Buffalo Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

The Silk Robe

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:46:28 +0000

Charles M. Russell’s The Silk Robe shows a Plains Indian encampment scene centered on the labor-intensive process of preparing a buffalo hide. A woman kneels on the stretched skin, scraping its surface with a hafted tool to soften and finish the leather—the painstaking work that transformed a raw hide into the supple, fur-side robe prized in the inter-tribal and Euro-American trade. Around her, the camp continues its routines: figures in conversation, a mounted man, dogs, and the conical lodges of a summer camp arranged across an open prairie. Russell uses a warm palette of tans, ochres, and dusty greens, with the horizon kept low to emphasize the openness of the northern plains. The composition is built around the diagonal of the staked hide, which pulls the viewer’s eye into the activity of the camp.

The painting dates to 1890, early in Russell’s professional career. He had come to Montana as a teenager in 1880, worked as a wrangler and night herder through the 1880s, and lived for several months during the winter of 1888–1889 with Blood (Kainai) people in Alberta. That experience sharpened his attention to the material culture and daily work of Plains tribes and shaped a series of camp-life pictures he produced around 1890, of which The Silk Robe is among the most carefully observed. By focusing on women’s labor in hide preparation rather than on combat or the hunt, the painting documents an aspect of Plains economy then being eroded by the collapse of the buffalo herds and the confinement of tribes to reservations.

Russell (1864–1926) would go on to become the foremost painter of the northern plains and Rocky Mountain frontier, eventually producing the large mural Lewis and Clark Meeting the Indians at Ross’ Hole for the Montana State Capitol in 1912. The Silk Robe belongs to the Amon G. Carter Collection at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, an institution built around Carter’s holdings of Russell and Frederic Remington and central to the scholarly study of both artists.

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The Buffalo Hunt

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:46:27 +0000

Russell’s painting shows a group of mounted Plains Indian hunters in the midst of a buffalo chase across open grassland. The composition is built around movement: bison run from right to left in the foreground and middle distance, kicking up dust, while riders armed with bows and lances close in at full gallop. One hunter in the foreground draws his bow alongside a bull; another rider, partially obscured by dust, presses a second animal. Russell uses a low horizon and a warm, dry palette of tans, ochres, and rust browns, with the distant plain dissolving into pale blue haze. The animals’ anatomy and the riders’ bareback technique—reins gripped short, weight forward—reflect his long firsthand study of both subjects.

By 1919 Russell was sixty-five and had been painting full-time for roughly two decades, having transitioned from cowboy and wrangler in the 1880s to one of the most commercially successful Western artists in the country. The buffalo hunt was a recurring subject for him from the 1890s onward, painted repeatedly in oil and watercolor. He treated it as historical reconstruction: by the time Russell arrived in Montana in 1880, the northern bison herds were already collapsing, and the mounted Indian hunt he depicted was a scene from living memory rather than current observation. Works like this one were part of a broader postwar market for nostalgic Western imagery, sold to collectors and railroad-era patrons who wanted images of a frontier they understood to be gone.

Russell spent most of his adult life in and around Great Falls, Montana, where his log-cabin studio still stands. His sympathy for and knowledge of Plains tribes—particularly the Blackfeet, among whom he had lived briefly in 1888—distinguished his Indian subjects from those of many of his contemporaries. The painting is now held by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, entering that collection through Amon G. Carter, the Texas newspaper publisher who assembled one of the largest holdings of Russell and Frederic Remington works in existence. The museum, which opened in 1961, built its early identity on these two artists, and Russell’s buffalo-hunt canvases have remained among its most reproduced holdings.

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Blackfeet Burning Crow Buffalo Range

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:46:27 +0000

Charles M. Russell’s “Blackfeet Burning Crow Buffalo Range” depicts a scene of intertribal warfare on the northern plains. The composition shows mounted Blackfeet warriors setting fire to grassland, a tactic used to deprive a rival tribe of forage and to drive bison away from enemy hunting territory. Smoke and flame fill the middle distance while the riders move across the foreground, rendered with Russell’s customary attention to horse anatomy, the cut of leggings and shirts, and the carriage of the rider on horseback. As a halftone print measuring roughly 3 1/2 by 5 3/8 inches, the image was reproduced from one of Russell’s painted or drawn originals for mass circulation, a common practice for his work in the early twentieth century.

The 1907 date places this image at the height of Russell’s productive middle career, after he had left the cowboy life behind and settled in Great Falls, Montana, to paint full time. By this point he was widely published in magazines, gift books, and promotional literature, and small halftone reproductions of his Western subjects circulated broadly. The subject reflects Russell’s lifelong interest in the Plains tribes before reservation confinement, a period he treated repeatedly through scenes of hunting, horse raids, and intertribal conflict. The Blackfeet–Crow rivalry he depicts here was a defining feature of the northern plains in the early nineteenth century, the same landscape and peoples the Lewis and Clark Expedition encountered in 1805 and 1806 as the Corps of Discovery moved through what is now Montana.

Russell (1864–1926) is the artist most closely identified with Montana’s visual identity, and his images shaped public understanding of the northern plains for generations. This print is held in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, a major repository of Russell’s work alongside that of Frederic Remington. It entered the collection through the Fred and Jo Mazzulla Collection, an important Colorado-based assemblage of Western American photographs, prints, and ephemera. Russell’s depictions of intertribal warfare and pre-reservation Plains life have been frequently reproduced in Lewis and Clark commemorative publications, where they serve to illustrate the Indigenous world the expedition documented but did not fully understand.

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Traditional regalia, dance styles, and Lewis & Clark expedition logistics

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:06 +0000

A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

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Missouri Speaker on Lewis and Clark Expedition Materials and Methods

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:05 +0000

and the Buffalo sent you in there and it’s really um soft and flexible when they take it out of buffo so they would just take it peel it off in strands and literally make sewing threads they could make um they use it in thicker quantities to lash tools together would they let it dry first or would they they pull it off as when it’s still wet it still wet or you hopefully soak this and get it soft enough again to okay but we haven’t tried that I’ve tried about everything else but I haven’t tried that one yet so it was used for a variety wind was coming from West so they weren’t able to use the sail too often but uh that would be another way to propel it now there’s a rope up there in the front too they would use that rope to pull that would be the have to walk on the shore there wasn’t much of a Shore there actually I left in the now the Missouri River was not very back then so they were able to do it most places like that but this boat was very very heavy and it was loaded with about 15 so imagine trying to pull something like that up they had about 20 22 guys out there and P on that Ro so to many people walk up the M what they were doing that’s what they do they were walking up carrying their possessions behind on the boat pretty pretty tough guys back there like that it’s just like what yeah canas is it’s like this roof that’s um it’s thin and it looks kind of stringy almost it looks like a radish yeah it almost looks like a radish or some people call it know to yeah yeah that the same thing wild carrot is not the same as K but it looks yeah and so they would tradition of her upbringing within the N Pur tribe and some of her experiences growing up so please welcome Mary tble good afternoon sight with a sighting vein once you got that thing lined up exactly the way you want it to go and again you’re going to have it up on the tripod or up on the shakeup staff and then you’re going to sight through the siding vein and in the sighting veins there are holes and then there’s slits below that so once you’ve got it kind of rough figured out with the holes then you slide your eye down and you line it up with the split and then you get that much better direction as you go along so this team had to move a lot slower yep L and Clark didn’t measure their way all the way across the continent with this kind of accuracy and what what we like to say is that the the public land surveyors are following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark as they’ve gone across the continent now we’ve got Lewis and or we’ve got the public land surveyors the general land office surveyors another name for the same thing kind of filling in the rest of the map L Clark just taken that one route across the continent where now we’re going to say we want to measure out the rest of it and the reason for all of this is to fulfill what Thomas Jefferson had in mind and that is to get as he put it the yman farmer out on the left you have a rough idea how far off Clark were with their rough maps and then fin did miles miles the final map which um gets published in I believe it’s 1814 with the the first set of journals um that yeah that map has been compared with a modern map so it comes out to be about 40 Mi off now you know part of that is the accuracy of the the width of the line I mean a line on a map of that scale you know could be you know 40 Mi wide all by itself so but they’re incredibly accurate and it it really comes from two places one is um this is a replica of Captain Captain Clark’s Compass the one he carried with him we we know it because it’s one of the few pieces that actually survived the ls and Clark um Voyage as they came back to St Louis in 1806 all their equipment that they had left became Surplus government property it was auctioned off oh God but the compass Clark’s Compass was his own personal Compass so he kept that compass and it’s now the original was now expected to get back it’s phenomenal isn’t it in fact that one poster we have we have one at pompy’s Pillar the uh the one at the top there oh yes and it shows a a photo of his uh where he his name nice that’s where leis and three others come out over Lim High Pass they were an advanced part looking for the way across a disappointing day though row after row of mountains yeah yeah okay on the well that in this corner we get from the Mand Indians one of the 12 varieties that they perpetuate from the old store of genetic seed stocks and it’s kind they Grind from formul so you can grind it back and forth just like that you got to work in the kitchen more here you I a Volcan CRA kind of a b fish it has to be we covered this didn’t open quite a while you got one in the shirt origal tail this is a relatively large here check out the in the Joby this is about 300 lb jly bear this is over a th000 so quite a bit of difference does the weight correspond directly to like how tall they stand oh yeah how much mass they did like that what is it Boon and Crocket scale right do they measure the height of them set no it’s this this print that’s rting one does kind of the same things that I are you an archaeologist for the PM then h no story okay there is there are jobs for his history majors not very many I have a degree in history so yeah for 6 years I I was a teacher before that so I I used my degree obviously but you know this is him when he was one of that that party of of four men who first entered Idaho uh with me my blanket is kind of buried underneath my stuff over there he would have had a blanket along also but uh so it’s was like just like a little mini Expedition they took off from the main group kind of thing yes yep set out on foot cuz the bullets were going so slow at that time so he was the guy who carried the provisions that me he was the cook and so he would have had a h sack you know he had 2 lbs of flour about the same of of meal I don’t think he had necessarily any of this stuff but it’s just kind of interesting I just wanted to have it on display anyway is it’s like the hard yeah that time they were calling it biscuit but it’s the same thing it’s whole wheight flour butter and water mix it up roll it out and then bake it and that stuff will keep for a long long time it’s about 14 months old that’s a loaf of sugar oh and what do you do you you shave it off you can shave it off or they have little you pinch some off like that yeah and it has a lot of molasses in it so it’s really much better for you than just plain white sugar and that’s how tea used to come that’s black tea oh wow it’s okay oh sure where do you get this now there’s a company several companies online that sell reenactor supplies all stuff so then what you do is just cut off a piece too sure you can scrape some off or you can cut off a piece and it’s it’s proc it’s chopped very finely so it’s almost more of a powder than it is a leaf and at that time they were issuing a 69 caliber must that’s the big one that’s the big musket ball yes they all handmade so they could be interchangeable no these weren’t these were made by by by Factory it’s called the 1795 contract model it actually was just a copy of a musket that was made in France about 30 years that’s what I mean cuz the French one could take like they could take all the they move the moving Parts on any rifle and change out with another one and like so they did that so like for the core so they all had you know rifle B they could just kind of how it yes and they did have one good gunsmith along them and he had to get Innova a few times to repair guns but he was able to and and so they carried a cartridge box rather than just you know a Powder Horn with with a separate pouch of of balls oh so they have like yeah and you know I don’t know what these look like but a friend of mine made up some cartridges for me it’s just each cartridge was paper and it had just enough powder to to Prim the pan to pour the rest down the barrel and then the ball went down the barrel um that was enough for one round okay so you have to get out your Powder Horn and dump it out you just the end of right right but but here’s the quandry okay now I’m ready to reload but what do I do so this this gives me to a rule that the Army had at that time regulation if you wanted to be in the Army you had to have at least two teeth and they had to be opposite each other you see where I’m headed yeah and then you pour some on that and then you pour the dress down there right Tamp it in with the ram rod and then you’re ready to to shoot around if you were if you were really good you should be able to get off four rounds a minute one every 15 seconds uh and they also had a bayonet though in case uh 15 seconds uh wasn’t enough time that’s the biggest chipmunk I’ve ever seen that’s a big chipmunk you want lunch yeah they were having a hard time you got sear running now I did I proba I didn’t I know I didn’t hit you with anything they would send out Hunters along the shoreline and they could range out in front of the core as they were moving up shootting animals and hang them up and they would actually come along and together and they were only moving 5 to 6 M an hour I mean 5 to 6 miles a day and on the way back they couldn’t do it because they were averaging up to 70 m a day on the way back they got into the current the way they so they couldn’t put Hunters out cuz they run off and leaving down stream so to speak mhm so they actually had to stop three or 4 days at a time send Hunters out and bring in the food and and eat a couple of days jerk the meat and then they get back in the canoes and off up but they were they were not doing too well on the way back that’s whenever Captain uh Lewis got shot is actually one of the hunting trips by the beach of those and we still use these today so they would have put their PL here wouldt soaked put it all in she pressed it together and kept it nice and tight until the plants dried out and when they dried out they had a perfect specimen of the plant that they looked at remember you kids Uncle Ryan got you one of those you have that little plant press with piece of wood terrible uh back side right there on the this is the back away from that’s the back side because uh wood never I that backbody told anything my uncle always told yeah pretty old bottom around mixure of mercury you know the stuff in thermometers that goes up and down to tell you the temperature and jalop which is a plant root and it’s held together with breadcrumbs as a binding agor and if you’re given one of Dr Rush’s pills you’d have to hurry to the bathroom because in less than 10 minutes you’d be cleared out to the extent that just liquid’s coming out also to make you go to the bathroom they have salt peter and if they’re out of salt peter they could give you gunpowder because salt Peter’s one of the ingredients in gunpowder what is that what’s that sponge thing well it’s just a sponge for cleaning wounds now do you have sponges at home yeah Is this different yeah how’s it different because it’s all at holes has like holes what are the sponges like that you have at home they’re like they’re rough they have holes in them they like and they’re Square you see what you have are artificial sponges that they make out of plastics this is a real sponge it used to live at the bottom of the sea little microbes and bacteria would swim by and get caught up in all the nooks and crannies and it would eat them this used to be a living animal this doesn’t have any eyes you ever see an animal without eyes you have what um and I hauled this out and it was overcast and I said to the students what can I do with oh you make a fire I one of it’s overcat it’s it’s easier to get a flashlamp oh oh good good good now from North Dakota you get to say Chic now this woman had a child and think things really didn’t change a whole lot in child they put light cord on it yeah changed a lot in the grass there huh in the grass in the grass that’s my coffee cup oh coffee my coffee funny looking coffee cup isn’t it then I can put it on my belt here and I got my coffee cup handy when next time I want made out of a some kind of out of a buffalo horn buffalo horn this what is that blue what’s that blue stuff what do you think that blue stuff is huh what do you think yeah if I took if I wanted to make a nice long straight Str line see I would take this string and I would lay it on there like that listen listen like that hang on the end of itang on right on the end of it hold it hang on hang on real tight hold down here hold it down there you see real tight my truck is is wet you see the line e

