Cultural Heritage Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Le Prisonnier de Ste. Helene and L’hirondelle (Pashia Family Papers)

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:47:49 +0000

English Translation

The Prisoner of St. Helena
(Pashia Family Papers variant)

Why run from me flying swallow
Ah! Come fly close to me
Why flee me when my voice calls you
Am I not a traveler like you (bis)

Maybe alas the places that saw you born
A cruel fate removes you as well as me
Come lodge your bed under my window
Am I not exiled like you (bis)

In this desert fate gathers us
Do not fear to stay there with me
If you moan we will moan together
Am I not exiled like you (bis)

When the spring will give you your smile back
You will leave my shelter and myself
You will fly to the land of the zephyr
Can I not sadly fly there like you

You will see again your first homeland
The first nest of your loves and myself
A cruel fate confines me here, my life
Don’t I have a right more to complain than you

—

The Swallow
To Mademoiselle de Vincy
(as published in Les Confidences, by Alphonse de Lamartine)

Why run from me flying swallow
Come rest your wing next to me
Why flee me? A heart is calling you
Am I not a traveler like you?

In this desert, fate gathers us
Go; do not fear to stay there with me
If you moan, we will moan together
Am I not isolated like you?

Maybe, alas! From the roof that saw you born
A cruel fate removes you as well as me
Come take shelter in my window
Am I not exiled like you?

Do you need wool for the layer
Of your little ones shivering near me?
I will warm their sleeping bag under my mouth
Have I not seen my mother like you?

Do you see there, on the shore of France
This loved threshold that is opened for me
Val carry the branch of hope
Am I not her bird like you?

Do not pity me Oh the tyranny
From my country close the threshold for me
To regain the banished freedom
Do we not have our skies like you?

Original French Text

Le prisonnier de Ste. Helene
(Pashia Family Papers variant)

Pourquoi me fuir passagère hirondelle
Ah ! viens fixer ton vol au pres de moi
Pourquoi me fuir lorsque ma voix t’appelle
Ne suis-je pas voyageur comme toi – (bis)

Peut-être hélas des lieux qui tant vu naitre
Un sort cruel t’éloigne ainsi que moi
Viens déposer ton nid sous ma fenêtre
Ne suis-je pas exilé comme toi (bis)

Dans ce désert le destin nous rassemble
la ne crains pas d’y rester avec moi
Si tu gémis nous gémiront ensemble
Ne suis-je pas exilé comme toi (bis)

Quand le printemps reviendra te sourire
Tu quitteras et mon exile et moi
Tu voleras au pays du zéphire
Ne suis-je hélas y voler comme toi

Tu reverras ta première patrie
Le premier nid de tes amours et moi
Un sort cruel confine ici, ma vie
Ne suis-je pas plus à plaindre que toi

—

L’hirondelle
A Mademoiselle de Vincy
(as published in Les Confidences, by Alphonse de Lamartine)

Pourquoi me fuir, passagère hirondelle ?
Viens reposer ton aile auprès de moi.
Pourquoi me fuir ? c’est un cœur qui t’appelle
Ne suis-je pas voyageur comme toi ?

Dans ce désert le destin nous rassemble.
Va, ne crains pas d’y nicher près de moi.
Si tu gémis, nous gémirons ensemble.
Ne suis-je pas isolé comme toi ?

Peut-être, hélas ! du toit qui t’a vu naître,
Un sort cruel te chasse ainsi que moi ;
Viens t’abriter au mur de ma fenêtre.
Ne suis-je pas exilé comme toi ?

As-tu besoin de laine pour la couche
De tes petits frissonnant près de moi ?
J’échaufferai leur duvet sous ma bouche.
N’ai-je pas vu ma mère comme toi ?

Vois-tu là-bas, sur la rive de France,
Ce seuil aimé qui s’est ouvert pour moi ?
Val portes-y le rameau d’espérance.
Ne suis-je pas son oiseau comme toi ?

Ne me plains pas Ahi si la tyrannie
De mon pays ferme le seuil pour moi,
Pour retrouver la liberté bannie,
N’avons-nous pas notre ciel comme toi ?

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Coyote Creek Drum Group: Native music and drumming

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:09 +0000

A recording from the Tent of Many Voices collection.

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Mike Ayel on Cowlitz History and Lewis & Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:09 +0000

oh you’re so quiet and timid we got to get you together get you focused we’re going to have a speaker so we I get ready so everybody hands on your knees eyes forward 1 2 3 good morning boys and girls good morning all right good morning good to see you glad you can be here you are now the tense of many voices and this is called core Discovery 2 and we are traveling National mobile exhibit we’ve been traveling all over the country we’ve seen so many places since we started out we started out in the year 2003 in the home of Thomas Jefferson in monachello in Virginia and we’ve been traveling all the way across the country and we finally reached the ocean and next year we’ll be coming all the way back and we’ll end up in St Louis that’s where Louis and Clark were 200 years ago and we’ll finish up there in September 23 2006 now here in this Mobile T what we do is we have a lot of presenters and speakers they come from all over the country to tell their story and interpretation of lwis and Clark we have native presenters such as singers and dancers and Poets we have Scholars people that have studied lisis and Clark they take the old um journals and they research them every day and they look at them so we have a lot of different people that come to this tent and tell the story of Louis and Clark so here today we have a special presenter we have Mike iel he’s a director of Natural Resources Council for the CIS tribe he’s also the vice chair of the tribal council so let’s give a nice warm welcome put your hands together for Mike AEL good morning good morning uh going to tell you some things you probably know and some stuff you don’t know uh first start out by welcoming you to ket’s Country um some of you may not be aware but before after it was CET country you are in Prince rubberland you didn’t know that one yeah Prince rubberland you’re part of Great Britain right here you’re in you’re you’re English now and then later on this would become part of Oregon over there except this was part of Oregon too and later on after that it would become Washington territory a part of Nebraska so in just a few moments we’ve gone from England to Oregon to Nebraska we’re back to Washington he didn’t even feel like you moved so anyway I’ll start out with a little bit of History uh in 1827 Governor Simpson said skena track runs from off the pet sound and Strikes the Colombia near point bellw skena was the college Chief and skena was the high chief cic were a little unusual in that we had 20,000 people many different villages with one Chief one high chief and that was skena he was my great great grandfather uh later on Governor Stevens would call skena track the C Trail and so you’re at the southern end of this the cets trail we were Traders we we like to trade uh our money in a long time ago was a special little shell called the dent talum and that little shell was also called hiqua and that was our money and it was exchanged in in what they called a fathom which was like 3 ft long and a fathom of the large shells was worth a huge amount of money and we know that that those little shells had great value because in South Dakota which is over over here right in here clear over there they had our dentum shells and we know that because the spiral flute D taum shell comes from only one place in the world and it’s right up the map right here on the Northern point of Vancouver Island and the queen Charlottes it’s the only place in the world that little shell comes from and I’ve talked to people from uh Connecticut that tell me that they have Den talum shells there as well so Vancouver was a trading post hundreds if not thousands of years before Lewis and Clark got here when Lewis and Clark came here they said said that this was a Marketplace equal to any in the world they saw people with sailor suits rifles pistols metal pots all things that they’ got from Europeans when Lewis and Clark came down the river and one of the big things that I have to laugh at my ancestors is we didn’t pick up on the significance of a boat loaded tour us coming down the river we’d seen people come up the river but we never realized anything important would be from somebody coming down the river so when you look at the map you see that me they came from here we’d seen people come from the ocean but we didn’t realize that they came from the other ocean too and that’s something that we didn’t realize so we’ll move on uh we traded and we traded from Canada down to California and in to the mountains of Idaho that’s how far we traveled uh I know that leis and Clark never met my ancestors because skena and all his sons were were large tall men for the time they were all over 6 foot tall Captain Clark was a very tall man he was 6ot and he would have noticed if there were tall indans there so I know that he didn’t meet them because our uh tribal history said that skena was away in business in in Canada when Louis and Clark came through so we know that that that those people didn’t meet with them so now I need to to talk about what did we eat well we ate salmon we had deer elk wapo Camas and berries and we would the fish came to us it was pretty neat setup really we grew the the the cus and the wapo and uh we would go to the mountains and pick the berries our tribe had a a special arrangement with the akamas we would trade salmon on the cetz river for berries on Mount Adams which today it seems kind of funny but at the time salmon were almost as common of sand on the beach and we could get berries for those salmon so uh and we had berries and we were able to preserve our food something that Louis and Clark couldn’t do you guys know that uh were Louis and Clark really hungry when they got hairs anybody know that yeah they were starving all the time they got here because they didn’t have the ability to preserve their food we preserved our food and we were able to do it better than than they would and uh as a result when they come into our villages we were able to serve them meals and we gave them berries we gave them berries in November and December like right now we were able to go and pull them out of the cupboard and there was some nice fresh you know berries that we could serve up for our guests so that was that was how we what we ate and that was how we preserved our food we had large houses some of the houses were huge they’re like modern apartment houses the uh large bigger uh plank houses were 200 ft long that’s almost as big as a football field and