Closed Captions

Curly Bear Wagner, past culture director of the Blackfeet Nation, discusses Blackfeet history, culture, and spiritual practices spanning over 5,000 years on the plains. He recounts the tribe's first encounter with Meriwether Lewis and his party in 1806 at Two Medicine, details traditional horse-taking ceremonies, and addresses misconceptions about Blackfeet-European interactions. Wagner also describes his documentary project presenting Lewis and Clark history from a Native perspective.

Transcript

0:29 e well good afternoon everyone and welcome
0:53 to the tent to mini voices T of mini voices is part of the core Discovery 2 traveling Louis and Clark exhibit and what this tent is is exactly what it sounds like it's a place to hear a wide variety of perspectives or voices about the Lewis and Clark expedition and also the 200 years since
1:18 then and what we have here this afternoon is we're lucky to have with us curly bear Wagner and curly bear is um of the black feet people he's going to talk a little bit about the history and culture of his people and specifically their encounter with uh Captain Lewis
1:42 and his men and give you a unique perspective a first nation's perspective on those encounters so please give curle bear Wagner a warm tenin voices welcome thank you thank you thank you 1 two three can you hear me hear me all right okay I'm curly bear Wagner I'm a
2:07 black feet from can you say okie Okie can you say that there you go that's how are you in black feet OK we say OK n say OK n that's how are you my friends then you reply you say suap that's good all right but you guys look ex soapi that's it's real good huh
2:31 all right uh some of the things that I've done uh my past is I'm the past culture director of the black feet and as culture director uh we I was involved in many issues concerning our people one of the issues was saving the sweet grass Hills we got a 20-year monitori from the secretary interior babit sweet grass Hills in the Bader 2 medicine area and also we were the first tribe in the
2:56 United States to get our ancestor remains at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and also the field museum in Chicago and brought our ancestors back home for proper burial and uh so that was really a feather in our H hat counting coup on those guys huh and uh I remember at the Smithsonian institution little guy by ubelaker
3:21 little skinny guy at the Smithsonian he's beating his little skinny fist on the desk said curly bear it's impossible to get your ancestor remains out of here I looked at him I said well I don't l my faith in man I lay my faith in him up there and we'll see if we get him out but I call him up about once a month to see he get angry and the Dickens with me we we did it all right uh my people
3:43 the black feet I'm going to talk about uh traditionally our land started from the headwaters of the Saskatchewan River by Edmonton Alberta and running East to battle for saskat then running South to the Missouri up the Missouri to the Yellowstone up the Yellowstone back into Teton country that was traditionally black feet land now there was us black feet today in the United States our reservation is a million and a half
4:07 acres in size there's the blood to be the cisa in there up north in Canada so there's four bands of us actually five bands a small R band they got the largest band of our people that got wiped out by small poox so that was traditionally land our land now as I said working with the as culture coordinator I was involved in many issues concerning our
4:31 people now some of our people up in Canada the Pagan Nation give me a call A guy by name and Albert little mustache Albert said curly bear can you come down here and give us a hand up here and give us a hand we have a VIP coming some of you may remember in the 80s when the pope visited Canada and uh he said the pope was I thought he was teasing me because my people have such a great sense of
4:55 humor and I said yeah I'd like to come up he said well when you come up to our Reserve he said look for a mile when you get to Fort McLoud you turn out towards our Reserve he said look for a mile poster number 28 you take a left there and so I drove up and I found M poost number 28 I took a left and went on down many roads huh in that area called Indian roads I know I do archaeology work I just finished down here you see all the roads these farmers and Ranchers have all over
5:19 the place but they had a road plowed all the way down and I followed it down in a very beautiful setting by The Old Man River they're putting up a lodge ceremonial Lodge for our guests and the men folks are out there putting that Lodge up and they're having a hard time so I stopped the car and I went out and I helped them we finally got the lodge up and we put it up wrong so we had to take it down and put it back up again that used
5:44 to be the woman's job putting those lodges up huh today you ask women to put the lodge I say if you want that Lodge up curly bear you put it up yourself kind of an in and women's lib thing caught on amongst our people so we're doing that work those women supposed to be doing so we we got the lodge up it was a 28t lodge a ceremonial Lodge with a Bear Lodge very sacred to our people they came through vision through dreams and