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Haywood Big Day on Crow history and culture

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

all right everyone like to welcome you to our um one o’ program already just fly by again you are inside the T of many voes and this is a really special venue we’ve traveled all over the country um from the east coast to the West Coast and now we’re going back just like Le and clar did in 2006 they were heading home toward St Louis months be in St Louis F are ass story to come in and add a voice to thisal Historic Trail that’s really what makes it so special there we go um should we try again so once again you are inside the 10 of many voices and this is where the L and Clark National Historic Trail really does come alive we bring in folks that have all kind of ways reasons you name it some sort of association with the Lewis and clar trail to share their story with us and add it to this and that’s what really keeps these legacies alive these historic things without uh people to remember it it’s kind of dead and so in here we get to remember it and live it day by day in this hour we have a really special presenter his name is Haywood big day he’s a member of The Crow Nation he’s going to be speaking on Crow history and culture so if you would please uh help me welcome Heywood big day to the Ten of many voices thank you ladies and gentlemen this afternoon I sure appreciate it that you all came over and many people I lived about 30 miles or 40 miles south of uh Bellington there was a little town name called prior and there’s where I came from and there’s where I liveed but I’ve been going around through this universe like down under insight and everything and so now what I’m going to tell you about it it’s they asked me one of the one of the Rangers was asking me she said that uh what what does uh cultural and history I I asked I asked her and she said that what do you want me to to do I said and she said okay for yourself for you cow Indians where did you come from how did you get here that’s a tough question who I was where I coming from and so now I’m going to tell you about where I come from and I where I came from who I am what I am and where did I’m I have to sometimes I have to mention about the stages and uh if we do have any questions questions and I’ll do some answering right after I get done and within about half uh half an hour or 35 minutes I’m I’m going to go back to doing a time of uh before the fire before the fire the crows were Liv on the ground and they Liv like this cave and we Liv over there around by Minnesota where there’s a lot of lakes where the swamping area and there’s a lot of herbs over there that we ate and there’s a lot of there’s a lot of plants over there that we ate and that’s how we survive and in at that time that I don’t know how many generations that they went by but that generation has been gone and the second generation the there was a medicine man came over they don’t know where he came from but he was there all right and after he was there all right and he beginning to he beginning to tell teach the people you people don’t you have any fire they said no what what the fire is so he had some he had a two two cherry trees and he put one cherry tree down and he put the other one right on top of it and start rubbing it as he was rubbing it then there was a buffalo drop over there it was old and he wrapped around it and about few minutes later it start the smoke coming out and as the smoke coming out then Sparks and turn into fire after it turn into fire and the crows they’re beginning to scary that’s that’s too much that fires so so that’s how that the beginning and that um then that same man was saying that I’m going to teach you how to use that bow and arrow and he pick it up a choke cherry tree and start shaving it and make the bowl and he picked it up these grass there’s a certain kind of a grass that they weaved it they weaved it and they stretch it and they put the they put the bowl on there and he make the arrows out of that same tree that choke cherry tree as he make the bow and he went along the creek and there was a little kind of a little little creek uh bottom he found um and an arrowead and he was pretty close to the Buffalo and and he started shooting that Buffalo as he was shooting that Buffalo and that Buffalo dropped and he looked at it the the Indians were looked at it and they was wondering what’s going to be happened this is this is too much we got the fire and we killed the Buffalo a buffalo’s dead and the buffalo’s right there and we can’t do that and so this man he said that this is what you’re going to be survived this is what you’re going to survive with it this is the height the skin the height he start helping these women how to how to time as the year goes by they beginning to be tanning and they’re beginning to be wrapped around and during the winter time to survive with the Buffalo and the Buffalo as we ate every piece of a parts of that Buffalo we used it there’s no waste even the hopes even the inside even the inside side we eat them and even today the crows we still eat the eat the tribe we still eat the eat the inside of BU and and part of the part of the bones all the bones on that on that Buffalo we used it especially from the hind quarter to to the to the Elbow on the high quarter there was a big bone and that’s to mash something like a sludgehammer and a hammer and the rest of them and even the inside the marrow that’s the best part of the food and we eat with the with the meat and we Barbe uh uh grill grill them and we C them right on top of the Open Fire and so so we we ate that and and as the year goes by we came towards to the to the South and somewhere along the north Kota or North Dakota or Minnesota somewhere along in the area and one of the one of the elderly person that went up on a Hillside and start fasting the man that teaches he’s the one that teaches how to do the fast and so as they fast and during the night time there was some Spirits came over and talked to him they talked to him and here’s a here’s a tobacco the tobacco was turned into not the tobacco that today that you were smoking no it’s a different tobacco and we still have them and sometimes that uh today they still planning them and as they’re planning it and it grows up to about 8 ft high I’ll tell you more about that too so during at that time that man he got that tobacco and he start here’s how you do it and he start smoking with the leaves and and he prayed and and doing at that night and he saw the vision and he saw the mountains then he beginning to start telling his people that you got to you’ve got to when you’re die what you going to do about it that tobacco what is it going to be is it is it does it going going with you to the happy hunting grounds and he said no I have to adab I have to to adopt the the person if the tobacco was telling me that to adopt a person so I’m going to adopt the person so if I do adopt the person he’ll continue going on as as the as the so so that tobacco has been up in North Dakota somewhere along there and there was two brothers s these two brothers were the ones that was the ones that um found it the other one the he do say went back to the north Kota along the along the river then the crows were start heading out towards to the South and as they’re coming as they’re coming along they sto like that Village down there you’ve seen the village and I’m sure a lot of people will see that Village they they camp like that okay the village that I’m going to talk about it it was that that Tepe that Tepe how did they discovered the Tepe there was a there was a lady that walking towards to the woods and he and they looked at it and these these elderly men they looked at it and they it looks like a a a woman when you go over to the TV Village you look at it in your mind think about a lady that was walking and when the woman uh scraped the hide and turned into to a bug skin and he put a 12 14 16 and 18 them them are the them are the the pretty good high and they all put it together when they stop and Camp the sewing every other four days every other three days three to four days at they move out they they bre up and there and doing at that time they once they once they start moving they moving out with the with the pack they moving out with the as the year goes by they found a they found a Timber W over by um moula some place and we called the we called a Timber W uh the timber underneath there there was a sand and so they found they found the the PBS these timber wolves and they picked them up and they raised them and as they raas them the timber wolf we call them Bish you know the the pine trees the Sab that’s what we call them the dogs that during the time Bish that’s what we call them and the Bish that means that we travel and we put the dog travys if you heard about that dog travys and that’s the time when we’re using the dog Travelers and later as the year goes by then the Englishman or Frenchman or somebody that came into our reservation they came through that Missouri and they stopped over at U Mile City about so many miles north over here that there was a mile city and they stopped over there as they stopped over there they’re beginning to have a u have them horses and they took them into the reservation as they took them into the reservation we saw the horses and them our fur Traders we call them and they come over to our reservation into our camp area and we traded off with the horses with the fur and and so there’s no name for it the horses we call called them similary of an elk e and e that means horses e elk similary of a of a horse we call horses that’s our Indian language so and as the day goes by we traveled with that and we go up towards to the to the West we migrating with the Buffalo and as the the white people bringing in their their goods like the wo beads needles threads and all of them all them items that we work with they bring them over and we trade them with the Pelt we trade them with the Furs trade them with the Buffalo ropes we trade them after we start trading them then we built the lak and we used the W it’s a lot easier because the during the time of the the first time that they’re doing some sewing the the plants that here around here here in state of Montana there’re some out in the they call it yucky plant that yucky plant on the end it was really sharp like a needle and you break the the the top part and you pull it and the string will be coming up down and that’s how they s their magusin in at that time then the white man bringing in their needles and the threads and that’s what we use right now my marusin it’s we saw them with a needle and a and the threads that’s what I and also the The Bu skin pants that I have the bead work they tack them down and so the white man brings them over so as the there’s where they stop and they start taking the the their their goods out to the to the Indian village and at about this LS and leis Lon Clark and throughout one of these one of these Travelers were coming to the reservation up in Big Horn and and up in Big Horn and coming back them but the crows were migrating there’s three B PS of crows one was down by m city they usually start migrating going up towards to Wyoming to the up to Potter River and there was another band from Mil City they go up to uh Missouri up to up to Mell and heading out towards the Great Falls the center Lodge from the Big Horn area and going into to all the way up to M Missoula and as they’re going along with the they go alongside of the Buffalo and as as they’re going along through the Buffalo uh they Camp by sight by sight and you’ve seen the people that they ride and they make boats and they had a battle crows actually they don’t battle you have to you have to you have to hit me first before I before I it was a Revenge it was a Revenge that they have to hurt us they have to hurt our family to and we do the Revenge and Once We Do the Revenge they we have to let them taste their own medicine and that’s why we get some of them were about battle and some of them they don’t it was a Revenge so a lot of times that there when I seen some bats they say they had a big battle yes there were some big battles but uh different kind of a tribe that came over to our reservation but they’re not pushing in us but it was a deadly deadly Sports when you play basketball or football that you have a you have a you have a opponent so that’s exactly and the best man wins so as the year goes by them them F Traders and uh and this lson Clark was happened to be in that bun and going into the reservation and he start migrating back and forth and go out through this Yellowstone going through the Yellowstone and going through the Missouri all the way up to and we known him but we what I hear from these old people I they talked about it but not really they don’t talk that much because the Lou and Clark but they’re they talk about the lot of these F Traders and that’s that’s how I learned these and also now today as as today that we live in the crow reservation there’s so many thousands of Acres there was a power our third weekend in August and the the outfits that I was using there’s a lot of them and there’s a lot of parades going on like in Friday Saturday and and Sunday and Monday they’ve got a they call it the parade dance so as the as of today that we