inside those houses there’d be partitions to where there would be each family would live inside the house just like an apartment house today and some of those houses were called plank houses and some were called long houses it just depended on where you lived but they were made out of boards and they were easily bigger than this tent and uh they were warm and comfortable houses so I already posed a question did we meet with Lewis and Clark and the answer is Maybe uh Lewis and Clark called us scutes which when you say callets and scutes uh it could well be uh because it’s really important to know that that the way we set our words the pronunciation of of Indian words was impossible for the Europeans and the Europeans their words were impossible for us to say so we had this case to where we couldn’t communicate so we had to guess and Lois and Clark called us scutes they called us huel and ketc now ketc means place of the cets and place of the cets is right here on the CET River and the Lewis River and along the Columbia River now for a very very long time I had read and I’d studied and i’ i’ even seen that one of the the great historians had misunderstood kitc he thought it meant River of the Kitz but once you understand that kitc means a place of the CET then it can be applied to more than one River and uh Lewis and Clark said of us we hear they are numerous they said that a couple different times and how numerous were we we were one of the biggest tribes in the Northwest we were 20,000 and uh we look right here see off the Puget Sound is Olympia and down here to point bellw is the Confluence of the wamit in the Columbia so we lived between Olympia and Portland and out to the West we lived out to Modern Raymond down through the wipa hills to the Columbia and then back up the the Columbia River to the Wind River and up the Cascades up to mount reineer and then over to Olympia it was a huge area we were a very large tribe and we had a huge amount of area so that’s that’s who we were that’s where we lived after Lewis and Clark the fur Traders came and our his our history said that our chief went to Fort George and Fort George is down right here by the mouth of the Columbia we call it asoria today and our chief went to the to the fur Traders and said I don’t like traveling this far can you move your your Trading Post closer to home and the Trading Post closer to home is here so the reason that Vancouver is here is because our chief went to Fort George and asked the fur traders to relocate closer to home and that closer to home became Vancouver so that’s that’s our connection with this area and after the fur Traders came then the settlers moved in and there were Indian Wars and during the Indian Wars our people joined the army my name my first name is Francis and I was I took me a long time to get used to that name and then I found out that that my first name is really someone else’s last name because my great-grandfather served with a lieutenant Francis in the Indian Wars and that name came into the family and he named his son my grandfather and then my father had the name and now me so I my first name is actually somebody else’s last name after the Indian Wars we we resisted signing a treaty after we had fought the wars the settler or the the United States wanted us to go live on the reservation and turn in our guns and go live with the people that we just defeated we didn’t think that’d be a good idea so we told them no and then at a later date we decided we’re going to have to to struggle for a recognition and prove who we are and we had a chief his name was atan stockham and he was appointed Chief by Lieutenant ulyses Grant and just right over here is Grant house and uh ulyses Grant made Antoine stockham the chief of the colge and atan started the the fight for recognition and 150 years later we finished that fight for recognition and we we were granted status that’s special to us it’s called acknowledged it means we knew you were here but now we understand that you really are the cat’s people and that was our history up to now so what do we do today well I’m director of Natural Resources Department today I have two dams in Rel lensing one on the callets one on the Lewis we’re working on salmon tracking on the toodle River and uh I’ve got biologists working for me that are checking gear for chronic wasting disease we’re checking Goose populations for their health we’re working to uh restore salmon passages to different areas and uh we’re working to protect cultural resources right here this bridge that’s if you could look out and see it just right you’d see there’s a bridge across the Columbia River that’s going to be replaced and when that’s replaced it’s going to disrupt a whole bunch of of uh surface and under that surface because people lived here for maybe 10,000 years there will be the the graves of of people so that’s things that we do so if anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer it if you have a question what I do is I come to you after you raise your hand and then you ask the question and everyone can hear it so go ahead raise your hand if you have a question for Mike clat of people were did did they who was their last Chief or who was the courage I don’t know the name of the last chief of the classup but I can tell you that uh the classup people came up here and traded and if you this is an assignment for the teachers now you read the Molton Lois and Clark Journal set in book six and book seven and in book Seven it explains the role of the classup and the scutes and I’ll use the more modern map though the clups live down here the clups were intermediaries between the people on the the Upper Valley and the Lower Valley and so when Lewis and Clark said the Chinooks have been at war with the scales and the scal the Chinooks are not allowed above the war kayaks the clups were free to come up here the shinook weren’t the clups came up traded took the goods back down to the shinuk and the shinuk would give them goods and the clups would take them back and so that’s the role of the clups any other questions more questions okay let’s go back here what is your question are science are scientists still working on the project to find um where Lu and Clark are or where they also went are scientists still working on the project to find where L and Clark um also went uh I think we know where they went but I uh I know that uh one of the people in the Park Service Doug Wilson is out at Fort classup today and they’re working to find out all of the information they can at the the site of the fort classic to find out how long they were there and and what they ate while they were there and other things like that any more questions we got one back here all right good have you been able to preserve your native language and do you personally speak anything other than English uh I don’t speak anything other than English um I was probably the worst student on the planet so I always tell people English is my only foreign language but uh not me but other people in our tribe are preserving our Salish language the Kat had two languages the Salish we shared with the shahis the two languages are almost identical and the sahaptin we shared with the yakas in fact all of the yakam or the sahaptin speakers when they came here they were called click itats and click attat is really means sahap speaker we have a question over here I will come over here to you and you can tell your question how do you know that they used it all the stuff that you have here how do they know that they use what all the stuff that’s here all the Stu it’s here you mean like here on the table out there you mean like uh salmon and and Cedar that type of thing I I can tell you that Lois and Clark took really good notes and when you read those journals uh teachers it’s book six and book seven and then maybe one of the neatest one is the one that nobody knows about and that’s the White House journals does any of the teachers know about the White House journals raise your hand okay Joseph White House was a private with Lewis and Clark and Joseph sometimes he had Duty and he was gathering firewood and peeling potatoes and doing Army things but other days Joseph had some free time and when Joseph wrote Joseph was one of the only Journal keeper to write active entries so Joseph’s entries were written as they occurred everybody else wrote their entries they took notes and then they recreated them years later so sometimes on the days Joseph was free he gives us the best picture of everything and that’s book 11 and for you guys to study the journals the easiest and best way is to pick the date so like we would just say November 28th 1805 and go back and look and find out what happened any other questions question over let’s go it over here did any of the uh Eastern Oregon Indian tribes like the ellos and the caus did they were they involved in any of the trading down here oh absolutely uh the word Shoni in jargon means person from the interior so we know that people from Idaho came here we know that uh people from California came here and traded and we know that the uh well at least I’ve been studying it I believe there’s a people called wakan Nish Waki and I believe wanas SE and those are people called nutkin from the northern tip of Vancouver Island and those people were here all right we have uh time for maybe one more question let’s go over here how do you how do you know uh where Lis and Clark is bed how do you know where Lu and Clark are buried well um I think it’s written in in a history book uh Lewis is buried and I don’t know where somewhere down South Tennessee Tennessee yeah just Trail they see and then Clark lived a long happy life and died a very old man so they and and he he he wrote down a lot of stories and I think he I don’t know where he’s buried but St Louis St Louis Missouri right I I think it’s time for us to go but we got one more question if somebody’s ready let’s have one more question from this young man right over here go ahead do you do you think or know if leis and Clark pass through this spot where this T of voes is that do you think or no if leis and Clark passed where this spot is right here I think it’s really quite likely that yes they did pass by here uh the only thing is is on the way down I think they stopped on the airport side I don’t think they stopped on this side of the river so but on the way back they spent a couple days here because uh they sent a scouting party up the wamit river so uh they’ve certainly looked at this place if they didn’t stand here all right let’s give a nice big round of applause for Mike iel