6:08 inside we put a liner all the way around also very beautifully designed then we laid Buffalo robes throughout in the center we left the fire we made then we put the willow back rests up these Willow back rest about 132 those Willows like these easy chairs that you're leaning up against we had that in place now Albert he was pretty nervous about everything so since there's many roads getting that area he plac these young
6:32 kids up there on that road so when the Caravan came to come and visit the pope to come and visit our people that they would uh find the right Road how this all started is the pope was going to visit in Calgary Alberta and he was going to come down and visit the head smashed in Buffalo Jump head smashed in Buffalo Jump is recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site up in Canada some you may have been up there it's about a
6:56 three $6 million Museum built right into the uh grounds and the Pagan heard about it since most of our people are Catholics baptized Catholics it gave us an opportunity for the pope to visit the First Nations people I always say First Nations I don't really care to be called a Native American because most of you people are Native Americans right you're all born here right but I don't mind
7:19 being called an indan either doesn't bother me to be called an Indian because when Columbus came to this country he was looking for India huh and he seen the people and he called them Indians that was good I'm glad he wasn't looking for the Virgin Islands or turkey being the heck of a fixing
7:41 so so uh IND didn't don't bother me and so when uh everything was in place now we had everything in order and uh the pope was coming down and uh from Calgary after SP spending some time up there and visiting the head smashed in Buffalo Jump now the pope very highly thought of throughout the world is a very educated
8:04 person and he knows many languages but my people know many languages too because there's over 500 federally recognized tribes the United States today and we all speak a different language and we uh sign language huh that's how we communicated with one another that's like juler in the uh core Discovery he spoke sign language and so that was in place now we're all set up waiting for
8:28 him and waiting for him and and and uh nothing happened pretty soon one of these young kids come running over the hill told Albert something Albert dropped everything went running over those Hills apparently the Caravan the pope has taken a different Road and Albert panicked he running over these little Hills and he's seen the Caravan coming some distance and so he start waving his hands like
8:51 this to get the Pope's attention and to get him on the right path he's really waving his hands like this he finally got the Pope's attention and when he got the you know Pope rides in that uh Pop mobile huh rides way up high and he was waving like that and he found he got his attention he told him in Sign Language he said come on over to our lodge we'll sit we'll talk we'll drink tea be good so copy told him in sign language and
9:15 the pope would like this to him so nber he came back to the lodge he started rolling those Willow backrest up and placed them outside placing those buffaloes outside and those Elders said nabert what on Earth are you doing did you get to talk to the pope he said yeah what would you tell him well I really waved my hands like this I finally got his attention the Pope's attention I
9:38 told him in Sign Language I come on over to our lodge we'll sit we'll talk we'll drink tea be good what what the pope say the pope said take your teepee down and get the hell out of here I was in Italy a couple times I want to tell that story over there I
9:58 thought I better not get the hell out of there is everybody from Montana here any out of Staters who's from out of state where you from Illinois Illinois huh I spent a lot of time in Chicago New York new yorkon
10:22 Arizona South Dakota who's from h no all right well welcome to our beautiful country the black feet called Fort Benton mini horses because of the trade here they didn't like us too much they kicked us out of here well anyway I'm going to talk about my people and and I'll eventually work to the
10:45 encounter and uh the black feet are the oldest Plains living tribe on the plains we can trace our ancestors well back over 5,000 years of being on the plains we were hunters and gatherers we didn't grow any kind of a crops we had a about 75 plants that we use for food and for medicine so we depended upon the Buffalo for the staff for life for our people before come to the horse we use dogs as a means of transportation it was a
11:10 wolf-like dog we put a harness over the dog and that's the way we travel now average family of four to six people would have about up to 15 dogs to move their belongings a lot of dogs and uh Buffalo being the style for life for our people so who had various ways of hunting the Buffalo one of the ways was run off over these Cliffs these Buffalo jumps we call piskin and we did this in late fall