had these all this all this outfit that I was using that I had a you seen I’m going to talk about myself now youve seen this War Bonnet when you see the the there was an Indian was using the war Bonet in the in the magazine or book you say it was a chief and they write it down as a chief some of them it was um there’s no tail some of them has a tail the tail it was a chief at one time there was a chief and I inherited from my great great grandfather from back in I believe one two three y yeah my great great grandfather was back somewhere around about 8 late late 16 or early no late 17 or early early uh early 18 H and he beginning to be a a chief power back over in uh uh Livingston R by Livingston between Livingston and bman they had a one day they had a power and and he beginning to be a chief and as as he was a chief power and from then on it was in handed down to the generation to generation just like this my name is big day and down down as the the guy the the person that had this big day he was U he was a a warrior and he met a a different tribe and had a arm wrestling was fighting and everything and he he got the whole nine yards at that day and so that’s what they that’s why they call him he was a a big day as he was a big day that was his big day and during a time of uh over in absor or over in bman and they ask him the when they start writing the their names and when they start and they told they told the guy that he said it his name is um his name is uh big day he got the he got everything that one day so they start writing him as a big day so a lot of these crows we use in our last name an animal or a ground bird in the ground or all them uh all them all them uh native names that’s what we go about it and that’s he’s uh he achieved achievement and all that achievement and a warrior as he was a warrior they call him a big day that day and from then on on his children their last name was big day all the way up to myself and my grandchildren and my grade uh if there’s any questions feel free to ask and we if you have any questions please do raise your hand and I’ll bring the microphone around that way everyone can hear your questions question do we have any questions about Crow history and culture yes we do how do you pronounce the traditional name of the crow the traditional the traditional Crow name it’s a the the black the black bird got a big peak knows the crow you’ve seen there’s two different kind a black bird around over here one of them was a one of them is was a big got a big peak and so that’s what that’s I’m saying uh I’m one I’m the child of the a black bird got a big peak that’s any any questions where did the uh Crow Nation uh what area did they cover we’re starting it out from um where the great Leakes were run by Twin Twin Cities and we came up to the up to North Dakota and as we coming up from the North Dakota uh we’re part of the hiod dosy that’s one family so we’re splitting the sheets at that time and and one of them goes for the corn and the other one it was the tobacco the crows they it was a tobacco they’re the ones that brought the tobacco all the way up to the to the mountains and there’s where the there’s where the crows are and and they and some of the crows the the Potter River all the way up to the head of the Potter River and around by uh thopas matii around in that area we migrating there’s like I said there’s three bands Center Lodge and a mountain area and also the down the river around by m city and so this is the whole area that all the way up all the way up into PR all the way into Canada I’ll put it that way so this is the whole area that we during the winter time the Buffalo they go towards to the to Missoula TCH to the Missoula and as they’re going towards to Missoula it’s warm the weather is warm but the Snows are pretty deep but in Bosman it’s a big Valley we call them Al Big Valley in that Valley there’s elk there’s Buffalo so we migrating in there until the until the I were broken that was in last part of February or first part of March and they’re beginning to start coming through the through the mountain area where the where the where there less snow and we broke the trail and into the flat area heading towards the buildings and we migrating all the way the center Lodge it goes all the way into the big big horn Big Horn and they start uh migrating going up towards to Missoula by the time by the time they get down to Missoula they start coming up down and into bman there’s where they usually hang around by February no December December January and February around in that area and once once the once the snow kind of melts down a little bit then they’re coming coming over towards the flat area around by around in this area did you go back to the use of the tobacco what did the coronation use it for uh would you that she wanted to know what the coronation used tobacco for okay now tobacco it was a big challenge the challenge it’s a it’s a tobacco it’s a it’s a plan and they offered and they prayed as he the guy the guy that owns tobacco I adopt this this uh this man this woman that I adopted I want her him to be LIF long time time so he put it in the ground and he prays and after he was praying that tobacco goes up to 8 78 ft long yes he’s going to lift here up to 100 to 125 so if it’s not say like about 5 ft he’s not going to make it up to so it do it’s a challenge just like this uh just like this uh a put in an extension on that that challenge it’s um the where they mark their the The Rock Ledge uh what they call that The Rock Ledge with the pets the the plys I seen some books they say that it was was um thousand and many years ago but it isn’t it’s still in active it’s still the same as yesterday and today the reason why I knew about it I witnessed it because my son was an artist at the Eastern he graduated from the art uh got his bachelor’s degree on it art so he he’s an artist and he’s a painter and we were studying it and I looked at it in my in the old days when we coming back from uh this was back in 19 early 40s and when we coming back I used to horse horseback riding to no trailer so I used to ride horses to go to Prior so sometimes I come through uh we camp over in jol Ed and these old people they say that they want to look up the pet and so we I I usually go out there there was one old man was telling me that here pick this uh Sage fish and so I picked it up the sage fish and I don’t know what I’m going to do with it but she he told me to carry that and I didn’t even know that it was that powerful and it tells you the what is it going to be happening for the next 3 months what is what the weather is going to do where the powow going to be where the buffalos are going to be where the algs going to be it tells you if you go through the the route of what the procedures of the right away just like if you want to go to the bank and if you want to borrow the money you have to fill out all them papers just exactly the same thing you have to do the proper way before they could come over and communicate with you for each each day and each month they have a they’ve got a away uh to come over and our question is we we come over with the tobacco you were talking about the tobacco so the tobacco that we put it in the Peace Pipe and we and we prayed we prayed and we asked questions and we go through the procedure and about and they tell us when to coming back maybe a day or two they come we they told us to come back and you’re going to ask me who told you some way somehow they usually let us snow so yeah so that’s what it is on that any um I’ve heard that the um crazy mountains are sacred to The Crow and I know you know you may not want to talk about a lot about some of those things in public but is there anything you can tell us about the Crow’s relationship to crazies what what the crazy would you uh he wants he understands that the Crazy Mountains have some sacred significance to the Crow Nation he’s wondering if there’s anything that you can speak about in public about that relationship okay okay that’s over and just right outside of Livingston the crazy Mountain why they have to call them a crazy mountains and when the leaves were beginning to be blooming and that’s in May no first part May when the leaves were beginning to be blooming and the crows they want to go up on mountains and fast and as they going up the mountains and there’s a certain area that you past that area uh they’re not go uh the spirits are going to harm you and if you’re not go away if you’re not if you’re not going away that night you able to to have a snowbound and you come down a little further and the rain will be harm you you’re going to be soaked and W and and a cold wind and the you can’t hardly build a fire because the wind was so blowing so hard and you came down a little more then it’s so hot down the bottom a little more down down the hill so they told the crows when you go up on mountain and try to try to Vision there’s no way he doesn’t have any children he’s for himself nobody T Pentacles went up there and came back he said that was a crazy Mountain crazy Mountain so that’s so if somebody was harm you and you’re running away and you’re trying to meet him and he harms you harms you and you call that man or a woman he’s a he’s a crazy person that’s what so that’s what the Crazy Mountains is crazies so so yeah that’s that’s why they call call him crazy Mountain he doesn’t have any I’ll I’ll put it this way he doesn’t have any children if he had some children like in Prior there’ll be a lot of crows over there today we used to live over there we used to live over there and we’re migrating with the Buffalo and but it’s a long long winter I understand that Crow Nation never did battle with uh the white people that they were mainly friendly can you comment on that uh yes yes the white people once they came over it’s a it’s a long story but I’ll make it short this was before the this is during the time of the dog that I was talking about it during at that time there’s no horses and there’s no dogs there’s they Camp over by m moua and one old man went up on a mountain and he saw this right at the cloud and he saw a man blinking his eyes got a beard and got a yellow yellow eyes and a long hair that much that how far that he saw in that cloud and that man was a foot and as he was looking up there and by God I better I want to talk to him that man he’s a strange man he’s one of the clouds so so from then on he never he never had a communicate with him so he doesn’t have any communicate with him since that he does and communicate with him and about four to 5 days he came down every day he was up there for about four four to 5 days and no communication so he came down as he was came down and went down through the valley and got in a camp about he went in the sweat lot and do the proper way and about two two nights or three nights he he began to Vis uh dream he had a dream there was a bunch of ants coming over there red ones you want to kill them sure he had a dream so he got up went over there and dropped them down and killed these red ants and then there’s another one coming over he start jumping down then the second one he said you can do with these but you can’t do with this one he said all right if I can do it just bring him on over I’ll do the same thing so he does the same thing he Dr Trump these white ANS the white ones they’re coming over and there’s more coming over and there’s more coming over the third one then the fourth one he said he saw a big big water far as it can see they’ll be coming over so now today there’s a lot of white people and after that t pic CL and at that old man told T plan clues that you work with the white people you work with the white people and so they work with white people General kuster doing time of the of the battle of the Little Big Horn the crows they want to help him General kuster and general kuster he found that out he turned into to be a bad combat and after he does that and the papers hasn’t been arrived no telephone no no no Telegraph magusin no Q West either so so that day he got all his ranks back and everything and sent major Reno nearby the camp and he told him the the Indians told that we don’t want that man we want that yellow yellow one that yellow man not him so major Reno continues going into the big hor and so he so the crows there’s only 13 of them 13 of them at that day the camp crier told them that that morning the Morning Star came over the camp cry said that you crows if you’re amongst with that battle you’re going to have a u there’s seven of you going to have a bullet wound or Arrow wounds sure enough it is seven of them will got shot and they took him down to the m city and uh about a year later they brought him back they survived and so from then on uh the crows we never the reason why that they don’t fight with him because he had a the night before they’ve got a moonshine the Moonshine doesn’t asso associated with our power so that’s why we don’t battle with him anym or well time’s up yeah I think we’re uh think we’ll have that be our last question let’s thank uh Haywood big day for sharing Pro history and culture with us thank you thank you ladies and gentlemen and enjoy the Heat and feel free okay thank you Haywood and remember folks we do have program

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Gary Moulton on Lewis and Clark Documentary Evidence

