generally uh you know we could have a whole session here on the controversy over the different spellings of of the name and what they mean uh but by and large this one more closely approximates uh the shishoni and uh the spelling with the G more closely approximates uh the Mandan pataa uh and that’s one of several reasons that when this coin came out um lmis uh added their voice to the sort of existing chorus of criticism that surrounded the coin um many lmis argued that this depiction was not accurate uh not accurately depicting a LMI Shon woman and the timing of that Gaff you know only added insult to injury because uh this was several years into the recognition process uh so while the Government tried with the best of intentions to celebrate one of the limh high contributions uh to American history um it sort of uh insulted them and I think this speaks to the larger issue of um the lack of awareness of the lmai shishoni everyone’s heard of Sakia um and during the bicentennial of course more so but outside of this region in particular few people have heard of of her people the LM High Shoni and I see from the schedule that Greg Campbell will be talking uh here tomorrow and he’s done pretty extensive work on the lmh high experience during the 19th century so I don’t want to cover that ground in too much detail um but uh mainly talk about the lmh high experience in the 20th century and especially uh the way that this country around us uh was so Central uh to their experience to their identity uh and to their current efforts to regain uh Federal recognition um after the core of Discovery uh the lhai Shon had a a period in this region where they um were remained relatively um un unchanged in terms of encounters with non-indian peoples especially relative to some of the other Indian peoples in this region it wasn’t until the 1850s when a Mormon mission was established here that there was any sustained contact with non-indian people in this area um and uh thereafter with uh the discovery of gold over in Montana and the emergence of salmon as a town the lihis welcomed the non-indian uh visitors much as they had uh Lewis and Clark um at the same time they remained adamant about staying in this country uh and despite uh an agreement that had been drafted with the government uh they refused to leave here uh for the last few decades uh of the 19th century um the removal agreement then occurred in 1905 and um the best way I can describe it is somewhat suspicious the lahis had been continually and adamantly refusing to remove um until this apparent agreement in 1905 when a majority of the adult males on the limh high reservation um apparently consented to move uh and then immediately thereafter um started lobbying against this parent agreement uh and so the removal process itself uh didn’t take place uh until 1907 and um the uh uh uh one of the Pioneers in the LM High Valley uh noran uh Norah rather yurian Whitwell uh described uh the process in this way uh and I’m quoting here from a later recollection uh they never left willingly they packed their meager belongings on horses strapped the ends on their wik up poles stuck the ends of their wik up poles to the sides of their horses and they dragged them along they were very sad and passed through the valley crying uh the ranchers along the way could hear their crying for some distance before they passed their homes the ranchers were near tears and some did cry they were so sorry for them having to go against their will uh I’m still sorry for we had great respect for Chief tendoy and his tribe so as that quotation suggests I think the LHI were not enthusi IC about leaving their Homeland in this region um and they had forged close ties with the non-indian uh Community here and many of the members of that Community were also not uh entirely enthusiastic about the this removal process and the lmh high now many of them refer to it in retrospect as the limhi uh Trail of Tears um but thereafter um the limhi sort of disappear from uh history and the history books most accounts of the lmh high conclude with removal to Fort Hall in 1907 um uh they enrolled subsequently as members of the Shoni banic tribes down there many of them anyway and the Assumption was well there are all Shon bancks down at Fort Hall now there are no uh lmis but um as I think uh Lois’s presentation suggested and as my own research has indicated to me uh a very distinct lmh High identity persisted uh throughout the course of the 20th century and as I suggested earlier that identity was very much tied up with their ass ation with their Homeland um here in the Salmon River Country and I want to talk about that I guess in three ways to elaborate to be a little more specific about what I’m talking about first uh I want to talk about their efforts to gain restitution for the seizure first of their reservation uh and then in an Indian Claims Commission claim for for their Homeland here uh secondly I’d like to talk again just briefly about the lmh high community in Salmon that despite removal in 1907 persisted throughout most of the 20th century and even to this day in fact there was an article oh gee 3 days ago I think in the Salt Lake Tribune about the LMI Shoni and about the activities that we’re all gathered here for uh and started off by talking about a lmh high family that had relocated to salmon and uh reading that article occurred to me gez this is the same thing that’s been going on since removal uh the lmis were removed to Fort Hall and many of them simply turned around and and came back uh and those that were at Fort Hall came back to visit on a seasonal sometimes uh permanent basis um and then finally um I’d like to talk briefly about the lmi’s uh struggle to retain treaty rights to hunt and fish uh in these areas I think that these provide three specific examples of what I’m talking about in terms of lmh high identity being intertwined with uh their sense of this being uh their Homeland I’m already fin falling behind here my trying to uh improvise but I’ve got a few slides here uh and this shows what the Indian Claims Commission uh decided Ed was uh lmh High territory of course they spent time over in Montana after Buffalo and uh uh occupied a teral a territory larger than this but this is what the Indian Claims Commission determined was their the the territory that they had exclusive use and occupancy of some photographs of the Salmon River Country I’m sorry that some of these images aren’t aren’t perfect here Lewis and Clark um here’s tendoy uh and one of his sons not identified sorry for the earlier question about which one near here um the tiny reservation which was liquidated after removal in 1907 um but then well I’ll start I guess then with the the claims that I wanted to talk about uh almost immediately after uh ending up at Fort Hall the lmis started pursuing annuity payments that had been promised them for relinquishing their reservation and moving uh to Fort Hall and not all of those monies for a variety of reasons