11:35 around October so we had enough meat to last us through the winter we T we dried the meat and uh this was a food source but we also hunted buffalo on the plains on an everyday basis also and then the first white man to make contact with us was in 1754 a guy by name of Alexander hendr came with the Hudson Bay people and they wanted to open up trade with
11:57 us well we opened up our our arms to them because they had a lot to offer to us they they come in here to coexist not to take from us and so we opened up trade there after the beaver they wanted us to go back to the Hudson Bay bring our Wares back there our Beaver skins and we said no we don't know how to paddle canoe and
12:21 we don't eat fish and that's true we never ate fish at that time um because my people are very superstitious like say we were why we never ate fish because we're nomadic people and we had across these Rivers all the time and uh we were highly Believers of the sopy spirit the water spirit and when we came to the CCS we'd leave offerings and uh talk and say let
12:45 our elders and our young people cross in a good way don't take their lives because you know the rivers are very strong and then we'll leave your children alone that's the reason why we never atat fish because of our spiritual beliefs and after comeing to the horse it changed our life completely uh the horse meant great wealth to our people and to gain more wealth to our people we had to go
13:09 out and what we call take horses from other tribes in the history books it said that we were horse thieves those black feet were horse thieves we weren't horse thieves we were horse takers because everything was done through prayer and I'll I'll tell you a story leading up to Lewis and Clark now to gain wealth these young boys it was a probably the poor kids in our bands now
13:34 would be the one that would be go out and taking these horses because every time you did you put your life on the line and so these young boys would gather and they'd go get uh guidance from the elders they may bring them a pipe said we're going to go take horses and build them a sweat lodge and the sweat lodge is like our church is made of 12 Willows and they're woven together and in theide of our sweat
13:58 lodge in the center we dig a hole for the hot rocks to be placed inside that hole and then we go and and prepare now the we didn't call them medicine men because we had no word for medicine we called them mysterious men so anything that we didn't understand we called it mysterious he'd come with his pipe now you guys know it as a piece pipe but to us the pipe is a connection between us and the Creator now the bowl of the pipe
14:23 It's Made of Stone so to us that represents the Earth the stem of the pipe it's made of wood so to us that represents all living things on the earth and the smoke that comes out of our pipe we believe that's our prayers going up the Creator because the smoke is like a spirit you see it then it disappears so that was our connection because when anthropol when they wrote about my people they said the son was our God the son wasn't our God our God is the same
14:47 God as your God only thing that in our beliefs in our ways everything is real and so we honored the son every morning we still do because our traditions and culture is still very much alive every morning we leave an offering to the Sun and thank the Sun for what the sun gives to us what does the sun give to us heat light and it's an energy force to make all things grow huh and so therefore we honor
15:12 that and then when the Sun goes home in the evening we leave another offering thanking him for the day that he's given to us because when the Creator created this creation everything is living from the sky the Sun the moon the stars the mountains of trees the rocks of grass the gravel the water everything is living and they're all related and we're part of that relationship without those things out there we can't survive as a people so we need
15:36 them working in the sweet grass Hills and working with the Bure blad management we educated them about our ways and working with the ranchers and the farmers in that area because water is very important we call a giver of life huh so all these things are connected and so that's we pray when we pray we pray all directions and so these boys are going in there they're going down into Crow country to take horses and that's what
16:00 they want they want spiritual blessing that they make this journey in a good way and they're just young kids and their leader is picked and they go in there and when you go into the sweat LOD you go for four rounds one round consists of four songs prayer and splashing the water onto the steam onto the rocks to create the Steam and it's cleansing our souls it's it's uprooting the evil spirits who all been into a sauna before you all been