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:55 +0000

30s um Dr Molton earned his PhD and his Ma at Oklahoma State University and then became assistant professor of history at Southwestern Oklahoma State University where he worked on the John Ross project um advertisement for editor of the Lewis and Clark journals for the University of Nebraska caught his eye and I was just talking to Gary’s lovely wife Bay and asking you know uh was it kind of interesting how he uh found out about the job you know you never know how things are going to turn out and I guess uh some of uh Gary’s grandchildren are very interested in that as well maybe he’ll share a little bit of that but here’s a quote from him when I first started this project I had no idea the breadth and depth of the material said reflecting on his hiring as editor for the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition I never en Vision 13 volumes or taking 20 years he remembers that he soon discovered the materials were so vast that his task seemed incomprehensible he admits feeling slightly panicked and my doctor caused me to take taxel for me the most exciting Moment In This research project came when I said Woo when I realized I could do it I was finished with the first volume and well into the second when I realized I can do this and and the person that wrote this said you know that must have been very similar to what Lewis and Clark felt when they first imagined their journey and then after they got their first couple of stops under their belt maybe their first tribal in 2001 Dr M was uh awarded the outstanding research and create creativity award from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln he’s a member of the Nebraska Lewis and Clark Bicentennial commission which still is in existence through 2007 and we’re very pleased that he’s working on that and he’s a scholar and Residence at the uh Missouri River Basin Leon Clark interpretive Center and I’m sure there’s many other things but one thing we know he is a friend of the mouth of the pl he’s been here before and I was very pleased that when um I asked him to speak with us tonight that he is approachable as he has always seemed to be that’s one thing that everybody says uh especially by the way U my girlfriend Dell that was great Dr Molton when you talked to her anyway and of course she was in tears when she first met you in Philadelphia when when she got to hold the journals that was a very special moment anyway without further Ado I will present to you Dr Gary M thank you very much uh I’m testing the equipment here uh can you hear me all right back there in very back thank you well I was sort of envious of the person who got the award for coming the farthest I told my table that Fay and I had amassed more miles than that today shopping in Omaha I’m not sure that we shouldn’t have gotten that we came over early and spent the whole day so Omaha is a big city that little candle Lincoln over there and it’s sort of we been looking up at the tall buildings all day and so it’s really great to be back here in Omaha remember standing right over there a few years ago and giving my talk I see some of you nodding uh in remembrance of that evening which means uh I’m going to have to think of a different talk because you may remember that one I came up with something fresh at least St it’s FR for you it’s a talk I’ve given a few times lately and it’s a way to sort of look back on the by Centennial from an academic point of view you know that’s where I come from and so that’s what moves me and uh gets my thought processes going and I’m here to tell you tonight about the three pillars that hold the Louis and Clark expedition together the documentary evidence that we have that makes the Lewis and Clark expedition so special part of the reason we’ve celebrated it in the B Centennial is because we have this abundance of documentary materials that shed light on what happened during the Expedition so we have journals kept by the two captains and foreign listed men we have m Ms of the Expedition gathered by Lewis before the trip and then made in the field by Clark as they traveled across the continent back and then maps that were made after the Expedition is sort of the grand result of the area that they had seen and we have Botanical specimens plants that were gathered by Lewis during the trip pressed between sheets of paper and hauled back and forth across the continent so these three pillars of the Louis and Clark expedition come down as our heritage from that trip I want to tell you tonight that these are living legacies of leis and the journals aren’t notebooks that are set on some shell Gathering dust and some uh archive that nobody knows knows about the Botanical specimens aren’t plants in the basement of some building being eaten Away by bugs and the maps aren’t simply wavy lines on sheets of paper that represent places that nobody knows about these materials are being actively used today by Scholars by enthusiasts such for yourself by people of all different sorts of interest and so I want to talk tonight about how these materials are being used by Scholars to enhance our notion and interest in the Louis and CLK Expedition and these are recent studies that have come about largely as a result of the interest that’s been generated by the by Centennial by Steven Ambrose’s book and Ken bur film my own Endeavors in editing the journals of Lewis and CLK April the 12th 1805 leis and Clark were just a few days out of Fort M where they winter during the uh winter of 180405 there north of bis Mark in North Dakota and now they had moved up the Missouri River a few miles and they stopped that day April the 12th 1805 at the mouth of the little Missouri River Louis and Clark wanted to take some astronomical observations you know the fix their spot on the earth and that would help of Clark’s mapping and just their knowledge of the terrain in general more I’m sure they stopped because the men were probably tired you know they had softened up over a winter of little physical activity and now they were spending five or six days pulling and pulling and pushing those boats against the Relentless current of the Missouri River so give them a chance to rest up maybe dry out some of their equipment and to reprovision the party and in that regard Lewis and Clark sent out 10 Hunters 10 Hunters were spread out over the terrain looking for food for the party we’ve heard a bit about that already this evening 10 men went out and they came back with only a single deal now a single deer is not nearly enough to feed a party of 33 working hand they needed much more than that listen to what leis said on one occasion we eat an immensity of meat it requires four deer an elk and a deer or one Buffalo to supply us plentifully for 24 hours a buffalo might yield 500 to 1,000 lb pounds of meat a deer only one quarter of that amount now part of Bob’s conversation here were about the nutritional needs the caloric needs of the party as they did their work across the continent there have been studies of that and I I knew of this when here that they run a little article in wpo about this uh matter and it’s very interesting been different studies and and French voyagers who did much the same work as Lewis and clarkman have been found to need 7,000 calories a day about what we had this evening for dinner I even without a dessert 7,000 calories a day I uh a few years ago had one of the Corn Husker football players in my class Carlos Pop you may remember that name on those behemoths on the cornar football team and I asked Carlos do you mind if I call the uh athletic office to see how many calories you’re eating today no no go ahead so I called the diet for the huser football team and I said how many calories does uh Carlos Pop eat during the high of football season they said most of our players like Carlos eat about 6,000 calories a day almost the same as leis and Clark then but they were probably twice the size Carlos vat three times the size of many of the members of the Party 10 Hunters went out they came back with a single de where were the Buffalo that day where was the meat that that party needed to keep them going and not have this caloric uh deficit that Bob talked about well the Buffalo stand Supreme in the vision of the world as the emblem of the American West for all the world the Buffalo stands as the symbol of the American West and Louis and Clark loved buffalo meat above any other meat that they ate elk deer whatever they could get was always the Buffalo they desired particularly uh several savored parts where the the tongue the hump the liver the intest these were the things they liked and the reason they liked them was because they were the fattiest parts and they provided the most calories and that’s what the men were after Lewis and Clark began to see great herds of buffalo very early in the trip on June 30th 1805 near Great FS Clark wrote that he saw 10,000 buffalo in a single sence Joseph White House at another time said I can without exagger ation say that I saw more Buffalo feeding at one time than all the animals I’d ever seen before in my lifetime put together finally Clark said I’m not going to enumerate Buffalo anymore there’re just too many and I’m seeing them too all but then on the way back after we got in Buffalo country again he said one more time I want to mention the number of Buffalo 20,000 buffalo in a single s incredible number the numbers of the buffalo on the Great Planes have been estimated have been anywhere from 30 to million Buffalo by Louis and Clark’s time had already retreated from occupying the Eastern parts of the United States and we’re now pushed onto the great plane the Great grasslands of North America where they thrived and increased in number 70 million is probably much too high in estimate and because of modern studies we pushed that number back to a more realistic 30 million still an incredible number of be so where were the buffalo on April the 12th 1805 some historical anal excuse me some historical ecologists have done some studies using Lewis and Clark’s Journal Paul Martin and Christin zuder of the University of Arizona have moved through Lewis and Clark journals looking at bison references and they said the reason they didn’t see any animals that day was because Lewis and Clark were in a game scene that is a drop off of Bison numbers a game s and they said within a few weeks they would enter a game park that is high numbers of Buffalo why is it a game s well Lewis and Clark understood why it was a game s they answered these Scholars questions themselves because they said we have noticed within the hunting range of Indians the numbers of game animals fall off and they were within the range of the hunting of the Manan and hota Indians their host over the winter and they would see camps that they had established for hunting purposes along the Missouri and so they knew that they were still within that range within two weeks Lewis would write the country abounds in animals and when they reached the mouth of the Yellowstone River at the border between North Dakota and Montana LS said there are so many animals we have to push them aside together through they were now in a game Park well if one side of the equation the game SN is answered by the hunting territory of Native Americans nearby how do we answer the other side the game Park where there are lots of numbers Paul Martin and Christine Zer have an answer they say it’s not only a game Park it’s a war zone a buffer zone it’s a contested area where Native Americans struggle for occupation but do not have the singular strength to control the territory themselves in other words this contested hunting grounds in the area that LS and Clark were entered were contested by a number of very aggressive tribes the Mand the Hadas the asins the crow the AA the black feet the shony all encircling this vast Preserve of Buffalo and the Buffalo Thrive there because the tribes could move in as hunting parties hunt briefly and aggressively and then rush out before they were set upon by their competitors so Louis and Clark were seen they were in a game Park and they too noted this phenomena in the same way they noted the phenomena of the game s they said we have noticed in the areas where nations are Waring that the game numbers go up so LS can Clark the astute observers that they were for noticing these things that is taken us a couple of hundred years to figure out and they were doing it on the ground moving very quickly as they crossed through this region they finally uh reached the area of the Three Forks of the Missouri in Chicago WEA the native woman who was with them the Shoni Indian woman whose territory they had now entered said when I was a child there used to be lots of Buffalo here uh but in recent years before I left this area the numbers had gone down and she said we can’t find animals anymore why is that well competition again between the Shon and the black feet for that hunting area on the way back they cross through here again Clark and his party going over to the yellow Zone they passed through the game sink there at the base of the Rockies and then went back into the game park again moved up the Yellowstone through that region and then out again into a game sink near the Mandan and theat Indians so Paul Martin and Christine zuder were able to make some very important observations about a phenomena of the Buffalo range and behavior and extent and numbers based on the journals of Lewis and cl very wether Lewis was a natural he had a naturalist inclination from earliest life in the little biographical sketch that Jefferson wrote uh of Lewis he talked about how as a boy he loved to go out into the for forest in the wilds and and go on Excursion for himself and and there he would study nature he like Jefferson had an inclination towards the plant life of the world you know Jefferson just always was gathering plants and studying them and trying to learn about their medicinal purposes and their ceremonial and ritualistic purposes among Native Americans and and LS either had this himself or captured it uh from uh Jefferson and carried it with him on the trip Lewis was the primary naturalist on the trip of the 239 plants that we have from the Expedition everyone but a single plant seems to have been gathered by Lewis he was the one who observed the plants who recorded who wrote about them who preserved them and then carried them back to Philadelphia where 99% of the plants remain today on the way up to Fort Mandan Lewis was gathering plants along the Missouri River and then as they left Fort Manden in April of 1805 he sent a shipment of goods back and you probably know know about these crates that he boxed up and everyone knows the wonderful story of the little mag pie and prairie dog that made it all the way back to Washington DC to Jefferson’s Montello but there were other items in these shipment Indian artifacts the geologic specimen and the plant specimens 60 plants that he had gathered on the way up the Missouri River to Fort man there 30 of those plants are lost we have no idea what happened to them we know they existed at one time because Lewis besides sending the plants sent a list of the plants and then a receiving agent in Philadelphia checked off each plant certifying that he had the whole lot that Lewis had sent we don’t know what happened but I’m going to speculate a moment that these 30 plants that were lost were probably plants that were familiar to scientists in the East you see it’s not a random 30 that are missing it’s the first 30 plants the first plant that we have in the ls and Clark herbarium is number 31 gathered in Burke County Nebraska on the edge of a new zone of ecology a new environmental Zone that is the the uh High Plains of North America where these drought tolerant species first began to appear so the the scientists in the East were probably going through the plant and say oh yeah I know that one I collected it in Mississippi I know that one I collected in North Carolina you know so they knew about some of these plants that Lewis was collecting up the Missouri River as a matter of fact the terrain up to Sous city was very similar to the terrain they were seeing all along the way and it finally reached a point where the high plains entered and the drought tolerant species took over and these species who demanded more water just couldn’t function any longer and died out so the first 30 plants may have just been discarded as being familiar to scientists in the East so we only have that second 30 but that’s more important because these are from a new environmental Zone and scientists would be interested in those and they left Fort Manan and they April 1805 Lewis began his collecting and preserving again and as he went across the continent he’s Gathering plants and preserving them between sheets of paper that are carefully pressed together and then he decided rather than to chance them over the Rocky Mountains he buried them in a cash at Great Falls Montana and left them there to pick up on his way back when he came back and opened that cash water had seeped in and destroyed all those plants the plants that we have then are primarily those from the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest that he had collected from that point on and the 30 plants from the brasket to North Dakota so the Great Plains is very much under represented in the collections of Ls and Clark what is the bulk of his plant collection are the plants from the Rocky Mountains in the Pacific Northwest but those are the most important because those are the ones that are unknown to scientists in the East and no those are the plants that they will want to see those plants today some 240 are mostly at the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia Mark te a chemist in Syracuse New York has been studying this plant collection what Marti is interested in are the plants providing a snapshot of environmental conditions at the time of their Gathering their Collective he studies the plants in a way that they hold a memory of what were the environmental and climactic conditions at the time of the Gathering when I was studying the plants myself getting them ready for the herbarium the volume that’s out here I went to Philadelphia made notes on them and we took photographs of them and identified them by their scien popular names and I did all this work and finished up the volume and went away and uh worked on the book and then I came back a few years later to do some check up on it and when I pulled out the sheets that had the specimen I noticed little holes little missing parts of the plant you know about the size of a Florida Chad and so I went went to the uh Bist the curator in charge and I said what’s happened to the plants here he said well Mark te is working on them he cuts out these little Chad siiz pieces and takes them back to his lab to study they’re not damaging of the plants greatly because mostly it’s leaves that are under side not visible out of the way and it’s very very small of gatherings from these plants so I talked to Mar to try to discover what sort of researches he was bringing to the plant uh collection here and I’m going to try to describe it to you in layman’s terms uh I don’t understand it fully uh so you may not understand it as fully as I do but that’s all right we can understand it from a sort of a neutral position here now we all know about carbon 14 you know that way of dating um items because they have a half life that carbon deteriorates at a known rate over time and so you can take a piece of wood or any sort of organic matter and T and Trace its age with some degree of accuracy but now Mark te is looking at organic substances or inorganic substances rather on these leaves that do not deteriorate over time that are steady that are stable isotopes and he scrapes the waxy surface of these leaves and looks at the results under a mic scope and when these plants are gathered you have a Time Zero snapshot of what they were like what was the oxygen in the air what were the other sort of environmental and climactic conditions at the time it was get and so now Marti can gather other plants modern plants do the same study and get a sense of how environmental conditions have affected plant life over time now we all know that fertilizers atmospheric conditions uh Industrial Waste and all of these things have had impacts on plant life and that’s what he’s trying to determine uh some plants have thrived and grown and spread because of this others have deteriorated and retreated from their former zones of activity so Mar is studying all this and using the Lewis and Clark plans that were preserved during the expedition to discover answers to these questions about the environmental changes at this point he’s not done the further study he simply determined that this sort of study is possible with these plants and that speaks to the the care that Lewis gave in collecting these plants and also the care that they’ve been given over the years that they are so carefully and well preserved today well if Lewis