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Patricia Allen on Living from the Land: Seasonal Harvests and Ceremonies

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:09 +0000

good morning I am I would like to introduce you welcome you to the core Discovery 2 we are doing by land what Lewis and Clark were able to do by water which is to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail this is a commemoration of by Centennial and so true to 1806 whenever Louis and park were making a hasty return to St l Louis so are we we’ve got about 6 months and we’ll be back in St Louis this September every town that we go to we get local presenters to come in and speak in the T of many voices where you are right now and so this morning I would like to introduce you to Patricia Allen she’s a member of the culture committee for the grand Federated tribes of grand Ron and this morning she’s going to talk to you about living off of the land so if you all please give Patricia a warm welcome we’ll get started thank you um I’m uh great grandma grandma and aunt and I was raised customarily traditional all my life where I was um when I was very small but the title of my um talk here is living off the land and what I’m going to talk about is um how I was learned this and um I learned from my grandma who was a tribal member from Grand Brown her name is uh calling for war Johnson who is uh who lived to be 94 in comparison with my great grandfather John machino who was a clamus my grandmother was of the umaro uh descent so um I want to talk about these things because of the reasoning you know we have seasons for all the harvests that uh We Gather which now we’re um we’re going to be into the salmon season the root season and all the Camas and uh these Seasons before we even start doing these Seasons we have a ceremony which will be happening April 23rd uh the harvesting of these foods are the medicinal purposes of our body to survive we have a blessing ceremony thanking the Creator for our survivals uh Ena us also to find these Foods uh we than um we we ask for the safe journey because we had tra we travel a long ways for these we go to the um waters for the salmon we go into the Earth uh into the lands the flat lands for the roots the canas which will we’re going to be harvesting here in um a week or two and um I want to talk about the foods uh the seasons that uh we get these foods which starts with the spring and that’s a season uh where uh We Gather our fish and the Camas and the um many other uh Seafoods that we’re going to served during this ceremony that we’re having um we also have some um berries and meats that we serve and when we do the servings um because I’m a uh I was taught to cook in a long housee and prepare these Foods also to preserve them uh it you know it takes a great step to do these things they’re each done with a lot of time time and effort um which is uh you have a mentor who is teaching you at all times guiding you through these different walks um the salmon in the first in the spring we uh we catch the salmon and then we proceed to um cut them start cutting them and then uh filling them for the feasts that we have and then we also ask if we do have have uh abundant more salmon after that then we start to uh wind dry or smoke dry them and we uh dry them with alter with when we smoke them um we also catch the steel head they have I imagine you you fishermen know that there’s Wild Ones out there but there’s the major now is K to put um uh I guess the Wilder to be set free um we we use also um the muscles we use clams we use oysters these are caught uh we have uh certain ones that go down there and do that all these different areas are like guided out with different groups that go to these different areas to do to gather these and each one like I’ve been taught each one at different times you know you can’t some are going on at the the same time so you’re you’re going to be you know kind of deciding which one you want to is the easiest usually but um I’ve done all of them and uh I really enjoy what I’m doing the canas um that is prepared in a oven I mean we do that in the ground we call that an oven because that’s our mother earth we use that for when we prepare them to barbecue them and we use certain leaves uh to prepare them and we put the we never put the uh the heat above it’s below the so that they’ll steam so um that’s how the canvas is prepared for preserving the cell where we also have a cell released which happens we call it Tupa now today um it uh it’s plentiful here in Brad round along the main road you can see a lot of growing well you can eat that either raw or you can cook it you know in stews and uh which we um we were terminated in uh 1954 and a lot of our heredity was lost so now we are coming back with these different ceremonies with our pank house that we are um right now in the process of uh building um next the roots that uh also when we do have other roots that we trade for with from the salmon and these roots are like in the desert areas that we know and we have uh people that go over there and like myself I live in the desert I live in Warm Springs well my grandchildren now are today out digging these roots for the ceremony that U is being prepared and uh you usually you go out early in the morning and when you go out you say a prayer when you first touch the land which will be today and uh they’re um they’re out there doing the ceremony of gathering because um giving thanks for this wonderful day that we are able to be here and that our children they’re also taking my children my great grandchildren out there to be with them so that that they’ll be observant to all the things that are on the land and uh at this time there are um three of The Roots out in the desert that are being uh gathered so they’re going to be aware and they’re they’re little guys I mean you know they’re little babies they’re like the oldest is 3 years old and so um they scravel around out there and it’s really fun you know for them and they have their little diggers we have a little diggers that um they you know take out and try to dig and they have dug I mean you we have a special little service for the children you know because to make them know that it’s real good and well for them to be participant with the feast you know the Gathering and to be thankful in the summer seasons um we start the Gathering of the berries and the herbs in the Seafoods uh the wild tea and the WAP um the WAP today I want to talk about that because you know the because of the farmers and because of the um the fencing and everything on the land that we are um really don’t have that much of the the wo as we used to have it’s become more scarce and um you know a lot of the areas I guess are we haven’t we have just now begun to come through our programs to try to preserve and save these uh endanger species of uh foods that we have we used and we supplemented on and survived on so now we’re in that position also with the fish fish and wildlife you know the deer AR in Seasons enabling us to carry on 100 years from now so we’re we’re uh we’re working programs to where you know we’ll be able to eat this in later life also because it’s a it it’s a real it’s a ceremony for us to um you know not everybody knows where these things are there’s different areas that we just don’t talk about because we have to protect it um we um also the clams muscles we go out and gather the muscles along the rocks and the clams you know in the Sands the oysters and we also ate seaweed well I myself my grandmother when I was very small she uh showed me this but I’ve never eaten it but I know you probably maybe some of you have today but I’ve never done it but I’ve um gathered it the crab and wild mushrooms and uh also we go and we gather the eels and uh we have are two specific areas here in um by Grand round which we go to to collect these eels and we um bring them home we clean and we prepare prepare them to dry you know I can I know how to dry them and uh to preserve which um you know is being taught here how to clean them to clean all the oil out I imagine you’ve seen the eels you fish with them probably sturgeon fisherman use them a lot now but um we uh that’s a ceremonial food for us because it was you know we used the oil and grease for many things you know for bug bites and you know all kind of different remedies you know the the fish itself was used use for the eel um the um we in the fall we go we we go to the mountains and in the mountains because uh this is a season for the hunting and in that time we go to um gather the berries and also dry the dry the meats the different uh deer or elk whichever we might um spot that day but there’s a group of people that go out to the mountain because in all this time that’s carried on the fish are running so as long as the fish run the people will fish as long as the seasons different seasons run the they will they will be there Gathering doing all these different foods until you know to find them for to preserve for their women ner and when and these foods are real important because we have a lot of Ceremonies we use them in um many ceremonies and the the most sacred one is when we put away a person an elder or somebody who has passed away this food is used always we are never without it so through this period we have to preserve and gather up a lot of this I mean it is it’s a group of people it’s not just me it’s a group of people families who gather this it’s not everybody it’s just different groups the medicine people they they are considered the medicine people because this uh food that they are gathering is the supplement that they use in ceremonies that we could continue on existing and being who we were brought here to be and to be proud of who we are because we are existing yet today and um we also go uh when we go to the mountains we have we go for the huckleberries elderberries or the thimbleberries these things all of these things in and preserving are dried to keep a lot of them they mix with your um um when you have the when you are drying your eelf meat or deer meat you um you take this uh dry deer meat and you grind it up and they preserve this for especially for elders because by then the elders you know they um the food is too hard for them to eat well how they preserve this is they grind it up and they grind these berries up and they mix them together which will bring the sweet and the substance the protein from the meat for them so that um you know they they don’t have to work at um what eating something that would normally be okay for a younger person but when you get older your digestive system is um hard to digest a lot of foods so what you’re going to do is you’re going to prepare all M for your ERS because we respect high honor our elders and we take care of them and we try to you know help them all through their life you know after they’ve become because they were our mentors they were our teachers who taught us all these different things I’m talking today mainly from the woman’s point of view because um and I imagine you had the men’s point of what they do because uh the women is the one that is gathering all and working with the foods preparing the foods teaching your children the different ways of foods out there teaching them the the uh things not to bother because of the toxins are in them and uh showing them different um herbs that uh they might use um for different things the different um how to use the fs when you preserve your Foods as layers uh and the Gatherings that they do the basket trees the material you use for basket trees and to gather them in fall and to be able to bring them back you always have a older person these are the ones this is the reason why you’re taking care of them they’re sitting like I am waiting and showing taking them to these different areas where they can gather and do all these things that they’re uh to taught to do and so um my grandmother was a great one because um she taught all of us children we were out there you know Gathering scrambling doing all these things but to us she made it fun for us because uh you know you weren’t to eat the first you had to wait and uh taste everything you know when everybody else did you knew so you had to take candy along well we went for candy you know so it was it was a fun time she’d take lunches for us and and it was rather enjoyable for us to be with our grandma and spend that precious time that um she shared um the winter season we come to that and this is a season where we start preparing for the next we do our sewing in and weaving and and the the men will make Nets and the different things that the men do you know I’m not really um a person to say fully with the men you know the plannings that they do uh in in preparation like for the next year what they expect out of that year and the prayers and the scks that go along with all these different Gathering periods that are done um they prep uh they go out and get the sticks for us when we’re going to dry different um foods that we have and also you know you need the sticks um because uh I don’t we were always taught that we were running around you know Gathering sticks because we never knew uh I guess for your when you camp and to do different um things uh the camp to hold your Camp up or to dry in a tree or to make tripods like when you would try do your Heights you had to have have scraped sticks and prepared sticks for that so it wouldn’t um you know get rid of the bumps and things that it wouldn’t harm you or do Travis like or you know when you were uh preparing to carry all your stuff out of there um the materials um my grandmother and him there’s different areas you go to the mountain for your berries and things you go on the flat for your roots uh the mountains that we went to was uh Mount Hood for our berries and whatever we were doing there but it you know uh as I think back you know from all the years we travel like that we would do this you know it was just something that was implanted in us that we did year after year after year after year we never tired of it we were always thankful and joyous because we were able to go out there and my grandma was a long housee cook and she took you know we thought that you know when we went to the mountains and um got huckleberries we thought we were going for maybe 5 10 gallons we didn’t we went for dozens and dozens of uh you know it wasn’t just small it was always you know she was a good provider for the fitting that she thought it what she gathered was never enough too because at the end of the year we would all by that time like myself I’m a gatherer and I do the cutting of fish people come to me and they ask me medicinal purposes through the year do you have this do you have this and by the time the year is up I’m I’m depleted now you know and I have two freezers I have two freezers what I I uh put like if I can dry my roots or whatever I have I have to put them in there and freeze them and it’s it’s still preserving you know in the freezer that I can’t if we don’t have sun in the summer I’m going to put it in the freezer because you know then like in gallon bags and then like uh during sometime I have 5200 in there because of as the year goes on and the ceremonies that are if I’m unable to be there then I’ll automatically take it there have my kids call them up and take it there because they need to use this because this is a the medicine uh that we use is one of the medicines you know for all the people of healing and um healing healing we think is um healing your body but we’re talking about spiritually because the Creator gave these uh foods to us and this is what we were taught from the very beginning of time and now a lot of the things that we do have are being um extincted you know from us like some of the trees are going and and um this the the WAP is very you know we don’t have that much anymore like we used plentyful for you know the land and uh because you know we had the population but still we have to keep the teachers around that knows these things that we can instill our children who are from here in grandr the histories and to let them carry on uh to what has been happening to where we were you know when we were terminated there was a great um span there where our children were lost and a lot of them now are we have really enthusiastic people you who the children are being taught the language and everything but I’m thankful you know that we are still here able to uh bring our family and our tribe back to the true identities that they need to have to live and uh that right now is about all I can think about but uh if we have any questions out there yes now I’ve never read that in history I mean I’ve got documentation back to uh my grandfather who uh that’s like uh two other Generations from me before the reservations and there I haven’t heard it yeah because this is a vast trading area this is one of the biggest trading areas in in the coast we it was a my grandfather was John Vino and of the clamas they had the biggest trading area it ranged from Portland Oregon even over into washingt up into Washington clear down into California up into Canada yes yes we did yes we did we did do that because we have evident of uh the bones that were being used for uh ceremonial purposes and they had clubs and uh that were made from the whale so we used all the ocean I mentioned the uh the ocean you know the sea very uh animals and creatures that we did use yes definitely for the oils all the fried fruits and meats on this side of the Cascades from mold and mil how did you salt would be unhealthy if you used too much of it for everything well they buried them they buried them and they had cases and they used basket trees is there any more questions yes I’m going to go ahead and bring the microphone in in the movies we see the some of the Indians maybe after a war party or someone an Indian ding they would build a fire and they would they would uh pull those smoke up put in their body yeah cleanse they use that they use the cleansing system and the sweats you know we had people who lived uh that lived under the ground I mean they dead like holes and I’ve read that through documentation from my uh grandfather they called them they lived under the ground people I mean you know that was just the way they Liv but they would come out because you know they would come out in uh you know during the days or whatever but I mean that’s where they slept underground I mean under areas like that it’s just the way they were I don’t know why but I mean you know the Creator what the different tribes we have right now five tribes right here I mean that are are in the the Confederate tribes in R but we are um uh we this there’s 29 different coastal tribes which a lot of them are integr into our tribe I they’re all our family all of them are our family does anyone else have any other questions for Patricia if not then let’s all please give her a warm Round of Applause I want to thank you all for being here listening thank Youk and our next presenter is at 11 o’ it’s Tony

The post Patricia Allen on Living from the Land: Seasonal Harvests and Ceremonies appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Neil Main on Gateway to Discovery and Northwest Coast Ecology