16:25 into a sauna you come into a sweat who's been into a sweat lodge a sweat lods make a sauna look like a gets really hot in there sometimes you pray you're praying to get out it's so hot anyway when that's over they get ready and preparation to go and what they do they take their they a blanket with them they take their spiritual things with them
16:48 now excuse me and moccasins are found me because it's a long journey when we went into Crow country we walked from all the way down in Crow about a twoe journey down there and uh we had our we didn't call them Scouts today always say well those Indian Scouts were way out there we had no word for scout scout we don't know what Scout
17:12 is so we call them cranes because a crane is great finder of things huh that's why we call them our cranes would be out looking for the enemy as we traveled and as we traveled constant prayer prayer was going on all the time everything we did was through prayer and it's still that way even today when I came down here this morning I left the offering prayer that I have a safe journey down here to talk to you good
17:36 people and on our journey things get quite difficult sometimes sometimes uh if you a person starts having bad dreams a leader then they'll turn around and go home or an individual if he has dreams that he's going to get killed or something bad's going to happen to him he turns around and he leaves nothing is said to him nothing is said that nobody makes fun of him him or teases him or
18:00 nothing because it it's it's very serious and we looked at it in a very serious Manner and so they travel during the day in blackf country when they got close into Crow country absor country they traveled at night and uh the the cranes would be way up maybe a mile to two miles ahead of them always looking for the enemy when the crow is spotted that
18:24 crane will run in a zigzag way knowing that the area has been found and so what they do is they go build a war Lodge now a war Lodge Is Willows and trees stack together like a like a lodge and inside there they get ready and prepare to get ready and go and take horses now as the cranes are
18:49 coming in these young Warriors take a bunch of sticks and they pile them up about so high off the ground maybe 2 feet and pile them so when the cranes come in they kick those sticks like that and those sticks scatter like that everybody runs for them and picks up a stick and how many sticks they get that's how many horses are going to take and so they made a game of it too and I
19:11 having fun doing it now inside that Lodge they their preparation was made now they start painting their faces now they just didn't paint them anyway and you know he always hear about these Indian teams college teams and paint and all that paint is very sacret it that was probably given to you by your grandfather by your father and uncle or you may have that a vision and so that
19:35 paint was put on and songs were connected with it that Warrior wouldn't go in and say well let's drag out your hym books today and we'll open up to page 56 and we'll uh horse taking him we didn't do things like that everybody sang their own individual songs now once the songs are done the black feet would go over and absorb absorb the crow huh now the crow are all
20:00 the plains tribes are pretty much alike because there's a lot of activities going on at night and we didn't really set guards out on our horses but their best horses were tied alongside their Lodge probably around the owner's wrist Crow away crows were very good horse people and uh the Buffalo horses were very well trained you just ride them you you could guide them with your with your knees like like such I give a presentation on all that stuff
20:24 too and so what we want to do is cut their ropes and get the best trained horses they had now when the Indians are taking horses what they do they feel the back tail of the horse and my my uncle long time ago he was a horse doctor and I I knew him real well I was a little guy I used to say you feel the tail the man if it's if
20:47 it's if it isn't thick and it it is kind of loose and kind of light and feel the horse's veins if the veins are sticking out he's no good he a ain't a good runner and so the man veins had to be very thin and no veins sticking out so that's how they picked their fast Runners but I always thought well when you're taking horses you ain't too particular you take what you can get and get the heck out of there that's the way
21:10 I looked at it now what they do they set the young boys in the brush and they go on in and what they do they would take this pitch from the cottonwood trees and rub it all over themselves try to get that smell try to for a black feet to smell like a crow would be pretty hard but we tried it anyway any crows
21:33 here and they go on in and they they go on in and they would uh start taking the horses and not so good horses they start take them and start running them home now I'll stop right there in the meantime Lewis and Clark had just come on over L pass and stopped at Travelers
21:54 Rest and here they split their party up Arc was to take a group and go down the Yellowstone Maryweather Lewis di Sergeant orway Thompson mcneel and Goodrich field brothers and jwor and head on back down into this country now he's going to leave orway Thompson