were paid so they organized a committee uh formed only of lmis uh charged with the task of securing these unpaid annuity monies and the dollars weren’t uh significant even it was a few thousand dollars really it would have amounted to something like $7 per individual which in those days was not nothing but they doggedly pursued these claims this limh High committee remained in existence uh it Formed almost immediately after they were uh at Fort Hall by 1913 uh they had started to lobby for these Monies and this committee was still active into the 1950s when the matter wasn’t entirely resolved uh it ended up being lumped in with some Indian Claims Commission monies uh and eventually resolved in that way but the point is um that the Salmon River Country and Lim High identity were intertwined uh in so far as they organized politically to pursue uh these monies uh then again after the Indian Claims Commission was formed uh and it determined that the LHI were the lhai shones were due uh five $4.5 million for the uh seizure of their homelands uh the lhis organized again this time because the wording of the Indian Claims Commission act dictated that that claim would be under the jurisdiction of the tribal council at Fort Hall and not the lhai shason per se they organized they tried to gain control over this claim many were opposed to accepting it for a variety of reasons some felt the money wasn’t enough some felt that it was tan amount to relinquishing the land which some held that they had never done others because they felt that they should have control over what happened to those dollars and not everyone on the Fort Hall reservation um and so uh two cases there I think were the lihis at Fort Hall and the ones at salmon who had travel down there to participate uh in these meetings uh organized and um this organization this effort to retain uh control over monies offered in restitution for the seizure of their Homeland helped solidify I think this sense of lmh high identity uh that the lhis were distinct that they were a group and that they were from the Salmon River Country uh indeed when the lmh high Indian Claims Commission uh award was finally accepted by the tribal council at Fort Hall a resolution was passed and it was called the sharing resolution and uh all of the tribes and bands there on the reservation agreed to share all of the Indian Claims Commission Indian Claims Commission dollars that had been awarded um but it’s uh the wording of it is really interesting and I don’t have time to read it uh in full but it mentions uh the LHI Shoni specifically uh a number of times uh as uh members of the former lmh High tribe um descendants of members of the former lmh High tribe it will say all the tribes and bands on the Fort Hall reservation including the lmh high tribe uh just making it clear I think that uh in their efforts to mask this separateness this separate identity on the part of the Loni these efforts only really served uh to to put a light on it uh that the lhis there considered themselves uh a distinct group and that many people at Fort Hall considered them uh different to some extent uh in so far as their Homeland was in this place uh too um uh so as I mentioned the sharing resolution uh mentions uh the L High specifically uh and no other group on a number uh of different occasions uh so that’s one of the examples that I that I wanted to raise in terms of the Persistence of lmh high identity during uh the 20th century uh and this shows the various Indian Claims Commission cases uh that dealt with tribes that were at Fort Hall um next uh I wanted to talk about the lmh high Community uh here in Salmon Idaho which as I mentioned persisted uh so long um on a Monday in May 1993 uh a group of LHI elders and youths uh gathered on on a hillside near the town of tendoy uh in the lamh High Valley uh to fulfill an OB obligation that apparently dated back um to around 1820 uh and this was to replace uh a cedar pole marking a grave site uh this task had been charged to uh future generations and uh in ’93 this group uh was fulfilling that obligation and this was not a unique ceremony uh by any uh by any means the lhis had been um preserving and honoring ing uh ancestral grave sites in the lamh High Valley uh from removal to the present but this one was different in so far as uh for the first time uh there was no longer uh at the outset of this ceremony a sort of permanent lmh High Community uh in the town of salmon um and so after the ceremony uh participants gathered at a city park the former site of the last Village uh where Lois was the last uh resident and um uh the the the group told stories of the lmh high families that used to live here in town um and the local newspaper uh covering this event uh in toned and I’m quoting here although none of the LHI Indians now live in the lmh High Valley their Roots Run deeply here and they have never forgotten the past that links them to the area members of the LH High tribe will continue to Journey Back to the lands of their ancestors to honor their forefathers and to revitalize and pass on their native Heritage uh to their children uh so uh as I uh indic earlier uh lmis uh despite the uh note in the article do uh still live in the lmh High Valley and I think you’ll see from walking around today uh visit on regular occasions and um this is not a recent phenomenon uh immediately after removal as I suggested before lhis returned here and um lived throughout town but there was also a LHI uh Indian village it was known or encampment uh which moved around town um and generally occupied lands that had been donated uh by sympathetic non-indian uh families many of them Pioneer families uh Lois made reference to one of the last families The Sims family I believe uh which had allowed the lmh high Village to occupy its land but just to illustrate my point here’s a photograph of some lmis and salmon 1929 um uh a village uh west of salmon and uh another encampment uh a map here showing uh different locations uh where the uh these encampments were over the years I got this I should mention from the publication from the local high school here an article that a uh young woman uh had written um the Persistence of this Village I think speaks to not only the lhai um attachment to the to the samura country but also to the good Ties That they’ forged with the non-indian community here in the early days prior to removal as I mentioned the the lmis and the non-indian community had had forged close ties and I think I um spoke to that some uh when I was talking when I read that uh the quotation and also um just now made reference to it Lois did as well talking about uh the local stores that would sell uh lmh High products or to uh the jobs that they held in the valley and so for a long time uh the Indian and non-indian communities here were very close um there’s a picture of the last one here at the intersection of 93 and kids Creek from 198 uh again the quality is not great but this is what’s now kids Creek