was the naturalist Clark was the MC maker he was the Cartographer on the trip of the 129 historic maps that are associated with the Expedition almost everyone has some direct or indirect connection with William Clark Clark uh had a a group of maps with him to begin with maps that were not of his own making but maps that were gathered by Lewis before the Expedition the maps as a whole for fall into three sort of categories and the first category is these pre-expedition Maps the maps that were gathered by Lewis before the trip he was going all over Washington to the Spanish and the French and the Russian embassies and saying uh could I use maps that you have of the West when he got to St Louis he met people there uh bird Traders and government officials from Spain who would also give him some maps that they had of the western territory these were sort of the maps in the glove compartment you know that he can pull out to look at what was expected to be before and Clark as they set out the winter across the river from St Louis waiting uh to start up River Clark would recopy many of these maps and try to bring the ACC cumulative knowledge onto single sheet or two to know what was going to be before them as a matter of fact these pre-expedition maps that they were gathering also included some maps of a Welsh a Welshman who had gone up to Missouri as far as the Manan Indians and his maps of the Missouri were excellent Maps as a matter of fact Lewis and Clark were not really seen new territory up to the mands because John Thomas Evans and the others had been up this grout many times and some of the boatmen that they had hired in St Louis said ah I wintered here last winter near the nishnabotna river and I hunted a few weeks here next to the pla so they knew this River up to the manand so Louis and Clark were not really treading new territory they had Maps they had journals of previous explorers and Traders and then we have that second group of maps maps made by Clark on the Tria root maps daytoday maps that Clark worked out along the river and the third set of maps were post expeditionary Maps where Clark br brought together the pre-expedition maps his root Maps plus the information he had gathered from Natives and from traders who told him about the territory to the north or south of their Ro farther east or uh off their line of March and so he Incorporated this a vast store of knowledge and data that he had accumulated into a great map of the West the map that would eventually be published in the 1814 edition of their book by Nicholas Bid And so that became the great map of the West and as a matter of fact that map published in 1814 was not supplemented until the 1850s was not really uh taken over so it was a grand map of the west but what I really want to talk about are Clark’s grot maps The Daily Maps he made along the way now if we respect lewiis for his naturalist and scientific abilities his Gathering of plants his descriptions of animals his astronomical observations then we have to put this same sort of respect for PL for his untiring efforts to match every mile of the trip the amount of work involved is incredible what he seemed to be doing and there’s no statement about his methodology but what he seemed to be doing is What’s called the back asthma method that is Clark would be standing at a point looking up River and he would see a bend in the river or prominent feature a rock a tree something that stood out and he would mark his spot where am I standing here what is the feature here and then he would move to the point ahead turn around and take a compass breing and then in his mind he would have to turn that 180° and write that course on a line on his sheet about the direction he had traveled if he had traveled Northeast he would ride it in this way the surveyor’s way of running North 45° East and he would write that to a point a bend in the river and then he would say traveled three miles because he used dead reckoning to determine the distance what is dead reckoning geing that’s what he was doing he was guessing how far he had traveled but he was a dead reckoner per Excellence he could uh note distances if today you would take some of his maps in Montana where the rivers of weavings have not changed you can lay those down over modern maps and they fit perfectly he was a genus of doing it we don’t know where he gained this knowledge and this ability but he was certainly a master of it so across the continent then he would develop these map he usually had a sheet of paper on which he had laid out a gridline square and these were usually uh 1 in squares he had laid out on his sheet and then he he uh he had a gaug of the scale of what the distance would be and it was usually about 6 mil to an end so if he said we traveled 3 mil North 45° East then he would draw a line halfway across the grid and start all over again for the next three milth the next mile and a half the next 3/4 of a mile 8,000 miles across the continent and back day by day the table that he established these course and distance tables go on page after page after pain an incredible amount of work with his compass and with his dead reckoning and with his perseverance and patience to get that done I admired Clark greatly he was not only leading the party doing the maps trecking the Journal under the most difficult circumstances it’s only been lately that we’ve had biographies of Clark we had all the agulation to Lewis with the biography by uh Steven Ambrose and then the film by Kim burns put Lewis at the Forefront but Clark’s a man to be greatly admired for his work on the Expedition well when he returned to St Louis in Philadelphia uh he gave these maps to the president um some of the maps went back with that uh supply of goods from Fort Mandan I can just see Jefferson laying the map of the Missouri out on the floor of the Great Hall of monello and crawling across the floor and working his way up to Missouri uh he was enthralled with Clark’s mapping these Maps then that we have of the Missouri River and that’s what I want to focus on here from St Louis to Fort Mandan are about 1,500 River miles now we know there were about 29 maps for that period because Jeffer Jefferson himself said um I uh have 29 half sheets of maps of the party and this was what he had received from Fort mam most of those are lost to us today just like the 30 plants are lost to us just like some of the journals from the Expedition are lost to us as a matter of fact from St Lewis to about Omaha Nebraska we have no original Maps from the Expedition what we have from Omaha to Fort Manan are copies of Clark’s original Maps we don’t even have uh the original maps by Clark for that period either all of those maps of the Missouri River up to Fort mandam are lost to it and probably will be forever lost to us searches through the national archives or appropriate depositors have not yielded of those Maps so what do we have from Omaha to Fort Mandan we have a a set of copies of maps made for Prince Max milon and where would they be Jos Ln art mus no Nebraska that is our single and most important uh part in connection with the Louis and Clark expedition Prince Max Mayan arrived in uh the United States to do his Grand Tour and study of the ethnology and and boty and zoology of the American West and wri his Grand book and when he reached St Louis he visited William Clark and Clark said let me give you a set of maps uh going up the Missouri River but that set begins at Omaha I think it’s such a coincidence that his Maps began at Omaha and that’s the very place where all his archives now reside what a coincidence the first map is numbered 13 in other words supposing that 12 went before well why didn’t he have the first 12 copies probably because by the time of Max Milan the highway the River Highway coming up to Omaha was a thoroughfare was a Turnpike you didn’t need maps to get on the river and go and everything will be apparent Beyond Omaha In 1832 became the Wilderness the unknown country it was where the American Aman Fur Company now had fewer posts and less involvement so he was giving him maps of the true Wilderness that he would enter and those Maps then reach the number 29 so they’re copies of maps that Jefferson had seen at one time that Clark had until the 1830s that are lost to us today so it’s a real sad story that we don’t have Clark’s original but we’re happy that because of Max M and because of the efforts of Johnson Art Museum uh to get these materials and I’m sure all of you from Omaha and Council Bluff know that incredible Story how the artwork of U Carl bobber and The Archives of Prince maxan were making a a tour of the United States in 1962 and the uh inter North Art Foundation decided to buy those materials and deposit it on loan to Jon and when Northern Natural Gas Company became inter North and left Omaha uh they Beque after some negotiations those materials to the Jon Art Museum and there’s where they reside today and then you probably know the unhappy story maybe you had stock in that of and you know that it became inran yes that’s sad but luckily they left this incredible art collection there Jon of the bodmer and the even more incredible uh Max me papers and just as an aside tomorrow uh at noon J Art Museum will be sending the first volume of the newly edited Max Million journals to University of Oklahoma press to start the publication process so we will be getting the Max Million Diaries here within the next few years beginning with volume one uh that takes him uh out to New Harmony Indiana and we’ll be seeing the eastern part of maxman so in years to come you can look forward to Max Millions Journal I call him son of Lewis and Clark being published and again Omaha I can be proud of their connection with this world few years ago a man I met in Vancouver Washington Martin Ponda told me about his efforts to reconstruct the maps of Lewis and Clark and he showed me some examples of his work and I was amazed at the beauty and the detail and the craftsmanship that Martin had brought to that work after he completed it in all he had three volumes numbering hundreds of maps showing the rout of Louis and Clark across the continent I want to talk about his first volume the volume that covers from campwood Illinois cross from St Louis up to the manance that 1,500 River miles that Clark mapped in sheets Martin plont mapped in sheets five times the detail of Clark now in Martin’s Maps volume one two and three across the continent and back and up I have to tell you that Martin died just a few years ago but he had completed the third volume and the Press had sent him the results of the third volume just before he died so he he came out with this work he completed this work a magnificent work it is before he died when Martin pondan started to work on this lower part of the Missouri he faced a problem the problem that I’ve already told you about there are no maps by Clark from Camp Wood to Omaha and from Omaha to theand Dan we have secondary maps by Max mil could he trust those well he had to because that’s all he had available but how did he reconstruct the river of Le and flar where he had no maps on the lower Missouri below Omar he had Clark’s course and distance riding north 45° East three miles to send in the river and he simply used those figures and those descriptions to reconstruct the river of Lewis and Clark he said I think I’ve done about as well as humanly possible well he probably has and it’s probably not truly the river of Lewis and Clark we’ll never know the the river of Lewis and Clark because of erors that creep into it because of difficulties and field conditions doing the work that Clark was doing poor instruments uh difficult uh field circumstances all these things drove it to increasing problems Clark sometimes would go ahead do his back asthma treating and forget to change it 180 degrees in his mind and have himself going back for you get up to Sous City and all of a sudden he takes off for Minnesota we don’t know why but uh what Martin had to do was resolve the difficulties of these errors and he simply did the best he could uh and it’s a beautiful piece of work if you don’t have any of those volumes or haven’t seen them I encourage you to get a look at them or purchase them uh the river uh of Lewis and Clark and Lewis and Clark terminology on the maps is in bold black Print so it’s easy to view and in the background in fainter lettering are modern circumstances the modern course the Missouri uh Omaha the cities the county lines the uh the airports all these things are drawn in so you get a sent of where you are as you move up to Missouri and across the continent well Martin has been criticized for some of his work uh again all the difficulties that Clark had were brought over into the work that Martin plon had to do but still I believe it’s a magnificent work and it gives us something to begin with so there we have journalists Botanical speci Maps of the Lewis and Clark expedition actively being used today by scientists Scholars Enthusiast of the Expedition so the living legacies of Lewis and Clark live on and I think that we’re just beginning that there are things that will continue to interest people from all sorts of discipline to return to Lewis and Clark each generation takes up and Clark and brings their own insights and circumstances of their time we’ve been fortunate to live in the bicentennial era and have a flood of new studies come to us but we don’t know where the next generation will find interest and um answers to questions about the Expedition so I’m going to be laying low for the uh triennial I don’t that but uh maybe some of you will be here but there will certainly be some people out there and they’ll be working on the Lewis and Clark expedition also and they’ll bring other studies to magnificent uh group of materials we have thank you again for inviting me okay we have some a little time for questions there um we have these these three legs of of scholarship here and I’m curious of your opinion about in the future particularly somebody told me that the only thing we have can learn now about leou and Clark is going to come from Indian oral histories and Indian perspective of of this what what’s your view of that and and what do you see in the future is that I mean as oral history is historian these oral histories count uh what’s the value in the future well I’ve had that question up uh several times before as a historian it’s difficult for me to comment on because the oral tradition is something I have’t worked with uh historians like documents they like the written word and that’s we we know how to evaluate and discriminate with the written word we have contesting words contrast contesting testimony and so we’re used to dealing with this and evaluating it and investigating it and we see the difficulties there with the oral testimony we’re just not as comfortable with it uh I’m not comfortable with it partly because I I can say this document is in error this document has flaws or prejudices but I can’t say to someone your grandmother lied to you so we have to be sensitive to oral Traditions I am not discounting it entirely I’m just saying there are difficulties with critiquing it with putting it under the same sort of very close examination that we would documentary evidence I think one thing good about the B Centennial is those stories have come forward I think the B Centennial has been very rich in its uh design to try to tap into Native American stories and we’ve seen that happen in a number of places and they’ve been reported and I think that’s good I don’t know how they will be used but maybe different sorts of Scholars know how to handle those materials better than I do and I hope that we can gain more information from that aome please start I think we own you to some exent so I hope you’ll ex me I think we’re curious as to what your life is like these days what are you doing personally with those par well uh personally I’m working with the maxan project I’m advisor on that project son of Ls Park you know they uh they thought maybe there’s a few miles left in the old guy yet so I’m doing that and very interesed it’s it’s a a fascinating project and I’m sure that you will be interested in it too as it comes out and then F and I are doing some traveling um we’ve had uh some Lucky Chances to do lots of traveling during the B Contin I’ve got these wonderful invitations like this not only to come here but go to great places all along the Lewis and CLK Trail so we have vowed that in the future we will travel where no member of the Lou Park Expedition we’ve been to those places so we’re doing some traveling and uh just enjoying retirement thank you for asking are you thinking of of doing any I do have person writing I do have one other uh Louis and Clark book that I’m doing and uh I will be working on that next year I hope to finish that up and what it is it’s a it’s a narrative of each day of the Expedition um you know I I did the full journals and then I did the a bridg journals so now what I want to do is a Louis and Clark day by day so each day of the trip I will write an entry telling what was happening with the expedition that day so you can either read the original journals or you can open that up and see in my words what was going on that’s where I’m working on there do you have any suggestions for out of the plat as a purposeful motivation for us to undertake well I’ll tell you you people have done so many different things that I’ve admired you know your ongoing studies these weekly things that Kira and other people like Bob have been engaged in and um certainly uh We’ve benefited from your help just uh giving us physical labor to the Lewis and Clark B Centennial commission I uh I pull up to some Lewis and Clark event I see all these people in blue t-shirts and I think it’s going to be okay you because we’ve got the help from MTH and the plat so uh the B Sentinal commission has certainly appreciated the volunteer efforts uh your enthusiasm for the commission events uh in Omaha Fort Atkinson PK and Braska City uh we certainly appreciate that so uh I would just say keep on keeping on and uh can I throw something in there commission we we just had a commission meeting last week and I got put on a committee to talk about doing an inventory of assets on the trail in Nebraska all a lot of the states are doing this now inventory of all the Wayside exhibits the historical signs the museum exhibits all this and there’s a lot of good information in things like Kira’s book and a lot of other books but uh there needs to be some some uh inventorying done and I’m on a committee um I’m going to talk with the park service and Suzanne and Dan and some other people here in the next couple weeks and I think out of that is going to come some some labor that is going to be needed in terms of inventorying uh sites along the the trail here so you might keep that in mind it was a project that uh might require some we’d asked for some assistance from the mouth of the class so dick do you think that’ be a good uh about January we’re going to to plan this out okay all right we’ll talk about that yes sir uh you mentioned the contributions both of Lewis and Clark U have you in all your time with this come up with who you think is say one of the other members the most important to the uh for the Expedition I know everybody’s got a different well it it it is hard um you know if you would ask Lewis and Clark I think they would have to name two or three people and and pretty much in their summary of the members of the party afterwards uh if you read what they said about the different members uh you get a very quick sense of who was most important to them George Jer you know uh the two field Brothers of of course were very important Ruben and Jose field um those those those three people have to stand at the top and I know we we give lots of attention and lots of space to sagia and to York and I think they would represent um a portion of our own thinking in our own time and they’ come forward because we are interested in a woman’s role an Indian woman’s role on the Expedition and we’re interested in a black man’s role on the Expedition because Clark had such problems after the Expedition with your so those two uh persons have come to the Forefront but immediately after the Expedition if you would ask leis or Clark they’ have probably said shield centuri and the field Brothers um so I think those those three people would would be very important and and that’s not overlooking some of the sergeants like gas who um printed his own journal like John orway the top Sergeant on the Expedition but in terms of getting everyday things done that is getting the party where they needed to go and getting enough Provisions in to feed them feed them each day you know those those three individuals R time one more question and then we okay can can you tell us exactly how many copies of these journals there are there’s been a report that there’s some down in the Missouri historical society and then some back uh the philosophical just how many copies are there well anybody