22:18 mcneel and Goodrich and Great Falls to dig up the rest of their stuff and Float on down and they're going to meet down here by LMA Montana where the Bear River pours into the Missouri we call it the Bear River they call it the maras and so that was the plan now they knew when it was coming up into this part of the country what they were looking for was more land they thought the water would go
22:42 beyond the 49th parallel and this is what they wanted to claim reclaim more land and so when they left Great Falls they cut Overland they come by Rose river out here we you guys call it the Teton we call it the rose and they cross they kept running into Indian signs all the time they run into Indian fresh Indian Signs by meaning Lodge circles and what have you and doing the
23:07 archaeology work last week I was running through a lot of tee rings out there and all this time I was thinking about Lewis and Clark because I was walking through those Farmers Fields my goodness they're hard walking through gee many crickets but it made me feel good because I'm sure it was a lot harder coming up that Missouri River and so that kind of put my mind at ease but we found a lot of sites coming in
23:29 and and so they see these these signs and they they went on they followed the maras or the Bear River all the way up until it start turning South West and that would be the cut bank and they start and the Cut Bank turned into start turning like that and so they camped it was cloudy it was hazy they
23:53 couldn't get a couldn't read his instruments it was raining couldn't really see the Rocky Mountains they stayed there for a couple days and they called that area count disappointment and they left there and they went Overland hit the two medicine and start uh falling the two medicine down about four miles where Badger Crick turns into two medicine
24:17 they stop they sent Jer now Jer was an indan a shaune Indian sent him out to hunt for deer and he decided to come up off the Blends up onto the flat area and look around now when they get up there up on top of the ridge they were Scouting Around and to their surprise they seen the Indians eight of them well they were
24:40 scared the Indians didn't see them they were down looking at juler and I do tours in that area I take people out to that site now where the black feet were they're looking down and where Clark was maybe about a mile or so away and there's a little dip like that and it comes back up on the hill so the Indians came on down that little dip and they come up on this hill and that's
25:05 when they seen Maryweather Lewis in the field brothers Joseph and Ruben fields of course they're young kids they were kind of scared I'm sure but also very curious who these people were now we were used to seeing uh these nappy Quin uh we always call them napin means
25:29 old man because they had always had beards huh the French and so on always had these big beards so we call them napin old men and so we were curious and we're going to find out who they were and so they planned amongst themselves and marwe Lewis was standing out there I'm sure he was pretty frightened and the black feet took one boy and took out after him full tilt on Horseback the rest of the boys stood
25:53 back and he had his club and his spear in his hand ra with lwis was standing there raising his hand like that and the black feet got maybe the length ofest tent and turned his horse and and took back off remember whether Lewis didn't show Fear if he showed fear and he turned his back that IND would have come back up and struck him behind the head we learned that from the bear huh we're
26:17 taught if a bear comes at us not to lay down and play dead don't make eye contact stand still and and the biggest chances out of of a 100 he'll turn and he'll leave you alone because you don't show Fear so we learned that and so they went back and they said well where our tobacco is low now I know these napin they have a lot of tobacco
26:41 let's go see who they are so they went down and he was trying to talk sign language to the black feet and he wasn't doing a very good job so they sent for juler who was out hunting the deer you know one of the field Brothers black feet rode off that cliff and found him and they come back in and you know up on the plane and this happened in July it gets awful hot up there and the they were sitting there visiting a sign language and they said well let's go
27:05 down we'll Camp there's three trees down there go camp by those trees and so they did get some shade they put up Buffalo robes and they made shade and they began to talk sign language well he went into his dog and pony show and black feet really didn't make much sense of it but one of the things that did happen they said they wanted to open up trade with us they wanted to bring guns into the
27:30 shonis into the crow into our enemies because the black feed at that time our enemies were the Flathead sish Cy cordan NEP Shon rapo Crow shyen Su man hadat and R grant grant were our allies at that time so that was our enemies and we didn't want anybody to be equal with us huh so it didn't strike us too too