Park um the lmis here in Salmon I think also struck a balance between integrating into this community and also maintaining aspects of their uh traditional culture um and some of these other slides I think speak to that um these are some photographs of a a glov making kit this was one of the Main Stays of the lmh high Indian village making gloves for sale um not only in Salmon um but some as far away as California they would uh make them in bulk and and sell them at some distance at least as late as the 1930s uh and then also here um some moccasins sold at a Sam and Idaho store purchased by Jed Wilson longtime resident here uh who uh allowed me to take these photographs uh and then the lmis continued to rely on traditional means of subsistence right up into uh the late 20th century here photo showing uh bitteroot harvesting uh above lmh high harvesting bot in 71 and then in 1974 um processing bitot at the Indian village uh here in Salmon um some lamh high uh tribal members in the village 1958 um but then as this uh photograph suggests I think to some extent integration into the local community here’s uh some lmh high children preparing for an Easter egg hunt in Salmon uh 1964 look at uh plenty excited about that event um ultimately though um what had been seen by many as a sort of quaint reminder of the earlier history I think uh by others came to be seen more as an isore maybe uh detraction to tourism and as Lois indicated um The Village was demolished in stages um partially in 1987 then shortly thereafter uh there was a fire and then finally the last portions of it where Lois and Alfred had lived and uh the 1990s and it’s now kids Creek Park uh the final thing I wanted to talk about was uh the L High um the importance of uh salmon in particular as a resource but uh other hunting and fishing resources in the Salmon River Country um as salmon runs in particular diminished over the course of the 20th century as a result of variety of factors which I’m sure we could uh debate um Indian fishing in particular came under uh heavy criticism by uh a variety of different groups and ultimately the state of Idaho challenged the lmis treaty rights to hunt and fish uh off reservation after a limhi Gerald Tino was arrested in June of 1968 uh for spearing salmon uh up the Yankee Fork River uh ultimately this case went to the Idaho uh Supreme Court which confirmed uh the lmi’s um right to to fish for salmon off the reservation in areas that they had been uh promised that they could retain access to in the Fort Bridger uh treaty and depending on who you talk to some other uh documents as well but um the contention over treaty rights and over uh Indian spear fishing in particular gave way more to uh cooperation I think in in recent decades uh especially after the Snake River Sakai uh salmon was listed as an endangered uh species and uh the shy benic tribes and lmis uh started working uh thereafter uh more closely uh with uh the fish and game department uh to help restore the runs and um I think that um these signs have been more promising and certainly cases like the Tino case um like uh the baloney decision in Oregon the bolt decision in Washington have indicated that uh the Indian peoples are going to have a place at the bargaining table when it comes to uh preserving the Salon species and the the lhis and uh other Indian peoples in this area uh have been responsible about uh maintaining this resources as they have been for Generations uh and generations uh so I see I’m running out of time to conclude uh uh just to reiterate that uh despite the lmi’s absence from the history books in the 20th century they have persisted culturally as a people and retained a sense of identity uh which has been very much intertwined with their sense of this country as their Homeland whether it was uh legal struggles over gaining restitution whether uh it was the LM High persistence uh the sort of Tenacious tenacity with which they clung to a foothold here in the town of salmon or or whether it was their commitment to uh continuing uh to harvest traditional resources and to maintaining uh those resources for future Generations um uh the lhis have real really retained a sense of identity uh and now I think uh the the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark uh uh and the core of Discovery Journey to the Pacific Ocean and back provides I think a an opportunity uh for the federal government the lhai Shon have uh not been recognized since 1907 as a distinct uh tribe or band they’ve been essentially exiled to Fort Hall 200 miles to the South and so if we’re serious about celebrating Sak jia’s contributions to the core of Discovery or Indian people’s contributions to the core of Discovery and if the federal government is serious about pursuing a policy of self-determination uh then perhaps we’ll see Federal recognition restored to uh the lmai Shoni saak as people that’s all I had to say I have time for some questions I think we may have time for one question so does someone have a question that they would like to ask yes sir coming up I’m a coin collector and have a collection of Saka joia gold dollars I think it’s a beautiful coin what are the objections to the coin from the Indian standpoint well let me I guess um talk about the objections to the coin in general including the Indian standpoint and uh let me start with the caveat many people have said this this coin is a long overdue recognition of Indian contributions to American history so it’s not like it’s been entirely panned but people have argued for instance that uh look at the irony of uh the jux toos of Saka jaia who some people argue and again you can argue about Sakia until the cows come home but some argue was essentially in slaved um and juxtaposed beneath the word above it Liberty um uh this has been one argument that’s thrown out there this is I’m not saying I necessarily agree with these arguments but I think the lmai Shoni arguments uh have more to do with the opting of the mint for the Mandan Hada rather than the Sakia spelling that is with the G uh without the J um and uh I’ve also read that um that there would have been a cradle board instead of a sling uh finally there was some objection that um while the LHI Shon still exists despite the fact that that that’s not widely reflected in history books it was not a woman uh descended from the lamh high triber band that was chosen to model for the coin and that the artist might have done more research and found somebody who was uh descended from that group of Indians instead they just went down to Fort Hall and uh and selected somebody else these are the things that I’ve heard anyway and maybe somebody else can elaborate on this um does that answer the question all right uh actually we are out of time and if you would like this is John man and he will be outside the tent in the next little while and I’m sure he’d be glad to answer your questions out there but let’s give him a big hand thank you very much John for coming in and presenting