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Brain Tanning Hides: Cheyenne Traditional Methods

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:52 +0000

h he hey High Happ Hall I presenter Cheyenne flip and she’s going to be talking about brain tanning hides brain tanning hides and I’m going to hand it over to her thank you my Indian name is strong strong Medicine Woman and I’ve been learning this since I was a little girl but at that time I wasn’t paying attention I had to go to college and learn from another person and I like doing this because I like to finish products this is a buffalo hide that was killed up north at the buffalo ranch and it’s about a month old since it’s gone my when I finish it my younger brother is going to paint on it some of these products that you see up here are finished products this is a ALK hide in the chair it’s a commercial hide this is a nether hide that’s created into a dress so you can see some of the finished products that you can do with the hides when they’re done here’s a bag it you can hear it it’s loud and sound in the sound and it’s parch the moccasins the turtle when the babies are born the mother that’s carrying the child the sisters of her are her cousins the females will bead them for her make them for the child here’s a vest that I made 10 years ago and I beaded it I finally wore it the other day some um rabbit Furs because of the seasons you get the two different colors of it this is my brother’s bear he had to throw that in I didn’t have a bear hide now I usually ask the little girls how many of you have Barbie dolls they raise their hand how many of them the heads pop off they’re still they’re raising their hands this is my Barbie doll her head don’t pop off and she’s got real hair so a lot of times you see things you don’t really know and how they come about these knives are used for helping to tan the hides the moccasins here were given to me by an aunt 35 years ago when I was a Prince’s attendant to oil celebration the belt here is also made from leather I’ve kind of gotten modern and I’ve got a tool here that I created and made through the classes and I can show you how easy it is this is another bag that was made and you make your BTS from it I’m kind of I’m going to show you a little bit how I do this as I pull down all I’m going to do is scrape the meat the fat because that deteriorates it it’s fast easy and simple you could do it in the winter spring summer or fall as long as you get as long as you get the the meat and fat off then you work with this here stuff okay after you get all of this off the light fiber that will be on the floor I usually put a tarp down below to catch it moisten it the white fluffy stuff a little bit water roll it in a bowl when some of my things that need to be cleaned I turn around and scrape it and rub it off to get the dirt and stuff off now sometimes they get wet and really Saka I mean really hard all you do is wet it again work at it rub it off you can clean it back up again a lot of these things will last a long time if you take good care of them just like regular modern clothes so what I do is a brain one animal’s brain will take care of itself the tools that we use long time ago also came from the animals these are deer bones I like to collect them after the dogs chew it on them because they get the meat off of them for me take them if I have the meat and fat on it roll it on and pull it off fast and easy and then when a little bit later all you do is come back and rub on it and get the rest of the stuff off of it some people say it’s hard but you make it hard for yourself if you don’t do it the right way some of the finished products people ask I need some new leather for my kids’ leggings and moccasins I what I tell them is go ahead and kill a couple deer I’ll teach you how to tan them you’ll learn how you and your family and from there on someone else has learned oh thank you ready good afternoon welcome to the T of many voices our next presenter this afternoon is Raymond Ogle and he’s going to talk about about setting bold meeting and popler so I’m going to hand it over to him is this mic on Okay I uh got this I guess idea for this uh presentation a while back when U probably quite a while ago when I first started working for the forbeck tribes I was working for the I’ve been working for the tribes for about uh 30 years and uh a few years into that I was in my 20s maybe probably late 20s uh an elder of the of a tribe who was on the tribal council one day stopped me uh we were uh visiting in the break room and uh and as we were leaving he called my name and he said uh I want to I want to tell you something he said so I stopped and uh he said uh I want to tell you something that was passed down to me when I was a young man he said and I want to uh pass it on to somebody so I want to tell you about it and uh at that at that uh young age I was wondering wonder why he’s telling me you know is it real you know is it is it really something that he wants to tell me or is is he just pulling my leg and he goes uh I I said uh what is it and he said well I want to tell you about how some of our sue people got here on the four reservation and uh so then I I I started listening to him and he said um uh as Sitting Bull was passing through here to uh go on to Fort Buford and uh when he decided that you know he left Canada wood Mountain area and and uh they were starving up that way and and there was you know and they were really having a tough time and so I guess uh thinking of the children at that time he didn’t want to see his children suffer he he made up his mind that he was going going to uh do what the government wanted him to do which was to to give give up and turn himself in and so uh that’s what they were doing they were they traveled down through wood mountain and they came near here and uh I guess uh in doing this they he met with the other leaders of of the the camp and uh they wanted to you know discuss what what else they could do do and uh so during that discussion I guess uh they they considered other options there wasn’t very many back in there CU there back in those days because a lot of the game was gone you know the Buffalo they had hunted them near Extinction there was hardly anything left to eat uh they were being uh you know I guess hunted by the by the soldiers and and things like that and they were tired so he finally decided well we’re going to we’re going to give ourselves up and so on doing that they like I said they camped near here popper and they had the meeting and during that meeting he I guess he he in his wisdom he uh you know decided uh determine that maybe some of the his followers didn’t want to didn’t want to do what he was going to do you know and so he h he asked them you know in his meeting he he told them he said here’s what here’s what I plan to do you know H give myself up but if any of you people people don’t want to do that uh there was a camp nearby uh I don’t know how many miles away but but there was a camp there and he said uh that the people in that camp uh offered to you know provide uh or offered to accept you people to stay with them if uh if you decide you want to do that you know if you don’t want to give yourselves up like like he was planning to do and so um several of the families uh decided they wanted to do that and uh and so they they uh they kind of had to do it uh secretly that’s why they they wanted to mix in with the other group you know they I guess they didn’t trust the uh government as far as what was going to happen to them you know uh if they didn’t if they did if they did uh decide they didn’t want to go back so so uh in order to do that uh they just uh move their camps without uh you know trying to uh noticed and so they mixed in with the other group um so I guess that’s that’s what uh Gerald wanted to pass on down to me you know and uh I I I when I first when he first told me that I I was wondering what you know why did he want to tell me that you know but uh it it sign it finally kind of uh you know hit home that you know this this was a something that was told to him and this is the way that our history was was passed on from one generation to the next because we didn’t really have a way of you know uh a written type of a language we we there was records kept of certain events that uh they wanted to share um uh by pictures you know they they drew pictures on uh uh you know I guess uh bark and skins and bones and things like that they drew whatever they had to that they could draw picture on they if there was an event that they want to keep a record of then that’s what they did but as far as having any type of a written language the uh our our people didn’t do that so the only way that they kept uh uh Records is by passing it down from one from the one generation to the next and uh and I guess that’s one of the things that uh uh was something that our Native American people I guess had was good memories um I’ve heard that you know is that Native American people have good memories because of that they have to keep records in their minds you know and share them with other other members you know and uh so I guess that’s that’s I was I was kind of glad that this was shared with me you know and uh I plan to try to uh do something with this information uh um this is just the first time I’ve shared it publicly uh I’m I’m hoping that I can make a short story or play out of it one of these days uh and uh I think there is some historical significance to that information so that’s why I decided that I wanted to you know do this presentation at this time during the core here Discovery so that’s all I have to say does anybody have any questions for Raymond no want to thank you Raymond for coming and I hope you folks have a good afternoon we do Clos in 15 minutes so if you haven’t seen any of the other exhibits um feel free to go outside and see them there’s the kilbo there’s the exhibit tent the TP and a Dugout canoe as well as the National Guard thank you folks for coming and uh thank you for having us in popular Montana thanks

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Gloria Wells on Buffalo and Chippewa Spirituality