27:54 keen and so as night came tobbacco run roll they went to lay down to rest they kept guard black feet came along early in the morning took one of Ruben Fields guns and took off they hollered at him dropped it another one took a gun and start walking away Ruben Fields went up caught the boy tackled him stabbed
28:18 him in the heart his name was Sid Hill calf without Clark's permission or Maryweather Lewis's permission killed him killed him instantly took about a couple steps and died and that started a confusion horse started running away Mayweather Lewis was a hard sleeper he finally arose and seeing was horses were being taken he pulled his pistol and he shot one of the
28:43 Indians he didn't kill him he just grazed him wounded him in a lot of history books it said that he was killed he wasn't killed he brought him back home and uh a lot of confusion they start running their horses off off and and going to the Indian boys they took off tailed it for home and left some of their best horses there now these horses were quite
29:07 unique because these horses can run from sun up to sun down without stopping these were the Spanish barbs that were brought over here by Cortez and uh that's also another story but these horses were bred by the Moors of Africa huh this is why they were such they can go great dist they go great distances without food or water for a day or so couple days and so they start they left a piece
29:32 midle on side Hill calf and they they left we went back told our Warriors our real people and they took after them but they had about a day and a half's journey on us we couldn't catch them marwe Lewis in the field Brothers Junior came on down there were Lomo Montana to day about that time they heard a shot and it was or orway Thompson mcneel and goodr coming down they were
29:56 happy to see him they dropped everything jumped on her vots and they took off how much time I got minut all right good I'll make some some of these stories real short now one of the great stories is uh you probably heard the John culture story huh you guys hear that story this afternoon John couter story well John culter was going on back and he ran into a couple guys
30:20 that were coming up the Missouri River and they going to trade so he got permission he came up with them he trapped and traded all winter and then he was going back on down he met manal Lisa and joined his party Manel Lisa was the first one to build a Trading Post in the state of Montana which is the state of Montana and that's for the Little Big Horn pours into the Yellowstone and so he worked with Manuel
30:43 Lisa one of his duties was to make peace with the black feet as an ambassador but he went out with some crows they joined some flatheads and there was a skirmish with the black feet gter was uh grazed on the on the side of the leg shot so cter to the black feet was a man who fought on the other side and as time went on uh he was up
31:07 dropping in the Three Forks area we call those we have our names for the Three Rivers up there one was is Medicine Woman River or Medicine Woman River uh they were coming down that river guy a name of pots and him and the book says they run into a whole bunch of Indians maybe a couple hundred thousand or so and uh he was called out of the
31:32 ship out of the boats they stopped hid their traps cter get out pots didn't they said they filled his body with bullet holes when cter got out he said this old man talked to him said you better run you better run he didn't listen to the old man but they stripped him naked he probably run him through the G in line and he said he kept running he took off running and he ran
31:56 and ran he looked behind him his Indians were chasing him this one Indian with a spear and a blanket was coming close to him and he ran for maybe four or five miles blood was coming from his nose he stopped he got in a wrestle match with that Indian took him down that Indian start begging for his life but couter killed him anyway jumped up and took off dove in the river hid in a beaver dam took his blanket and Beaver House beaver
32:20 hut that night he got out of the beaver hut and he crossed over the mountains another 500 Mile Journey back to Fort Manuel Lisa that was a story but really happened and we wouldn't be traveling with that many 500 or even 100 or even 50 probably a small party of maybe 30 people out on a hunting uh 30 inds out on a hunting Patrol because we weren't going to no major battle and we weren't
32:45 making no major move just think how much buffalo would take to feed that many men and uh we didn't have any of our women folks with us or nothing and he did stop and uh maybe pots took a shot at one of the Indians and uh Indian shot him they didn't rivet his bullet his body with bullets because bullets was hard to come by you know and we never shot off a horse huh like in