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:09 +0000

got he they were never good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the core Discovery 2 and the teny horses I see some familiar faces um for our next presenter this is Neil M and he’s going to talk about the gateway to Discovery and he does work for a land trust that manages the gateway to Discovery so I’m going to hand it over to new M please welcome him well thank you it’s a pleasure to uh be Mak your presentation both representing the Gateway Discovery and then the North Coast L con servy is who I work for and kind of the focus of my part of the program for those of you that have heard Doug Durer you you kind of got the historical context in terms of na na American element I’m going to focus a little more kind of the scientific side of uh the perspective of not only the historical context by which the the core Discovery come to because as you know for those of you that follow the concept of Discovery usually that includes some element of some unknown or new information and if you make your group small enough uh then everything is new information that is if you’re just telling your friend next door uh then you could well be be the source of Discovery for a certain piece of information for the person next door although the information may have been known for decades or centuries so the whole idea of Discovery is is kind of squishy and I know people have sort of wrestled with this on the core of Discovery and in a way it’s been a struggle to say what did they discover you know people had already been living here carrying on ecological interactions with every single element of the landscape for 10,000 years kind of what’s left to discover so that that’s one of it is sort of what wasn’t discovered that people might think was discovered and then what was actually discovered kind of in our cultural context and then the really challenging part and the part we’re all faced with today is what’s left to discover that is do we know enough to um sustain a culture like ours uh for the same period of time that the cultures had been functioning in the landscape we now uh inhabit so you can kind of set the time frame for what I’m talking about is 10,000 years and we’ll kind of pick 200 years as our operation period and that’s sort of appropriate given today and all the time that’s going on a couple of things that uh that I I’ll mention real quick one is Gateway to Discovery it’s a real place it’s uh 850 Square ft it’s on the south in the seaside for the local people you know it as the laabi gallery but it’s now uh the Natural History Center and there we we have initially started out to create a center where people would really dis use that Center as the gateway to Discovery that is discovering the incredible place that we have here uh we had to adjust a little bit because once we got going we realized that it wasn’t really so much in the gateway to e Cola State Park and sadle mountain and hug point and Fort Stevens but that just walking through through the building to the de that overlooks the Estuary ended up being the gateway to a Wildlife Museum I mean so much going on every single day and having been in science for 30 years You’ think I would have known that and I knew there were a lot of Critters around but the Dynamics of it when we have people staff there and volunteers there every day every minute making notes about what just happened out over the deck from the Otters coming in and catching flounders and eating on the logs to the bald eagles catching the fish to the deer quum swimming across the river to millions of anchois coming in to the golds being so stuck with anchois they couldn’t even move to the blue herand and the king fisher fights and well it just goes on and on so in a way it’s kind of portrays this idea that when you look closely at anything you you usually find action something’s going on and that’s what we found so we sort of modifi you see you get an experience with Discovery at the Gateway Center and then that also leads you to all of the other incredible places uh in this neck of the woods for those of you that maybe haven’t uh done some of the homework with the Louis and Clark expedition to understand it the best I think you have to understand Jefferson because Jefferson’s mind was scientific that’s where he was he was probably the top meteorologist in the nation at that time and he would even make his kids keep notes on the temperature when they were somewhere else you know I mean it was just almost fanatical about it and he had already tried to mount this very Expedition uh in 1783 he was already ated trying to make it happen and they even even collected funds and had someone that he thought that he was going to hire to make this same trip and that sort of didn’t work out so working through the Philadelphia Phil philosophy Society he had started to organize this Expedition and he just never could get it together and he had all the geography and the scientific information that he was wanting to collect so sort of think about and even by the time he was in Congress he had tried a little run at it just at as a congressional person and had gotten people to put up a whole th000 to to finance the Expedition but it sort of fell on De ears he wasn’t able to make that happen so it’s not surprising not too long after he became president that really just kind of pulled the old notes out of his pocket and said okay now nobody can tell me we’re not going to do this but scientific a scientific expedition in 1800 probably wasn’t a real hot item and so his challenge was to cloak it in the thing that Americans are pretty good at and that’s getting more material wealth okay economic get the Furs get the products so that transition you can see it in the documents and in a way you can see the documents being restructured to have this sort of grand benefit to the economics and kind of the social dynamics including one of Jefferson’s greatest passions which was this idea that unless everybody had a piece of land they were farming there was really no hope for democracy so need a lot more territory to begin with and what he wanted to know was is that all nice and flat and plowable so to speak and of course as you know they come out here and found all these dirty rotten trees just covering the landscape almost as Pest and so it wasn’t seen as very productive in that very productive what would you do with a tree I mean not that many trees so they were looking for farmland well uh when I say cloaking I I mean that literally I mean including very sophisticated ciphering messages that were written in code to Congress and between Lewis and Jefferson and Jefferson and Congress uh secret coded messages about this Expedition and again that was sort of the political reality of it was Jefferson had already asked the French ambassadors that about what would people think of this if we went into this territory and you know he says that would definitely be considered um by you know by our government and so it be trespassing on our land which at that point was basically Louisiana what became the Louisiana Purchase and of course when we bought the Louisiana that s took care of that problem on that angle but of course we still had the English you know in the west and so there that sort of secret uh continued on until just about the time in which the Expedition left were still sending these coded messages uh so that kind of set the stage but it again I think starts to bring up the idea about Jefferson’s thought process on this and keep in mind he thought they were going to go find Masons I mean you know they sort of had a little bit of a science fiction perspective this that this West even though like I say you know I think the folks in near San Museum to you know a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Louis Clark expedition you know and that the further they got away from a culture the more culture they found you know literally millions of people already there with full cultures that had uh evolved to very very sophisticated levels and in their own way have developed a science that we’re still trying to get to that is we haven’t figured out the kind of Science in which you can uh make interpretations without our seven steps of the scientific method and yet cultures that had been here had resolved most of those science questions about what to eat what to use how to use it how to prepare it how to treat it just about everything you can think of in terms of the the cultural uh adaptations so when it come time for sort of the eventual expedition to to leave there was you know a lot of training that had gone on Le had spent a lot of time with sort of major scientist of of the era uh describing animals describing technique uh spent weeks and weeks getting trained to just run the instruments that were necessary to collect the data about main about survey and geography so um as primitive as it might have been at that point in time compared to today with our you know we just got through mapping the plat of planes the very land that that Clark walked on with a handheld GPS with a aerial photo of the site that wherever you move on the classet planes a new aial photo for that spot Scrolls up cuz it’s reading the satellites and then it tracks a little red dot on that aerial photo of everywh exactly where you are in the context of that aerial photo and then if you see something there then you just scroll up your little data sheet and plug in US saw these plants that plant this plant this animal that and then it’s all recorded for that single site you know and then think about the technology but in reality plus or minus a few miles probably in some cases feet uh with those primitive instruments using sort of scientific methodology uh Le was able to make incredible uh Records so again this is Jefferson kind of making sure that all of the elements of making this Expedition uh quite documentary uh had been done with the planning process so that whatever skills Lewis mainly Clark as well didn’t have they got this through some of the top people in the nation at that point in time so it it it sort of sets the stage for for that uh that part of it uh let me just shift a little bit to sort of what I see as the um historical Sciences of let’s say the West Coast uh and and in some ways I think people don’t consider real science if you’re doing it for basic in a cultural context or for sort of fundamental survival that the s is something that often times is considered abstraction from the context of the culture and you go to some separate environment for the science and then you work up the experiment and the design and do all that and you bring it back to the cultural context so when the when the native Eskimos native alaskans got together with some of the top scientists in the world they started a Cooperative project in which uh the two Sciences merged and what come out of that was that uh they were both inadequate somewhat they both added there were pieces missing from the Native culture uh in their form of Science and then there were pieces missing from out of the western version of it and so out of that come really a whole new powerful kind of science that was embedded in the cultural process it wasn’t separate or separate from and I think that’s well that has a lot of Merit it also advances my own Prejudice which is the way we tend to select what we think is good bad and so in a way we’ve been promoting this idea of Citizen science that is that science is not something that’s relegated to the science room or to the scientist that it’s a cultural process and that it benef could benefit benefit us in every way we just been working with a mid that was uh opened up from a little excavation was going on for somebody’s driveway and uh in that in that mid was uh these shells and um we just s these out just last week really to get some analysis I’ve already been through them with the stereoscope and there is nothing but clam shells in this entire layer and also with that was the uh was the charcoal that was left after the Clam Lake okay so if you can imagine razor clams I mean this sounds so good to me baking razor clams you know on a dune uh and leaving nothing but the shells and that’s about as good as it can get but you know when you think about it even with Lewis Lewis is bringing his his science here doesn’t mention razor clams okay in in the journals so can’t quite make that connection but you might have had some bad time of the year to be digging plams but think about the weather now get plans just in the last few days here so here’s this sort of common ground of the razor clown uh not something that’s found in the 3 to 4,000 year old men in this area very few razor clams but if you get to the 2,000 year radiocarbon material see razor clamps that’s what this this is all 2000 somewhere between 2,300 years old and razor plans are everywhere uh keep in mind we didn’t have any sand here until starting about 5,000 years ago the ocean was right back against the head walls all Cobble ridges there almost no sand whatsoever and then somewhere in that intermediate time between 4 and 2000 we start seeing these dudes start to grow and they’re Grow Again from back against the head wall and then start migrating to the West um so there’s probably if we get enough good dates there there a point where sort of all of a sudden razor clamps are showing up because we have sand we’ve got Beach whereas if you look at the mid material from say the pomos site which is in the 4,000 year old era it’s all Bay material almost zero Marine materials okay cockal Tres gacks Gaper clams all those kind of bay things so there’s a big transition that went on in terms of the geography here and then you see the razor clam showing up and and this is where I just try to make one point about this idea of how incredibly valuable and exciting it is to know about the place you live because it’s it gives you an Insight that would be comparable to the native science in which you knew about the processes of the natural landscape because you were a part of that landscape okay unlike our culture which is aart from for the most part some of you maybe living out in the woods and digging roots and stuff but not a lot of folks doing that now so this is that sort of comparative in which knowing about the processes now I could probably almost guarantee you that the folks that dug these plans 2,000 years ago would have been hard to imagine the life cycle of a razor PL and I think that was probably a decade ago or so there used to be a program called Beach was it beach festival or something everybody brought all their stuff to the convention center and it was just about Beach things what you found on the beach and all about the beach materials I remember I had my students setting up a little program there on razor Clans and they had microscopes to look at the CL lby and all the different parts of the plan they had the life cycle put up well we spent the whole night arguing mostly with commercial CL ders about our life cycle of these razor plants because we had them releasing eggs and sperm cells into the water right on the shoreline and then we had these razor clams going all the way out into the ocean 15 20 mi off shore and they were like no way I found little baby razor clams on the beach and they don’t do that but of course they do but it’s hard to imagine razor plants could successfully reproduce by sending little swimming protozoa type Critters all the way out into the ocean spending 6 to8 weeks out there and then eventually starting to grow just the tiniest little piece of calcium carbonate on that little lar microscopic laring which then makes the lar drop down to the bottom of the ocean and then the currents on the bottom of the ocean slowly start moving all of these spat of baby plams back onto the beach by the millions and of course they dig in and some of you may have seen this event I mean it’s an incredible thing when they come in and you’re walking and you’re the pressure of your feet makes these tiny little r clams come to the surface uh and we aren’t the only one that has noticed that if you happen to be there on those few evenings in the spring when that happens then you’ll see these goals down there doing this dance going like this and then take a three steps dance p and what they’re doing is the same thing that we end up doing and that’s they’re making making these little baby razor clamps come to the surface and then they eat it so they’re tied into it so I I I kind of where I’m going on this is to is to make one point for the presentation and that’s that when you’re digging razor