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

e good afternoon ladies and gentlemen how are you good you’re getting better as the day goes on you’re becoming more learned Scholars of Lewis and Clark are you not you are indeed and I see you’ve moved up for this next presenter just as I asked you to do that’s great did you find that windscreen microphone no all right if you find that little tiny windscreen I will give you a little loose Clark pin all right good so we’ lost little windscreen thing if you see a little spongy thing Beneath Your Feet around here just pick it up and give it to us okay so we are the core of Discovery 2 and uh we are traveling mobile exhibit and we travel the country telling the story of lwis and Clark and of course to do that we have some props we have a junior siiz kebo back there we have a wonderful uh Dugout canoe right over here and uh that is provided by the Bureau of Reclamation with with Steve Morehouse we also have a planes TP exhibit and we have a 35-minute audio tour and we have indigenous games provided by Harry Anderson back there so if you want to girls if you played the games yet please do uh they’re right back there you can scream and yell and hacky sack and have lots of fun so those are back there and we also have a free Art Exhibit right over here in building number two and that is uh photos and drawings of interpretation done by the children in the area about Louis and Clark as well here in the Tet Min voices this is where things get exciting because we have a dialog of different speakers and a variety of different people and they come from all over the country we have poets we have Scholars we have uh musicians we have dancers all interpreting their story of Lis and Clark and their perspective and coming up next we have Gloria Wells and she’s from the little shell band chipa she’s a cultural leader and she’s going to tell a story of Buffalo and their perspective let’s give a warm welcome to Gloria Wells thank you very much and I whoa that’s a little louder than what I had thought am I drowning you guys out okay well first of all I’d like to say welcome to the tent of many voices um I would like to thank you all for um being here and at this presentation and for um participating in such a historic event as this 200-year um I call it a celebration so I I thank you very much for coming and I want you to know that I’m very very very honored to be here as an Indian woman from the state of Montana I would also like to take just a minute to thank the the people who have put together produced the tent of many voices all along the Lewis and Clark Trail these the crew have have worked extremely hard in tearing down the equipment resetting it up tearing it down resetting it up but the thing that impr impressed me the most about what they’ve done is they’ve offered us native people an Avenue to voice our stories and that hasn’t been heard too much here in Montana so so I I thank them very much for that and hold them in high esteem my name is Gloria Wells and I am a member of the little shell band of Chipawa here in the state of Montana our band of Chipawa people are the most easterly tribe of chipas in the United States our Nations like many came from the Woodland Woodland I hate reading off from this I try to do this and I’m not going to do it I just can’t our people came from the Woodland Lakes area the the the Great Lakes Minnesota Wisconsin area as did many of the other nations the Sue Nation um many of them F came out here following the Buffalo herds because as they begin to become less and less and less on the Eastern bench they were pushed over to the western side much like our native people before I start to talk about the Buffalo I want to talk about two other things that are are very near and dear to my heart and the first one is Native American spirituality and and I will tell you about that and tell you how that ties into the use of the Buffalo um as as I go on the second thing I would like to give um honor to are the eight Nations that are here in the state of Montana and I for those of you who who are not aware um of the Indian nations I’d just like to give a a quick rundown of who they are and where they are and um while I don’t need a a a a cheat sheet to remember this I I bear with me we have the Flathead Nation that’s up in the Missoula area Salish coutney tribe and that would be the Northwestern part of the United States then if you come across along the Canadian borderline you run into the black feet Nation they’re right on the Canadian borderline it’s black feet in Montana it’s black foot in Canada uh of the black feet Nation there are the pigan and the Bloods then you come a little bit more East and you run into the rocky boys reservation which is Chip walk Cree they’re around the H box elder area as you go further east you run into um Fort peek and Fort bellnap um one being a grovont and the other being a cabin Sue they’re in the Hayes Lodge pole area and then over at the Fort peek Reservoir as you drop Southward you will run into the Crow Nation just about an hour south of Billings Crow um the crow people for the state of Montana they were the first reservation Indians for the state of Montana and their reservation stretched between Livingston and Gardner Montana that was the first Indian reservation in the state then next to the crow the United States government put their favorite friends the Northern Cheyenne who at that time were they were fighting enemies and and we believe now and then that that that was a part of the ploy I think they thought if they just put us all together we would annihilate one another and take care of the whole the whole issue but we didn’t do that and then we have my band the little shell band we are the only non-federally recognized tribe of Indians in the state of Montana in 1863 we owned 10 million acres of land that stretch from H Montana to the Minnesota North Dakota borderline I jokingly say when our chiefs were hunting in Lewistown which had not yet been founded um the United States government appointed four trustees Indian agents to oversee our people and to uh to present them with the food and the um uh the housing materials and uh the educational materials that they promised us if we would stay on the reserv um during the course of that um 3 Monon hunting trip the United States government appointed four Native America or non-indian trustees to be our Indian agents at um on at our land base during that time in 1863 the United States government made a treaty with the four Indian agents who were then taken care of the little shell band of chipa people those agents took 10 million Acres of our land and they sold it back to the United States government at 10 cents an acre the going rate was a125 to 425 an acre it’s called the 10-cent treaty so if you if you if you have a computer get on the computer and go Google the 10-cent treaty and you’ll come up with the the little shell history in 1863 one of Let’s see our 10 million acres of land was reduced to 7 square miles 7 square miles of land so that means over 5,500 Indian people were placed on 7 square miles of land one of the Indian agents at that time wrote a letter to the government to the president of the United States and said if you do not send Farming tools seeds herds of cattle you will see our prisons fill with Native people from this band because they will be forced to steal just to survive no truer words were ever spoken when I think about our ancestors and the struggle they must have had to have gone through in hunting in preparing food preparing shelter clothing all summer long just to enable them to survive during the winter my heart grows very very sad the first thing before I go into the Buffalo that I want to talk to you about along with the the tribes is some of the commonalities that we had as Indian nations because each Indian Nation stands alone stands separate a lot of people like to group us together but each individual nation has their own Traditions has their own way of spirituality has their own cultures that were passed down thousands and thousands of years there’s one common theme two actually that that that that I want to talk about today that are the very basis and the core of of our of our peoples the first thing that I would like to touch base on today is our traditional spirituality and I will show you how that ties into the buffalo in a short period of time one of the things that all the tribes that I have just described to you had in common was their traditional spirituality their traditional pipe carrying ceremonies their Sundance ceremonies the sweat lodge ceremonies those were carried on well after the reservation era a lot of the native people took the spiritual ceremonies like to call underground they had to hide them from the United States government because the government had come through and outlawed every one of them um while this is kind of a sobering uh sobering story and it is it’s it’s a tragedy however we were still able to through um through tenacious spirit and through the gift of Grandfather the spirit he gave us the will and the strength to keep those ceremonies going I I have a quick funny story that I want to interject because I want to bring a little bit of light and laughter to this but yet still tell the story um one of the ceremonies that we had traditionally and that most tribes had was called the keeping of the Soul ceremony and that means when an individual passed away their belongings all of their belongings were taken and they were put into a bundle um a hide whether it be an elk hide moose hide Buffalo hide their belongings were put into a bundle and they were rolled up and they were set on a tripod that faced East just three Lodge poles outside the camp outside the lodge of the individual whose family he belonged to the three tripods came out the bundle was placed on those tripods and for one year that bundle remained there it was kept there for our nation at the end of that year we had what you call it this the ceremony was called the keeping of the Soul ceremony and you had had one year to keep that Soul so to speak you could cry over that Soul you could weep you could grieve you cut your hair you went through the whole grieving process but at the end of that year you had to quit grieving so that individual who had passed could go on to the other side that that was it could not continue to cry for that individual you had to quit your grieving process and move on what a wonderful psychother y we had going on back then all right this is it this the end of the year you’ve got to quit now and you’ve got to move on what a wonderful way to handle death so when the United States government outlawed the keeping of the Soul ceremony have have any of you seen The Far Side uh cartoons Victor I I just think he could do such a wonderful job with that bringing an enforcement agent into the reservations saying all right I know you have some Souls around here don’t try to hide them from me I know you have them and it’s against the law but you can imagine how how silly it was how could they monitor something like that how could they you know so you kind of have to bring my opinion is that you have to bring light to some of that because we still kept our ceremonies we kept them ongoing and at the end of the year whether whether there was a an enforcement agent there or not we did release the soul Spirit to go to the other side our pipe ceremonies our Sundance ceremonies our sweat lodge ceremonies each and every one of them have been kept and continued on and I feel very blessed that we have that when I travel back East to the tribes in the Eastern from New York all the way down to Florida I go and I visit the reservation there and I speak to the people about their traditional ceremonies their traditional culture and I’ve asked I remember one band specifically the Chaka from down in Philadelphia Mississippi I I asked Chief Philip Martin I’d like to see some of your traditional regalia and much to my dismay they brought out cotton dresses with kind of can cans underneath and then I really realized just how blessed we are out here to still be living in TS to still be doing our ceremonies our dances and I just hope and pray that if you get one opportunity this year to go to a powow or go and meet native people learn a little bit about their culture just that one specific thing they don’t have that back East any longer we’re blessed because from the PLS on we’ve kept those ongo so with that in mind I I have to say that the Northern Plains and the pblos down south and the West Coast native people to me are farther advanced than the eastern coast native people who’ve lost the very core of of of what they’re about our spirituality has been the Saving Grace for our people and it remains so today we know that whenever there are issues or problems through the pipe ceremony if those problems are taken to the pipe then answers will come very soon they’ll come directly from Grandfather we believe there’s only one God and we all we all have that in common there is one book that I would like you to at least take a minute to look at it’s called Black Elk speaks Black Elk was a lotas sue Chief medicine man who knew absolutely no English but if you read his book he had to have an interpreter to put this book together if you read his book Black Elk speaks and you read Revelations from the Bible you will be amazed at how much our native spirituality coincides with the Bible now having read both and having grown from that and have having the light come on for me and saying look this is how we’re alike Black Elk talks about four directions north south east and west and four colors red white black and yellow isn’t that strange that this Indian man knew not one bit of English yet knew about the the four colors of the people of the world just like the Bible revelations talks about the four horsemen coming from four directions and the horses were red white black and yellow so one of my goals along the way is to try to help to educate myself as much as I can about the encounters that Lewis and Clark had but I also want to educate at others about what we’re doing right here right now today and and spirituality to me is the main gift that we’ve been given from God from Grandfather that’s the number one gift so if I can share a little bit of my spirituality with you then I will have I will be able to consider myself a great success even if I don’t get all to the Buffalo I can still consider that a great success my prayer goes something like this we use four different pieces of of plant life to burn to prey with we use sweet grass Sage Cedar and tobacco and our beliefs are that as we light that Sage or sweet grass that our prayers our words land on the smoke and and our prayers are carried Skyward to grandfather we call that process smudging many of the churches that are alive and running today use incense in the same manner that that we do so again look for the likenesses um with the spiritual ceremonies that we have passed on over the course of the years the Buffalo was the main animal mammal used in in the ceremonies the eagle was also held high very high in a steam but the Buffalo was our main main source of subsistence pre-columbia days many authors have quoted between 60 and 100 million Buffalo Roam this country by 1990 there were documented 750 Buffalo left some of them a large portion of them were at the Bronx Zoo I have a couple of uh pictures here that I uh want to hand out so that you um or just pass around so that you get an idea of exactly what transpired because it is so and I’ll and I will pass these around through the through the audience and as I’m speaking just go you can continue to um pass them on it’s a small picture I wish I would have blown it up so you could have gotten a better idea but this is this is Two Gentlemen Standing On Top of thousands and thousands and thousands of Buffalo skulls that were taken for the most part just for their tongues um at the same time period when when the Buffalo were being shot off the railroad cars over the many numerous wagons that came and and and only the hides and the were taken much of the meat was just left this was the same time period when our Indian people were being put on reservations so with that in mind I’ll just start over here and pass this picture around I think you’ll be amazed the Buffalo had for us many many uses too numerous for me to be able to uh um list them all off the top of my head so I did bring a little list here or at least I think I did of course we use the robes for clothing for winter count it was a way for us to uh write down our traditional history we use the the Hooves and the sizing the scraping from the hides for a glue that’s what we mixed our paints with the list goes on and on and I’d like to to to read some of this off to you because you just won’t believe how every part was used we’ve kind of put this in a somewhat of a chronological order for the hides of course it was used for The Lodges um paint bags pouches pipe bags dresses belts Lance covers leggings shirts breach cloth bedding winter robes cradles moccasin tops dolls C flag covers