33:10 the movies we never did shoot like that because you ever try to shoot some of you ratch yourself shoot riding a horse you're never going to hit nothing except John Wayne you know John Wayne could shoot and 15 Indians will fall over but when we shot off the horses we always got off and and shot and and uh I don't make that point and
33:32 so then he took off run and and well then he went on over well anyway the story is that first place you're not going out run a Indian a black feed Indian you know in those days you know look how many times we were on the cross country state championship I think we set some kind of a National Record 24 years in a row that's our young people today when our people are natural born
33:56 Runners and uh no Indian's going to carry a spear with him there's certain people carried Spears and these Spears are long they're from uh 8 to 12 ft long are Spears and they were used for sacred purposes in those days because we had the rifle in those and who's going to run carry a blanket with them while he's chasing somebody huh stop and warm up every once in a
34:20 while and uh there's no way in the world you're going to get in a beaver hut hide in a beaver house huh you guys know the beaver Huts you know they're only about this this deep inside there's two stories to him huh and so that's and he didn't run naked all the way back to he froze to death going over those mountains traditionally anytime we run into to our we had a battle that may be the Flathead Crow
34:44 anybody and we always let one person alive to go back and tell the story always we give them the best Provisions we give him the horse the food clothe him up good go back and story they said they'll told culture stay out of our country because they were trapping here and that was our economic base there was a lot of Bloodshed sped upon these
35:07 planes and it shouldn't never happened and they could have come up here and opened up trade with us they didn't they come in and start taking the beaver and that's like someone going to your home taking your belonging say you don't need these things or you're going to retaliate too huh but a lot of we were labeled of of bad being bad people we're just protecting what was rightfully ours and so these are some of the incidents
35:30 that occurred up home at that time until they finally wised up and hired a guy by the name of McKenzie mckeny worked with the Hudson Bay people he came in and and started that Fort uh Union brought a guy by name in here burger burger lived amongst the black feed for 25 years sent Burger up in the black feed country to open come on down and open up for trade Burger went up what is now the black feed ending reservation up on Badger
35:55 Creek while into our reservation almost on the mountain front he met the black feet of one of the Chiefs was Pretty Woman Pretty Woman they wanted to talk to him he said no they got the White Flag let's see what they want they recognized it was Burger he could speak the language fluently and he said come on down and we will trade with you and a lot of those sign uh that's when uh uh uh so the black feet went on down and
36:20 open up trade and and uh the artist that did all his artwork on his tent out here what's his name huh Wagner absolutely he was up and he painted like Buffalo B back fat and those black feet and blood Indians that you see over there Buffalo B backfat was one of my
36:41 ancestors I was back at uh at this at uh National Muse Art Gallery where they have a big painting of him in uh the Lewis and Clark expedition that was going on and they did open up trade and they wanted to build a trade place up here so they black gave permission to come on up and they opened up Fort Pagan and this was in 19
37:06 1832 a guy by name of Joe Kip they come built that Fort there and they open up trade Bloods came and burnt it down what has time when went on uh we didn't start trading with Americans they offered us more and uh got rid of the British now I've did a lot of work on leis and Clark from the Indian from the First Nations persp perspective I got
37:29 150 hours of going up and down from uh St from I start from uh St Louis uh the Mounds kokia the mountains out there we start shooting out there and we we've interviewed the Omaha punka oage
37:52 Oto Mandan hadat and rarra all these tribes coming on up the Missouri River all the on over to Fort katup we're doing the Indian perspective of Lewis and Clark from our perspective we do the history before they came their involvement and then the after effects we finished our first one called Two Worlds at two medicine that's a black feet
38:14 encounter uh we put it in DVD form we've taken it to Harvard all over the country uh to the Isle George Museum in Indianapolis uh the Indian education conference national Indian education conference in Phoenix and so on all over the country got excellent reviews I've taken it to I've given it to our governor in the state of Montana national or the Indian Education Office of Public Instruction was very happy to
38:38 see this because they want more Indian education system in their school so it what we've done is going to be put in the schools systems today we were drawn up the educational curriculum that goes with it it's very interesting to hear all sides of the story so we're telling our side and there's a lot of it's not really uh it's it's great I mean they did a wonderful job the National Park