clams which is the way these razor clams were dug with a cedar stick stuck into a uh El time and that’s your digging instrument and you and their in your 30 or 40 fellow tribes people have got the entire class of beach to yourself it’s hard to change have an impact on the ecology because one the efficiency level is not real high yeah if you can imagine stick about 3 ft long in the end of this poking it in the sand proing it around and trying to catch razor clam uh the productivity was low and even if you could have caught a million what would you do with them you know because you got the ones you needed for that point in time so this kind of leads to the S of The Next Step even without knowing how it worked um as we saw the sort of cultural shifts from one in which culture was embedded in the science the life science landscape then we saw the transition to harvest strategies that no longer were embedded in just day-to-day survival but were then being uh exploited uh and relocated uh as a product material as much as you can get and you kind of see that sweep all the way through the culture uh which that big conversion in which the Technologies started to drive not better lifestyle not better subsistence but uh alternative products from the product that you were collecting whether it was razor plants or fish or trees whatever that might be so you just see that huge uh cultural uh transition so my the razor Clan is kind of my example of of how it changes the way of look at the landscape here in plon county and the say all the Oregan coast and that as you see the phenomena that plays out and in a way it seems It’s not surprising that commercial PL diers were saying those kids I don’t know what they’re talking about was because it just kind of hard to imagine and it turns out that just about everything that we look at closely ends up being wow how how does that work how does that all happen uh to to even have any of these systems work and even though the reverence was there for the salmon uh you can imagine how difficult it would have been for cultures uh these really very sophisticated cultures from 3 to 5,000 years ago to imagine that a salmon was going to swim three or 4,000 miles of the Bearing Sea be gone for 3 years and then come back and find that piece of water that it was reared in and not find it by luck but find it by science that is that that piece of water has t been tagged coated by the unique combination of the material in that particular Watershed 36 71 Cedars 4,221 henlock 851 sword Ferns and then stir well and you get this product that is so unique that it’s can only be in one place there is no other landscape would have that particular set of materials and all of that of course all the pine needles falling under the water being processed by an in a whole series of of invertebrate organisms which then pass that through the body which then add in well you can kind of see the picture you have a chemical potion so unique that it’s Unique on the planet so if you have a o factory system like salmon do that can sort out individual molecules at the rate of about one out of a million they can find that molecule then it’s not surprising uh that a salmon wood swim out of the neana river swim out into the ocean go to the Bearing Sea swing by the Asian coast and come back up the California coast and swim into the mouth of the the canum and start making choices and so this is the first one it has to make big one left or right okay I mean you either go neana or you go in the can so that’s the first move so the messages start getting read first of all you had to just find this place okay to begin with and then you had to start reading these messages about which water as that set of material that was here when I was here last four years ago and sniff sniff sniff sniff you know trying to sort that out and making that hard left and then you know was it mil Creek it is my did my parents live in mil Creek H not quite right there it’s four molecules off so it goes on by and uh and what about shangar Creek and what about China crate and oh coo crate that’s Bells are going off match up match up um and so it takes a hard left up the hill by the elementary school and it’s headed back now to that unique place where those S would would uh you know have their origin and got that that unique code I say unique on on the planet so sometime we call this St and people say that is so amazing I me how in the world can these s to do that you know and not trying to detract from the absolute Marvel of what at all I sort remind people you know what’s really amazing at least to me that’s that’s all it can do it could have not done anything else okay so in a way it sort of changes a conversation and that there’s a certain amount of sort of Destiny to this process that is it isn’t really left little left and maybe it’ll work out be nice and you know it’s quite precise and so if you look at some of the things that creatures do and it’s and it’s kind of surprising that you know you think about January and Clark is mentioning waiting in 3 ft of water across and I got a right across the first time and then waited across this Grand River um and in those 4 days at least the part was here um you know going through all this salmon territory kind of no mention of salmon no mention of Tides which would have been in January would have been like the big deal of all like as you know you know go to the cove and the waves are going over throwing rocks into the parking lot you know very high water so it’s no small item that and 3 ft of water across the mou of the river so kind of I know it was bad weather but wasn’t bad weather that day you wouldn’t be waiting across the mountain mechanical I can tell you there wouldn’t be a low tide to go across there and yet they waited across that but kind of no mention of the salmon but when we look at the Salmon today in the minana system native salmon in January December and January you know we we sort of consider that we’re looking at the same fish that were running through those Waters 200 years ago the same fish that were running through those Waters 10,000 years ago these are all the progeny of those uh individual ation and the irony of it is that there’s a there’s a population of about 500 coo that sort out that neana system every year and spawn in all those little screams there’s eight streams in the city of seaside’s boundary and seven of them have spawning coal and some cases as many as 100 fish sort of still there today and yet you go to the ne mon system and you look at it it looks kind of well might be a little smelly looks kind of Muddy looks kind of dirty and uh so in some cases when on our sort of sarcastic days we say well it looks so bad that no one tried to fix it so it’s still working so that’s kind of the conclusion we got out of that one well the other thing that I’ll mention I’ve covered I’ve covered the razor clams I didn’t mention the ghost shrimp just because that had to be a freebie but the material is so limp you know the kiten on a ghost shrimp is just you know it’s going to go away pretty fast and when we went back well in the 70s you know Smithsonian did an excavation at palro site and they used qu in sivs to SI all the material and they got thousands of artifacts hundreds of thousands of funnel material bones and things and but when we went back and found their SI piles and they took the SI piles the stuff went through the screens and they at that under stereoscope that was where a lot of the world was I mean it turns out that almost all of the verra of the small fish went through that quartering screen and all the little pieces of ghost shrimp went through it and so there’s kind of a a pretty big missing part of the story about this because and I guess maybe if they didn’t have a low tide you wouldn’t have noticed all those gin poles but you know if I was going someplace for the first time and looking across the mud flats of the neana and that’s all I saw I think it would come up I me say wow what are all those holes in there you know and then if you had noticed some creatures doing this you like what are they doing and if you stuck around long enough and then you saw what they were doing you know that long long Bill Cruise off here every year and they gr shrimp okay so just about every creature and if you tell the story of the ghost shrimp people shake their head like the salmon story like the clam story like wait a minute now you’re telling me that those ghost shrimp they build this U u-shaped tube and then those Flappers that they have on the bottom of their body they use those to pump water through and invite other guests in into that tube and then pump 400 gallons of water through there and then the bottom of the tube is where all the debris settles and then they pick through it with those very delicate little mandibles that can almost handle things at the size of a Micon little decaying particles of of Marsh Grass and well it kind of keeps going on and then there’s things that live on their claws that then feed off of some of the material that they well it just you know it’s sort of like everything we talk about here just keeps going a little bit off the chart because it’s like wow and then take all the complexity of every one of those creatures and adapting to sand and reading molecular structure and and then stir that all cuz that’s all going on together and a whole bunch of those things have to interact to survive so then you take all that complex and then multiply you know by factors three or four or 10 or 10,000 so when I look at when I look at materials from Native American mens in this area and sort of think about a culture that was embedded in that process themselves with their complexity and their delicate inter action at precise times and many of the as Doug was talking about in the last session many of those were I’ll call them esoteric not that they weren’t incredibly be but they were imposed views on the system they didn’t arise out of the system but at the same time they were imposed over time and therefore their accuracy was comparable to having analyzed the same that situ situation for analytical values so you have to think about it sort of in in that context well the other one would be the life cycles of the of the Nearshore Birds uh sheer Waters and wh scers uh in the in the palmrose site uh 25 Marine birds were found uh in the following makes at 25 species and of that about 10 of them you could find them as drift once in a while but if you’re going to get get them in new numbers you have to get in a boat and go offshore a fair amount to start catching up to Albatross and and City Shear Waters and things like that so that’s another part of this sort of grand story is the kind of science that would be embedded in your culture deep enough that you could repeated over time to go offshore and collect up green birds where they I mean the rating there are big numbers Millions even now sh City sh Waters you see you can see 300,000 you stand at the C looking offshore and binoculars so there’s lots of them but getting to them and getting to them at the right time and then of course understanding how to process and make them a part of their culture so like I say 25 species have identified uh right now in just one uh mid sight the other creature that was found at Great rates uh was the sea which is another challenging creature very mobile they’re large they’re strong you know you going have to know a lot about their ecology to catch one um where are they how do they feed when can you get there kind of all the all the sort of insight into uh otter culture in some of the inventories um the bone material from a given meter of B remains it was as high as 44 to 46 bone structures from CR and I mean there that kind of density so there was also some U sort of collective effects that occurred from getting individual organisms that come out at incredibly High rates keep in mind the SE are you know long gone here but more than likely they were managing large kelp BS off tomad and were a part of that help sea urch and seaotter S which is kind of say another one of those sort of complex features um we’re out of time got a couple of little giveaways this is just a reminder a little bit about today’s discussion and that’s that uh my goal here is kind of help you change the way you look at a tree and when you see the limbs on a tree it’s easy to think the limbs are on the outside of the tree but when you sort of see this picture this is a stump in which everything inside the stump rotted away except the limbs okay and even though it looks like a torture chamber it’s really the inside of a tree and what the limb looks like from the trees perspective okay so grab one of these if you’re interested it’s got a nice little reminder uh for you which is kind of my party comment uh and it’s a challenge for all of us as we sort of head into this next uh decade about thinking about our place and how to live sustainably in it so thus the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everyone has seen thank you does anybody have any questions for now I um it’s just that I wondered what the word is it mid m i d d n I’m not and how would you define that a lay of Earth I’m not sure I would okay it’s it’s kind of the cultural living site may have been a short ter campsite or may have been a long-term living site in which uh lacking Garbage Service uh it just kind of went out the back door of the long house and all the organic material and it piled up and it decayed and sank down and some turned soil and and so it become the the history of that culturals for the most part food Gathering and and see side there’s maybe the greatest Legacy of any City on the entire Pacific coast of mittens where there was cultural uh inhabitants for thousands of years uh starting about 4,000 years ago and those are maybe 10 ft deep and then every inch of this some piece of History going back thousands of years and so there were lots of sand in this year lots of sand bur not too many the next year so you you can sort of restructure the history of the culture by going through that V AR pardon would that be an archeological term it is yeah it’s uh yeah it’s a common term for the West Coast anyway where yeah okay yeah that’s that’s it it’s the and many of them do have just shells because the the uh natives moved from one location to the other depending on availability of a harvest at that particular time so you find these clam mittens only clam shells nothing else uh sort of from here North what did they what did they do with the grimp you said there was go shrimp there oh what did they do with what did they do why were they in the mid um that they might have eaten them I there’s not much there for for eating part of it so they may well have used app claws for something or some portion of it but they they’re just there so how they were used I I don’t know we haven’t seen anything made out of them like unlike let’s say the uh the little sand snail that you find down on the beach um all about uh you know they collected those probably didn’t eat them but if you take a fingernail file and just rub on the very end of it it takes just a few swipes and you knock the end off and then it’s Hollow all the way through so that become a really nice bead really plus one the first be that you have time for one more question okay i’ like to get back to je Jefferson you said that Jefferson had his son’s report temperature so I’d like to ask a couple of temperature questions to the presentation one is did leis and Clark record any temperatures they want I don’t think they did they had what what sort of therometer would they have used and the third sort of related question is the salmon going up stream do they respond to gradients in temperature in the migration or is it a chemical gradient in the what far as we know it’s gradient but can temperature can be a barrier that is it you know if you those who were in the west 2 years ago when fish started going up Basin and the largest fish die off in history occurred in the pouth river 78,000 sh salmon died from a temperature barrier because so much water is be in that system so temperature for salmon can be Buri I don’t I don’t know about thermometers U but and I haven’t looked at the journals to see if there is any Precision about temperature I don’t I don’t remember seeing anything but there might be something there right we’re going to have to we’re going to have to wrap up our program for the day I’ll be here for a few minutes so thank NE M for coming in and talking with us this afternoon this does complete our schedule of programs here in the tent to many voices today and