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Lemhi Shoshone

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:42:27 +0000

The Lemhi Shoshone were the specific band of Northern Shoshone, led by Chief Cameahwait, who encountered the expedition at the Continental Divide in August 1805. They were Sacagawea’s birth people — the band from which she had been captured as a child.

The Lemhi Shoshone lived in the Salmon River country of present-day central Idaho, a resource-rich but geographically isolated region. They possessed many horses but few guns, making them vulnerable to raids by the better-armed Blackfeet and Hidatsa.

The band’s decision to trade horses to the expedition — influenced heavily by Sacagawea’s reunion with her brother Cameahwait — was one of the most consequential moments of the journey. Without Shoshone horses, the expedition could not have crossed the Rocky Mountains.

The Lemhi Shoshone were later removed from their ancestral lands and placed on the Fort Hall Reservation in southeastern Idaho in 1907 — a removal they have contested ever since.

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Sacagawea Recognizes Home — Three Forks

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:34:30 +0000

At the Three Forks of the Missouri, Sacagawea recognized the landscape of her childhood — the very place where she had been captured by a Hidatsa raiding party five years earlier. Lewis recorded the story in detail.

“Our present camp is precisely on the spot that the Snake Indians were encamped at the time the Minnetares of the Knife river first came in sight of them five years since.”

The three forks were named Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin after the President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury. The expedition followed the Jefferson fork, the westernmost branch, as they searched for the Shoshone people and the horses they desperately needed to cross the mountains.

Sacagawea’s recognition of the landscape confirmed the expedition was nearing Shoshone territory and increased hopes of making contact soon.

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Sacagawea Reunites with Her Brother Cameahwait

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:34:30 +0000

In one of the expedition’s most dramatic moments, Sacagawea was brought in to interpret during negotiations with the Shoshone chief — and discovered that the chief was her own brother, Cameahwait.

“She instantly jumped up, and ran and embraced him, throwing over him her blanket, and weeping profusely.”

This reunion had enormous practical consequences. Cameahwait agreed to provide the horses the expedition needed to cross the Bitterroot Mountains — a transaction that might never have occurred without the personal bond between Sacagawea and her brother.

Lewis named the camp where these negotiations took place “Camp Fortunate” — recognizing how lucky they were that the first Shoshone band they encountered was led by Sacagawea’s own brother.

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