Quivers teepe covers gun cases the hair the hair of the Buffalo and and I’ll pass this around because I want you to see the different the hair mhm this is actually one side of a face of a buffalo short hair this is down around the shap of the leg on the top of the leg mhm the Buffalo hair was used for headdresses saddle pad filler pillows rope ornament in other words as you made a shirt you would hang Buffalo hair locks off from your your shirt halters they the the Buffalo hair was braided to make a complete Buffalo hair halter and and and Medicine bags the tail the tail it’s the Buffalo tail it was used as a medicine uh switch I got a kick out of this one a fly brush I don’t know thought that fly brush Lodge exterior decorations the old Buffalo hide tepes the Tails were left on so as the tepes were rounded around the top the Tails were left on it was such a beautiful site you’d start with one Lodge here the tail and then come around with three lodges in the Tails and and I was so blessed because I I’ve brain tanned many many Buffalo but I I I got to see on this core of Discovery in Great Falls one gentleman from the black feet Nation had the traditional Buffalo hide Lodge with all the taals on it and it was simply gorgeous it was just beautiful in the front of the lodge where the door came the two taals came and tied together it was just it was just a wonderful beautiful beautiful Lodge the hooves like I’ve told you um and I wanted I brought a couple different sizes because I wanted you to see just just the size of their foot deer hoof Buffalo huge aren’t they and you know what if there are questions along the way just just raise your hand if you have questions because I’ll go ahead I understand the word cover repat your question C flag CP okay traditionally an a Native American an Indian traditionally found more strength and prestige in his tribe if he counted coup on okay well much like our drum uh covers would have been or our par flesh would have been used as a suitcase it would have been like a suitcase covering or that would have been actually on the stick when when I think of a coup flag cover I think of those folding chairs that fit in a sack about this bigger around about this same difference it would have just been acoustic cover that would have covered the whole thing also most of our most of our ceremonial things um were kept wrapped up in bundles and those bundles were only opened once once a year to either add to or and there was a huge ceremony it was the bundle Opening Ceremonies so exactly that was it that’s exactly it good good good so you how long were you at Great Falls did you go good good yeah were they were you able to see anything down on the where they had the perau did you go down with the core good that Buffalo High Tepe was there yes yes it was that beautiful when you when we talk about this Buffalo High Lodge I I cannot express to you how extremely difficult it is to brain tan Buffalo hides let me tell you a little bit about about brain tanning just touch lightly on it how are we doing for time 15 minutes okay I’ll hurry uh brain tanning process every animal has enough brains to tanny’s own hide every hide is white it’s not this color this is a dyed commercial hide hide every hide is white about this color I brought two pieces of brain tan this is brain tan deer I wanted you to be able to feel the softness and feel what this is like the brains of the animal are used mixed up a buffalo horn used with oneir um of the horn being Buffalo fat poured in with the brains that conglomeration was mixed together after the Buffalo hide was rawh hided which is what this form is the hair has been taken off and it’s been fleshed you then take the brains and you rub it into this Raw Hide and I’ll and to feel just how thick and how heavy well and you can see what the Buffalo hide did when I made this drum and I didn’t give the tension all the way around the full the full the same uh amount of uh pressure it just took this Frame and warped it this is what we use the shields the the part of the back that we use the shields this hide was so thick it would uh deflect the arrows so I I wanted you to see this now the brains are rubbed into the Raw Hide like that and then left for a couple of days and then they are they are rubbed over a tree or anything sharp that would kind of give it a a little Edge or a little Edge that you could rub it across and soften it with that process is unbelievably hard 5 years ago south of Livingston I put together a buffalo TP encampment and and I thought I was going to do things the old way so I brought my trusty scrapers and I brought my um Buffalo leg bone scrapers and after the third day I said bring on the metal this is not working I can’t get this done it was extremely hard the Buffalo hides are so heavy when they’re wet that it’s very very difficult to pick them up most of them were cut down the middle and this was all women’s work then a beaded strip was added down the middle so the two halves could be sewn together whether that was hair on or hair off let me pass around a couple of things here this little soft one being deer hide brain tan deer hide this one being brain tan Buffalo hides this the smoke that you smell on this it was smoked to waterproof it we didn’t smoke things for color we smoked them to waterproof it so as you as you pass this around I’m sure you’ll be able to smell the Smoky smell of it dear Buffalo and then of course I’ll pass around a couple of these tools that that we used to to work on these sides with and I I’ll never do it again but at least you will have gotten an idea of of what we um what we used to to do this process I also wanted to pass around a couple of these Hammerheads because I wanted you to see the difference in this would have been a head smashed in hammerhead very heavy that means they would have actually used this just to Corral the Buffalo and then and smash their heads with these this would have been used as a war club but I wanted you to feel the difference in how hard that would have been too very heavy oh my good isn’t that something to to pick that up okay now let me finish off the horns the horns were used for cups fire carriers powder horns spoons ladles headdresses signals and toys the meat I have a problem with this one every part was eaten and I do have a little cartoon From The Far Side where this one little Indian is walking in front of four others and he said I’m not sure what this is but I think it’s the only part we didn’t eat but there was not a part we didn’t eat or utilize so every part was used um the skin of the hind leg that was used for the most part which would been something like this for the leggings that Go Wrap around the individual’s leg the rawh hide in the drum form everything containers clothing headdress food medicine bags Shields buckets moccasin soles rattles drums drumsticks splints cinches ropes belts bullet pouches Saddles horse masks Lance cases armbands quarts bull boats knife cases stups thongs and horse ornaments that Raw Hide was so important to us um if you didn’t get to go to the Great Falls uh show I am so sad that you didn’t I hope that you’ll be able to come out to Three Forks and and meet with the core of Discovery a couple of those members are actually um ancestors of the real Shannon that was playing Josh and the real Clark that was playing so if you if you can possibly get a chance to get out there and uh meet them I would love that they had quite a Time stretching that Buffalo hide over that iron cage that they brought up from uh St Louis in trying to make a buffalo bull boat it sank we still haven’t figured out where that was and that was part of the iron um any questions are there any questions if you have a question just raise your hand I’ll come to you I think you have a question did you not ma’am when when you said about the um The Rock was that carried all the time as as the tribes uh trial or were they left or I have to say that as far as as as many arrow heads and hammerheads as we have found out in the Missouri River breakes area they they I don’t think they left them behind on purpose and because I cannot imagine working so hard to nap an arrowhead or or fashioning a hammerhead such as these and then leaving them behind I think they were you I think that they were lost in battle or lost in in in utilizing them for the buffalo hunt or for the deer hunt or elk or whatever it was but I don’t think that they left them behind we did however leave a prayer behind for every animal that was taken there was always tobacco or sweet grass or Cedar Sage something left behind back to the Earth to give thanks for for the Buffalo so as far as the tools go I wouldn’t think that they they would have wanted to left leave those behind there’s another question over here do you know anything about the panop Scott Indians from Maine I do wonderful I do are you a panop Scot no my husband is a descended from them and we’re curious about that tribe well I have to tell you I I I have been traveling back to the east coast and in doing so they have an organization called United South and East tribes and what they they are second in line to the National Congress of the American Indian they are a group of the most economic developed nations in in the United States um they come from Maine I have a friend who is a um he is the University of Maine Native American studies Professor I can give you his name after this and your husband can get in contact with John be Mitchell and learn all about your people good for you absolutely absolutely I I I would encourage everyone I don’t care what nationality you are go back and do that Alex Haley thing find your RS find out exactly what you’re about where you come from and and what your culture is about question over here um do you know about the North Carolina Cherokee a some there are many nations of Cherokees yes there are yes I’m I’m about an eighth North Carolina Cherokee and my father uh was a forehand Cherokee name I don’t have enough in me to really you know claim a lot but it’s I I just love this because I see people in the crowd who in in Montana I grew up here and so I just love it that you are honoring your native side because for so many years our our families were told not to tell you know I don’t see how you could not tell I’m not an Indian I I don’t think I could get away with it but but many of our people were told to keep quiet about it claim Italian claim anything else other than Native American spirituality so I I it just makes my heart sing to see um the people wanting to to get back to where they’re from good for you find out about it I’m originally from Oklahoma but I know of some yuchi the yuchi tribe there but I don’t know where they originated do you I have you heard of them I don’t but I bet I can put you in touch with the p patami Nation there and M root Nikki is the tribal chairwoman and she will help you in any way shape or form that she can she can to help you find your your people good for you good got a question over here I was going to ask you about the pamies um I believe that was my where my grandmother came from and you mentioned people keeping quiet her mother had died and she was the oldest of seven children so she was helping her father who was a white man raise these children and when I would later in years when I would ask her about this Indian ancestry she’d say sh that’s exactly it she was afraid at that time when her mother died that they would be put on reservations or split up the family do you know about the pamies I do and also you mentioned something at Three Forks will you tell us the date on that um Three Forks the core of Discovery will be set up at Three Forks help me on this one I think for the next 3 days then pardon me they’re coming back though so they’ve already set up there went back to the gates towns and and then they’ll be back toward the end of the week there will be a person an individual here with a schedule that that can tell you but I know we’ll be back over there I think they’re going to be back at Three Forks tomorrow afternoon at the Headwater we can find out can’t we we have a we may have a schedule I don’t know how detailed it is the front desk but it may not be up to the moment um they may have a website too right and you can go on there and find out exactly where they’re at yes can you speak your native language I cannot that is one of the many things that we lost when our tribe was taken away however um Henry Anderson who’s over here at the traditional games he can speak our native language and we have been able to preserve that as well as the other Seven Nations in the in the state here thank goodness we’re very blessed yes you mentioned the PAB Scot how about the nipmuck out of Massachusetts I haven’t heard of that but again I can put you I can put anyone in touch with any of the tribes back East through United South and Eastern tribes their their huge conference people they know those tribes back East they know them very well it was it was a little difficult for me to go back there because because there were so many nations that I hadn’t heard of to think there’s 575 federally recognized Indian nations right here in the United States there has been 280 that have been completely annihilated and there’s 270 that are waiting to regain their Federal recognition those are approxim why were the little shell people denied recognition well um there were so many issues behind that uh first of all that you know the horrible thing about that when that 10-cent treaty happened with our people that money Gail Norton still has that money in her bank account that was in 1863 in 19 1964 it’s it drew for a 100 years 101 years it drew 0% interest zero in 1964 our money began to draw 4% interest when the going rate was like 11 or 12% and why did let’s see why aren’t we getting recognized they wanted us to prove that we were an entity inside of a community and so we when the Anthropologist came up to help us with our re Federal recognition she was from Cal State um Long Beach she came up we went to L we traveled to Lewistown to but to Great Falls Hill 57 we traveled to uh H 25 of our family heads got to join the rocky boy that’s how it became chipa Cree as opposed to just cre for the rocky boys we had to show we had to we had to gather all of this material and prove to them that even though we were out here living in the non-indian community that we were still a community within ourselves so that meant going back for school records and on and I think the funniest thing I found was um the 1902 marah County census because Mar County at that time it wasn’t Fergus County it was Mar County so they came up with a 1902 um Mar County census and and this just I was so pleased to find this but I I found such humor in it again the United States Government Federal Government wanted us to prove that we were an entity within in an entity and when we found the 1902 Half Breed census I went yes that means they didn’t even count us but now I finally figured out where that one little two little three little Indian thing came from I have that one down pat now excuse me we’re having to go and it was those kinds of documents we had a half breed School in ltown that just Indians went to we you know we had to come we had to go back through all these historical records and come up with all this information and resubmit it to our uh to um um the department of interior for a federal recognition I think we’re going to get it I do I I know the tribes back East are pulling for us very very much I I I have some issues regarding some of the management of our Native American Funds through the department of interior and and and our own management much like I have issues with what our president is doing with our funds it’s just on a bigger level with him I do I I don’t ever want to create and we’ve been one of the legislators from the area that I live in was quoted as saying we don’t want to give those Indians their Federal recognition because if we do they will just create another ghetto likee atmosphere and a Welfare Society well I own a few houses in this state and I don’t think that um I will would ever move to a piece of land that the United States government gave me back for land that they had taken you know a 100 years ago 150 years ago I I would never personally do that I would like to see a land base happen for us for one purpose well actually two culture and education those two things culture culture and education how many there’s over 5,000 of us enrolled and another 4,000 waiting to be enrolled so we’re there there are lot of us maybe really don’t have time it’s almost 10 to so um there but let’s give a wonderful thank you more questions for Gloria I’m sure you could answer a few in the back over there after you yeah good all right and uh basically we have more speakers coming up uh from NASA and he’s going to be uh stuff with satellites and uh GPS findings kind of like going along the locen Clark Trail but doing it through satellite so it’s really wonderful stuff it’s kind of fascinating 4:00 and we’ll up until 8 o’clock so other exhibits in the area

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