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Paul Brill on Omaha genealogy and kinship systems

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

the people who went with them on this journey it’s the land that they crossed the people they met and the people that they didn’t meet but the people who have come since then and to tell all of those stories we bring people from different backgrounds and different perspectives to come here and talk about their side of the Lewis and Clark Story and today we’re very very fortunate to have with us Paul Brill Paul uh has worked with the Native Americans from most of his life he is a genealogist and a consultant and a great friend to the Omaha people so we’re very glad to have him here today and he’s going to be talking about some of the Omaha uh genealogy so Paul you’re on am I I think so are you here they didn’t pay the electric bill there we go I thought a genealogist was someone who was a a lover of the I Dream of Genie but I never classified myself as that but about 43 years ago I was selected by the Secretary of the Interior to come to Nebraska and also to South Dakota because things were being done both places to be involved in something that involved the Omaha tribe who had just received an award in the in Claims Commission uh a year or so before and they were able to secure the legislation which was dated September 14 1961 little did I know what I was getting into I came here with a wife and three small children actually one was born in South Dakota the fourth one and uh people back in Indiana actually they don’t think North and South Dakota actually are part of the United States because they don’t have much population and if you’ve lived there and gone through Winters you might think the same thing anyway I came here with the purpose of finding out which individuals would qualify under the legislation that was enacted by the Congress of the United States and I might tell you the the uh elements of that legislation came about as a result of lobbying about three individuals who represented the Omaha Tribal Council they are all deceased now they are Alfred Gilton they are manura Morris and Pauline Tindle and these three individuals had come many times to Washington and I have just barely met them because they were around in different sections and they were able to secure the elements that went into that legislation my job my task was to carry out those provisions and to find out if there were really any Omaha Indians here and if there were to make a roll of them and to determine exactly how much Omaha Indian blood they had I didn’t know whether they’d be a court low or an ounce or two low but I was going to find out I came at a time when the council had such persons as Valentine Parker senior whose son Valentine Jr on the council just died a couple of months ago and the tribal chairman was Lou a s sui a most generous gentle man and buddy gilin and manura Morris and Pauline Tindle and Craig Woodhall the are such were such outstanding people and for me to meet them was indeed a pleasure and and an honor uh it started out to do that and it ended for me about 2 years later there were other things that were happening but my essential tasks were finished except I had been vaccinated with an Omaha needle and that may be trite but I have been so well treated by so many people that it enabled me to continue an association to and including today and I suspect that when I live to be 150 well I’ll still be doing that uh I don’t think I owe anybody any money but at the point is I do owe a lot of thanks my profound thanks to members of this tribe you understand the state of Nebraska gets his name from the Omaha word Nas and it means what the Omaha said was the land of the flat water which they gave that name to the Plat River not the Missouri but the plat those were the hunting grounds for buffalo and I remember reading also where the settlers always call this nebras which is that corruption and of course it’s been corrupted at least it’s stable now after a couple of hundred years it’s simply Nebraska but the word is nasaki and the people here the Maha people have been here well I wasn’t here when they first came I came a little later but probably as long as 400 years their movement started as a breakoff of the parent language family called the suan they with other elements of it they traversed from Minnesota down through Illinois or Wisconsin perhaps even in Indiana to the Ohio River I found a name of a member in the what would now be the Parker family who had to have been born in the 1700s but his name was oh or a variation of that name I’ve heard others talk about it but it meant that River now whether they got it from when they lived there and it stayed or where there were other tribes that called it that day because tribes were very Adept at borrowing things from other tribes names and locations in any event they got down to the Ohio and they were part of a group of five called aab branch of the suan language and that includes the omahas the ponas the oage the COA and the K but the call other name is which is where the word Kansas comes from and the Omaha have a Clan which is the K Clan they separated somewhat uh when they hit the Ohio hit to Mississippi now remember they didn’t take an interstate back in those days and travel was probably over a period of years some got across the Ohio when it was frozen and that probably is the name for the Cora whose real name is ugak which means Downstream Omaha means Upstream because they and the ponas separated and the oages also went in the middle and the omahas and ponas and the Iowa tribe which is not linguistically that close went up the Mississippi till they hit the de MO River following it West and north and into Minnesota and over into what is now South Dakota and hit the big Sue River came South to the Missouri river which is not too far from here and at that time which could have been as late or as recent as 1650 a lot of experts and you know what none of them were there but they seem to think they know whether that’s totally accurate or approximate I can’t say whether it was a a parting of the ways because of some internal strife we can’t say but the pona language is virtually identical with Omaha you get into the other L oage is similar the word for gaha chief in Omaha in oage it’s kahika and in other the quap and call it is even further away but they are in the same family much as we have the romance languages of Latin being French and Spanish and Portuguese Romanian and some Engish anyway they came down here and settled in this area although much of their hunting grounds were also in AA and there they stayed they were ultimately attacked by various bands of the Sue particularly the Brule Sue they not only were friendly with the Yankton Sue they intermarried with the Yankton Su there are descendants today and people that have been here this morning of Yankton Indians and their French fur trapping people the dorians uh there also are cases where Omaha stayed with them and in among the Yankton there was a family called like John Omaha um I don’t know what name and they probably ended up with a Yankton name so there was a little diversity at that age when they first you had the Europeans were the Spanish and they was mentioned the Manu Lisa Manuel Lisa has descendants in this tribe one time I met with an elderly lady in early 1962 and she told me about a place that would have been something similar to this but it was closer to Macy where they were there watching and I don’t know whether it was not a hand game it might have been a shell Society game the Omaha know what I’m talking about but and this lady who was about 90 years old in 1962 and she was with her mother and a couple of sisters and a couple not yet born and they were watching this and this crowd of people next to her were making a lot of noise and she said I remember asking my mother what are they talking they’re loud and my mother said oh they’re just bragging about what that they are descended from Manuel Lisa it took me about 38 years to actually make that contact but I now know who the descendants of Manel Lisa are then we came with the French fur Trappers and that was the little fleshes and the font nails and the sa sees course I’ve already mentioned the dorians but that came indirectly through the through the yanked and sup the my fleshes were an interesting group and I haven’t found all I know about them but they came the original one was came from Louisiana and married a whole bunch of women we Ed the say well how did that happen to well he had a fast horse and among those was one woman and the child of that one was the very famous Chief Joseph leesh who had the Good Fortune to have been raised because he was orphaned very early the Brule Sue killed his mother his stepfather and several other aunts and uncles down by Fremont south of here they he was raised by big elk who had become chief after the death of black I mean um Blackbird and when he did he gained great status and uh Joseph leesh had a whole bunch of wives and two of them were Omaha one of them was Oto and one of them believe it or or not was a Mormon woman that he met when the Mormon train came from NAU Illinois now that train is not the Santa Fe that’s the Wagon train and they were at there at bellw he married this woman and had three daughters by about 20 years ago I got a phone call from a lady from Portland Oregon and she said I I said well wait how did you get my number she said well I wrote to the Secretary of the Interior they referred me to the Bureau of in Affairs who referred me to the Aberdine Area Office who referred me to the wineo agency who referred me to the Omaha tribe who said call Paul Brill this lady said my grandmother was the last surviving child of Lewis s she died in about 1927 I said how how many of them are there out there she said well maybe not but we think there’s 10,000 I think I’m losing my voice here there’re about 10,000 now that may be a little excess but I told Elizabeth Sal see is on the council and I said well the word I get is that what they’re going to do is they’re going to get special legislation special legislation and they’re going to enroll 5,000 SAU who sees and they’re going to come over and give ask Oliver if he’ll prove them and they’re going to get special legislation to become Omaha and that’ll be called the Western Omaha tribe the S sea Branch this was the S sui came in the family now s is a French word SS is without Susi means care and so it now has been shortened to where it’s one word so we now have the soses the LEF fleshes the dorians and then perhaps for Nebraska not so much the Omaha tribe the most famous were the fontanels who came in in American fur trade company and Lucian Fontanel had come up from New Orleans and met and married a woman who was a close relative of big elk and had a whole bunch of kids and they all did very well some married out of the tribe one having married a pony woman but most of the descendants came here and those descendants have gone to a lot of other places and are intermarried with various bands of Sue and all over the United States they’ve started their own tribe another one became was known as Logan fontell and he became a war chief and he was given the name shongaska which is White Horse and in fact went to Washington DC and was party to a treaty there he sadly was killed by the Sue within a matter of a year or so thereafter uh south of here uh we have a Logan fontell in this audience that was his great great great great uncle I’m getting close what is it great great grand Uncle okay and he died about 1855 so we’ve only had about 150 years since then but anyway they had women in the F family who married back into the tribe and have become very prominent into the mcau family into other families and because the name has been absorbed a lot of younger people that are here don’t realize they may be a fontel there may be a fontel in your present in past be careful if you want to marry a fontell he might be a cousin anyway this is what happened and I found out and it’s been a glorious experience