39:01 Service people seen it at Glacier and they said this is the most one of the best put together Lewis and Clark perspective that they've seen and uh so we have that with us today right behind us is my son who was the star one of the stars in the reenacment we're selling it uh it is great uh we selling it for $25 it cost us $100,000 put together a professional
39:24 film crew from Indianapolis I I was getting my head into a lot of money so I owe money but it's great we're getting it we're getting it accomplished and uh you can purchase that and also black feet stories in there and you know I always like to say and but I'll ask for questions and you know I always think of my elders and I have the most up respect for them because theyve given me all my wisdom
39:49 and knowledge and God's raised the traditional way of my people and uh have a lot of respect for my elders but if I could speak to my elders a long long long time ago I would tell them many things have changed since you've been gone but some things still remain the same they're very mysterious but yet we need them on our everyday life and
40:13 that's love Faith and Hope thank you and God bless each and every one of you if you have any questions thank you the CDs right there if you like to if anybody has any questions please raise your hand I'll bring the microphone around so everybody can hear you did we have any questions for curly
40:36 bear there we go hold on how many Buffalo how many Buffalo would it take to feed a family win in the winter time uh a cow Buffalo could produce about uh 600 lb of meat uh they weighed about 12200 lb
40:58 uh so about half it was in meat and that uh that that meat Source would last them just a little over a month CU they consume a lot of food they could sit down and they could consume two to three pounds of meat at one sitting so that's a lot of buffalo meat and we're still meat eaters today good all right we eat the beef
41:23 today here did you uh did you uh did your divisions of the tribe did they migrate across back and forth the plains for the hunting areas or something well they tried to migrate into the black feet country but we wouldn't let them The Bu oh the Buffalo black feet stayed from uh from which is now
41:46 Edmonton Alberta down to the Teton country that was we stayed we didn't migrate from that we we wandered we was novatic yeah we wanded we didn't grow any kind of crops we wandered all over yeah
42:07 no uh most people use see they they call them uh uh Lodge circles and when I first started doing archaeology work I was walked into the archaeologist say I said what you doing he's measuring your Lodge well you're going to have to go out a couple more feet if you get our right measurements on it because that's inside of our liner we we uh rocked our liners down and we pegged our Tepe our lodges down because
42:31 my goodness if we rocked our lodges down we how in the world is the smoke going to get out huh and if we rock them down the wind blows hard in our country our lodges had to be flexible huh they had to be able to move and if they rock down they'd rip or we find them in Chicago somewhere yeah there were uh you had the Apaches down in that part of the country and the commanches and Kwa I'm sorry I
42:54 me Montana yeah say Arizon yeah I said Arizona yeah oh yeah yeah I do archaeology work on I we see a lot of that stuff all over the place yeah thank any other questions right here over here contact with the black feet in the Lewis and
43:16 Clark uh Expedition happened uh on on their return trip yeah uh did the black feed Nation know uh that they were going through this area in 180 did the black feet knew that they were going through our area we knew that they were coming up because word was sent from us from when they wintered with the
43:40 Mandan uh the grant came through that part of the country and there were allies we knew of these people coming up they had nothing to offer to us meaning nothing to trade so we didn't want to bother with them because we were quite busy people in the summertime we just have a few wants to gather berries hunt get our robes in preparation for the
44:03 winter and so we Wen there were just another we didn't you know there were just people passing through we we didn't care who they were Lewis and Clark didn't make any difference to them but they had nothing so we call them nothing people they were coming through that nothing to trade we didn't bother him we seen them going going up the river we P them I mean might have been hunting Buffalo or
44:25 taking horses and would have interrupted us we had to listen to their uh dog and pony show all right well thank you curly bear for presenting here in the 10 to many voices he curly bear is going to be back out at his table with his DVDs so I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any more questions you have out there our next
44:50 presentation in
44:56 here
45:26 e