to be able to find those kinds of things now the names of those were French that was easy where did these other names come from well the Presbyterian Church was the most prominent religious group in this area I’ve been told and there’s some uh legitimacy to that that the government actually the Congress actually said you folks take the Catholics you take this batch of company uh you Presbyterians you have here you evangelicals are over here now there was some overlapping but that’s not far from the truth because a presbyterian missionary came here way back his name was Father William Hamilton and one of the Omaha headmen whose name was c h took that name and became William Hamilton and all of his descendants they are not descended from the missionary they’re descended from the individual who took that name uh the Presbyterians had a school when the omahas were in B and there were two preachers down there two missionaries one was Reverend Clay mcau and if any of you are relatives of mcau that’s where it came came from another one was Reverend black and that name is not too prevalent today but there are some of those and Henderson the interesting thing is Upton Henderson and James Black were full Brothers but they took their Anglo name from different missionaries there are fremonts here Fremont was taken the name was a very a famous Mountain Man Trapper uh early on we had George Washington’s Abraham Lincoln’s General Shermans they had those we had uh people named Bert Bert county is named after the Bert but the Omaha Indians took the name Bert and so many of those individuals took or were given that name but you see they really still use the Indian name that was the thing that was important and even in my time a lot of them they didn’t even know when I was given the name is they even forgot I was called BR that was what and I thought well how come you don’t know because that name was not significant the Indian name and clans were the important thing and it still is sadly it’s not as important today as it has been because I find out when I ask someone what is your Omaha name well I think I’ve got one but I don’t know what it is or I know what it is but I don’t know what it means and that’s an erosion of the culture that is is difficult to to understand uh and it’s hard to realize that it is happening Omaha tribe divided in a system which is now known by Anthropologist as the Omaha Crow system of kinship and marriage it’s the most perfect system among all of anthropological groups that an they’ve studied whether it’s been in Asia in s whether it’s been in China or in Europe it is its Simplicity is so marvelous you had the Earth people and you had the sky people and each of them had groups within there and it was called exogamous which is a big word which means you married out of your clan you married out and this of course with a small group of people of a few hundred or even if they ever got to be a few thousand minimized the chances of marriage now I doubt seriously whether they were aware of DNA and genetics but I confident that they were aware of the situation which would result in marriage that occurred too close that’s why the European monarchy has been a disaster for Generations in any event this clan system has served the Omaha well served it so well um and there were sub Clans one of the sad things is that these names when they’re translated have lost their real uh meaning there is a name in the wany the El Clan called J W which refers they called her packing wood she carries the wood but what they’ve lost is that that lady had the honor to carry wood to the fires of the seven Chiefs the seven who had pipes so it was not just an honor of you know she would just thought hey you go get some wood no it was an honor to be able to bring the wood there uh among the Sue there is a name called afraid of his horses well that’s pretty terrible name but when you hear what is really said is he is so Fierce as a warrior the enemy is afraid even of his horses but it’s a new light on it doesn’t it one of the names I like to use is hint Jinga hint is hair I may be corrupting the the accent but that’s it t is yellow Jinga is little so I like to when I speak before students I said well what does that mean and they said well he had yellow hair no he painted his hair yellow no and hundred other wrong answers and what we find is this when a deer is born it has spots doesn’t it the spots go away and they yellow to the tan and the brown when a Buffalo cat is born it has toughs of yellow hair behind the ears what I’m telling you is the nuances of some of these names eludes the white population who thought they do everything they think everybody is a big bear or short bear or long bear or Buffalo this or that and indeed that exists but more than likely it had to do with some very minor thing that was not noticeable to the outside world and it got corrupted where I’m from in Tero Indiana we had a federal P we have a federal penitentiary and I did work there in the past because one of my childhood friends became the U Warden of that and I started doing this and there was a fellow there from out the soup country whose name was Johnny never misses a shot and of course he got the nickname of Bullseye but these are the kinds of things and I will tell you I’m not sure that I ever met an Indian man that didn’t have a nickname now some of them are easy and some of them are not so easy to talk about but people that I raised with had some nicknames but not everybody did but that’s a common I won’t use the word Affliction because it’s not U some of the most honorable people I’ve ever known have names of why would I want to be called that but you see you don’t even know the background that anyway I don’t want to pass my time but um there this is a subject you could talk about for 60 days and you never even began to tell about it would you have some questions that you might be interested yes ma’am let me come over with M so everyone can hear just in the short time that Lo has been up here he’s talked to several people and it seems like he’s related to everybody now when somebody in Omaha wants to marry another Omaha if how do they know they’re not related or are they so distantly related now is it okay yes and no I’m going to relate a story that happened I won’t tell you the names because that would give it away a lady about 15 years years ago when I was here she saw me she said this is in the tribal building and she said um when I was about 16 or 17 I came home and told my mother I was really sweet on such and such an individual boy he could dance both Indian and white way and he was this and that and my mother didn’t like him for some other reasons she said she pulled her sha over her head and began to cry and yell she was mad you can’t even touch him he’s your relative about a year later I came and told her I said you know I’m really I think I’m going to marry this guy my mother put this Shaw back we’ve never talked about it in that ensuing time and she began to cry silently and she said you know I never married that guy but I always wondering was I related to him or just so distant and I said well this is his name oinga yeah well do you know what his grandfather’s name was no his grandfather used his Indian hinga but he took the name of Charles wood Hall and didn’t like it so he reverted to ohaj Jinga yes he’s about a third cousin you mean he was a relative I said yes oh my mother knew it all along in many cases it is very it has to be very distant as some of you known from the charts you can go back to the same individual in fact more than even twice you may have to go back to six or seven generations I know of only one instance and that doesn’t mean I’ve known it all were a woman whose reputation was suspect let’s say that and married her first cousin had she not come from a family that was extremely powerful I’m not sure what would have happened to her because there was an uprising here and we’re talking about 130 years ago she married her first cousin and she knew it was her first cousin the tribe was an absolute uproar and only because certain Elders were able to make it quiet they perhaps even went away for a while because in some cases people who had committed murder if they weren’t treated harshly begin with were actually uh kind of they were sent out on the Prairie they could not come within certain distance of of The Villages so I don’t know I wasn’t there I came a couple of years later from that but this was a but this Omaha Crow kinship system is so marvelous it absolutely minimizes that sort of thing I made the comment one they said well well what why did those two marry if they knew that they would be causing so much trouble I said well I’m not an anthropologist I’ve studied it I’ve talked to a lot of them who are a lot smarter than I am but let me use a good phrase in Indiana they just had to hots for each other now that’s very unscientific but you know what it tells me that Omaha were a lot like the rest of the world in many of the day-to-day activities a lot like the rest of the world There are rules and they kept these people going and in good shape for centuries but occasionally there was a little as they say in New Mexico at one of pblos where well he fell off the wagon when they were coming through whether that’s the case I don’t know but they were human and these little exceptions to the rules which are magnificent I’ve talked to one of my bosses John Barney Old coyote Crow and we he was my boss out in California and we talked about this and he said you know we never thought of it but we have that same system like similar we have it rigid here and rigid here and this way we have while they’re much larger than the Omaha but the same time uh they realized that it worked for them any other questions yes sir uh my Robinson my name is I hear that what is the name uh that means City langage Clan right um my question was that um I’ve been asking around among our elders and stuff and I’ve been trying to locate the uh final resting places every our last Clan Chief and I’m wondering if you know where they’re located that wouldn’t be uh Robert Morris would it um Yellow Smoke or was there someone since him I’m not sure about that that’s what I’m trying to find out I personally don’t know um I went with a member a cemetery that’s falling into disuse the U Stones were still there and this was a Phillips that’s a name for you not familiar it was a Phillips Cemetery it should be restored it just breaks my heart see it but here was a name of a lady that didn’t fit in and it took me 2 years years to find out she was a Dale and had she married a Phillips and that’s why she was in that but there are all these cemeteries around here and I would you know beg the tribe to really identify them and to restore them trees have fallen over vandalism has done all of this and I I’m sorry I can’t answer your question that’s thank you one more PA I just want to thank you for mentioning three of my ancestors namely chief pel chief Logan F now and Luan F now I’m very proud of my Heritage as a matter of fact I visit the tent exore was a picture of big out there are better known as katanga help me with pronunciation but I fun to uh let you know how much I enjoyed your presentation thank you his full name was is because there were ones that followed and that’s like the white man says senior and Junior and names quite often were passed down from Uncle to nephew and from father to son or skipping a generation and um big elk was an absolutely beloved Chief and he was the one that met Lis and whether he was over on the river saying land here or whatever he was doing his good uh Vibes in that made it easier for this uh group that came up L and Clark to be well received because the Omaha controled this part of the Missouri River and when Blackbird was the chief as well nothing would have gone up if they didn’t want it to nothing would have gone up I don’t care when you get up in the Sue country it wouldn’t have gotten past here but they were well received and I think that that’s indicative of the very nature of these people thank you so very much e e for

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Howard Boas on Crow History and Lewis & Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

well good afternoon everyone and welcome to the tenam many voices I encourage you to come in and have a seat and join us we’re just about to get started with our 1:00 program the tenam Min voices is part of the cor Discovery 2 traveling loose and Clark exhibit it’s a m agency exhibit with a National Park Service being the lead agency if you spend some time here today if you go out to the keelboat for instance you talk to members of the Army Corps of Engineers if you go out to the Dugout canoe you talk to someone from the Bureau of Reclamation so it’s a multi- agency exhibit and it’s a multi- partnership exhibit here in the tenam many voices we have a wide variety of presenters that share with us a wide variety of perspectives both on the lwis and Clark expedition itself but also we like to hear from the PE from the descendants of the people that were living there long before Lewis and Clark arrived we’d like to hear from these indigenous or American Indian nations to share their story their perspectives and that’s what we have today with our 1:00 program we have we have Howard bogus who is an enrolled member of The Crow Nation he’s going to share some of his people’s history and culture Howard is a oral historian has been learning his history and culture of his people since he was six years old so we’re very privileged to have him here let’s give him a warm welcome to the tanam voices so you got me on oh okay all right thank you uh want to thank the National Park Service for allowing me to come here to speak with you and uh talk to you about the history of the people who were here when lisis and Clark came uh one of the things that people don’t see in the in the Diaries and and of the Louis and Clark and and stuff like that that there was people here there was culture there was societies there was religion all of that was here and it was all basically the same as the stuff that Lewis and Clark brought here and uh Jesuit priests and uh other religions that brought religion to the crow people afterwards but uh anyway uh I’m an enr enrolled member of the Crow tribe of Indians and uh at the age of 6 years old I was designated by a cow cro Indian Elder my named George Washington Hogan and uh when you go down on the Crow Nation you will find many Washingtons you will find many Lincoln and uh things such as this because at that time the Indian people named almost all of their children after a president or somebody that was very very important so you find them types of names down there but Mr Hogan when he adopted me uh that does not mean that I left my my family and went to live with the Hogan Family whoops my outfit fell off here my uh speaker fell off in the back of my belt but uh anyway uh when uh Mr Hogan when he adopted me um I became a a member of the Hogan family so I had okay so I had two families uh to bring me up and when Mr Hogan uh adopted me he he he he asked my parents if I could be brought up as an oral historian so I’ve studied oral histories all my life plus the written histories I’ve put together a library of over 8 around 800 books on the cow Indian people and the other Indian tribes of Montana and in thousands of loose leaf pages I I don’t know I I got so much I don’t even know what I have anymore but uh anyway when when when he uh asked me to do this then he and in Crow tradition then he designated two people that would be my tutors when I was very young and one of them was one of the people was Robert suar yellow tale who was actually the first American Indian that became a superintendent of a of a tri of a tribe of Indians in the United States and he was one and Mr yellow tale became came back and he became the superintendent of the Crow tribe of Indians uh and the other person who he designated was Robert Summers how who was who was my my mother’s older brother so I had a clan uncle and and and and an uncle who were my my teachers and these old these gentlemen would take me out and through the hills and stuff you know and you know I can remember now you know when you in the 40s and 50s men we had we were still driving Model A and old junker cars and stuff such as that you know battle tra around the hills and these guys would take me along and say you know this is what happened here on this hill side this is come and look at this these rocks and this the the rocks that this marks a prayer site or a battle site or or it’s a trail marker or something such as this you know and so I’ve actually spent most all of my life hiking the hills and looking toward uh my friend Mike penfold here goes with me all the time anymore because I have I lost all my peripheral vision so I only have central vision also they don’t allow me to drive but old Mike here he takes me all the time and and uh but anyway we go out and we we we uh find the paintings and stuff out here we we visit paintings here that have been carbon dated at 1,000 years old so the you know there was a culture there was you know and that was here a long time uh we we we walked the trails we have a highway system today the Indian people had a highway system one of the main highways is just right out here just west of Great Falls it goes from Alberta Canada to New Mexico and all you do is you follow little piles of rocks all the way um one of the things that’s always uh very interesting to me is that the I I believe that the Indian people got along a lot better before the white men came along before they was being pushed into smaller groups uh because at at in in our beliefs no one owns the land the land is there for everybody and the land is there to to take care of everybody uh in our and we and in our structure of Life uh our structure of life is a family is is a family structure because I pray to my my father the sky I pray to my mother the earth I pray to my grandfather the sun I play I prayed to my grandmother the moon these are the things that brought us into this into this life in this earth they’re the ones that brought us up they tutored us they taught us they fed us they took care of us so our our really our our way of life and our religion was our family and our Earth our Sky our sun our moon you know it’s it’s like uh my father this guy he looks over my mother the the Earth he showers with the rain my mother the Earth brings up the green grasses the trees whatever it takes to feed us or to feed the animals that we’re that we are going to consume without it our grandfather the son without our grandfather the son this could not happen because we need the sunlight to take care of it but you know we need time to rest so our grandmother the Moon she watches over us while we rest at night so that we can get ready for our new life that begins in the morning because in our cro in in our croad tradition our lives are one day at a time a life is one day at a time and it is for all of us yes we always plan for the future but our life is still only one day at a time and so that’s this is how our belief our culture was and this was a belief in a culture that was going on at the time when Lewis and Clark came up through the Missouri River I drew this map right here this map right here this is Mandan right here and uh I drew this map off in Crow Indian oral stories I drew it off of the information that was given by sits in the middle of the land when he signed the 1826 treaty at Mandan with the United States government that was the first treaty that the C Indian people ever signed with United States government so when uh they signed this treaty uh the general he says well sit in the middle of land he says what where where do you live how can I find you if I need to contact you because the 1826 treaty it didn’t say I’m going to give you something I’m going to take anything it was a treaty of friendship because the crow were recognized as a nation by the United States government not as a tribe of Indians not as a reservation we were recognized as a nation one of the very few tribes of there was only a eight to 10 tribes in the entire United States that were recognized by United States government as a nation but anyway when uh when we signed this treaty here and he said where do you live well he says my Crow people live under my Lodge we as Crow when we set up our lodge we use four main polls all of the rest of the tribes use three main poles to set up their lodges but Crow used four so we set up one he says my one pole sets at thei River Big River the Missouri River or the Yellowstone the AA runs into it this is up here on this my second pole it’s down here and it’s what where the it’s the Gap Where the Buffalo come through Spearfish South Dakota that’s where the second pole was set for the coration the third pole was set way down here in the southwest and uh it’s at a place that is called that you can visit today it’s the gurgling Waters pooo Papa Waters and it’s where the waters are boiling from the ground it’s a beautiful place to go to our fourth pole set where the rivers mix the headwaters of the Missouri River where the Jefferson all three of the rivers come together here at the Three Forks and this is our cron Nation sets under our law L because our lodge is round if you noticed the the the reserv the the nation was in a shape of a heart and I couldn’t figure it out I I study father desmid quite a little bit and uh father dmid went back to uh St Louis when he got to St Louis they asked him that where have you been where’ you come from he says I just came from the heart of the cron Nation we have to remember that father dmid drew a good share of the maps of the American West he was a priest a Jesuit priest but yet he you know he had to have a a way to finance himself because uh the Catholic church was not financing the Catholic church was not financing uh father dmet father dmit was a renegade study him oh he’s fun he is fun but uh anyway when when when he got back to St Louis he said he was he had just came from the heart of the crow country when I use the oral stories this country over here this is Plat River Country this water all runs into the Big Horn River this run water all runs into the Yellowstone River this water runs into the from the Missouri into the Missouri here into the Yellowstone and then Yellowstone Park up here yeah Crow Indians at one time Yellowstone Park almost 80% of Yellowstone Park was in The Crow Nation we should have kept that and give them the rest of the reservation but uh no it’s it’s it’s very interesting of the history and the people who went here but one of the things I like I always like to talk about uh the culture uh we had artists and our artists when they made a painting a thousand years ago you can read it today and it tells you a story um that’s one of the things I forgot to bring along with me I was going to bring along some photographs of of of some of the paintings and uh there one of the things what I find in the paintings when I see them all the time is that they generally have they generally have the number 13 marked into it there’s generally 13 little marks you if there’s a whole circle of marks you divide them they’ll divide out into because the 13 moons we have 13 full moons in a year the Indian people use that as our calendar the 13 full moons we even had a calendar believe it or not the 13 moons on the Turtles back the next time you see a turtle count the little squares on his back there is 13 that is our calendar that was our calendar yes so you know they was we was doing the same thing as a white man different way uh the other thing that was very interesting it was you know like I say you know the the religion part of it is how how when we prayed when actually when it going to come all when when it all comes down we all prayed to the same person up here when we die I I was buried on the top of the ground because of the fact that if I was buried down under the ground my spirit can’t rise and go up and I need to do that and and uh you know it was until 1894 that the United States government passed the law and said I had to have 5 ft of dirt on my face yeah one of the things that uh the non-indian people I don’t say I don’t I don’t use the term of white man very much I don’t I I I think it’s a derogatory term but I I generally say the non-indian and one of the ter the things that the non-indian people did uh get from the Indian people you go to any the cemeteries you’re always buried so you face the east Indian people were always tried buried so that they could fa they they would face the Rising Sun when I set up my Lodge I would set up my Lodge my openings when I set in the back of my Lodge I would sit there in the morning and I could sit in my Lodge and I could had watched the Rising Sun from the back Lodge so East was a very very important part of of of our of our way uh 13 you know like I say everybody thinks 13 is a great a bad number ah not for us it’s great no fact is I was in Washington DC a couple of years ago and I was visiting Nick rhof West Virginia and uh when when we were visiting Mr Mr Ray Hall he says uh well you know this might be a bad time for you to have propably to do cuz we was trying he’s actually put together a bill to try to uh put protection on uh cultural sites historic sites Across the Nation Indian and not Indian but he’s getting a lot of flak over it because I mean it it it protects a lot of land so but anyway when uh when we was talking to Mr Ray Hall he says well this is my 13th term he says this might be a the beginning of my 13th term he says this might be a bad time I says no this is the most wonderful time for us I said because 13 is our is our good number and like I say when you go around the the paintings you will find them always have 13 in some way or another uh in in the paintings uh some of the paintings I mean you you read them uh you get them get them and as you see on my belt buckle here I have lodges beaded into my belt buckle and the lodge is my home my home is very very sacred my home is my church because uh in in American Indian people we don’t go build a million dooll building so we got someplace to go on Sunday anytime that I go go out here my feet touch the Earth and I can see the sky I’m in my church I’m in my church and and I go there quite often to do this but uh what a lot of times you I like to talk a little bit about the prayer okay I do a prayer something happened in my life I don’t know maybe a death maybe I’m not getting along with people or somebody who got hurt that’s very close to me or something like this I go out to do a prayer and when I go out to do my prayer I go Before Sunrise to where I’m going to do my prayer I do a prayer twice a year on top of pompy’s pillar and I go up there I have my little place that I can set I can sit there the entire day people don’t even know that I’m there but I go Before Sunrise and I don’t come come back down off until sunsight at night and when I up there I I pray for what was is is going on happening in my life but I don’t sit there and pray the entire day I’m sitting there and I’m thinking what is the bad things has happening in my life what is what is the way that I can can can fix this uh this more it’s in our belief is we we need to know who we are within we need to know who we are as long as we know who we are we will do well but the day that we don’t that we find that we’ve lost ourselves and we became you know uh maybe we start drinking maybe we start using drugs maybe we do you know we we start doing things but you got to remember who you are and take care of take care of that that person as long as you always know exactly who you are you will do well but when uh I like to talk a little bit about Lewis and Clark now Lewis and Clark entered Crow country right here right here they traveled up Crow country right through here Crow people people were on the Sun River which is west of Great Falls the two Medicine River Crow people were living up there at that time there was Crow people living on the Milk River which is way up here but Lewis and Clark they entered cro country right here traveled up here and out the other side of cro country down at three fors then they returned Lewis made this entire trip back Clark P just drip down to Yellowstone uh there was one of the groups went down to through the Missouri River here again and uh prior made the journey with the horses across over here on these yellow lines so they traveled about 1,700 miles and never spoke to a crow and a lot of people wonder so why did they travel all these miles right through the middle of the crow people they seen signs of the Indians all the way they never met a crow for one reason one reason only mosquitoes these crows they was smart enough that you get back away from the rivers into the hills the high mountains you get away from the mosquitoes and mosquito time they left they left the River Country this was the time when Lewis and Clark was doing all of their things in Crow country and they stayed on the rivers they stayed down in the mosquitoes they got ate up the croww gone what was very interesting at this point right in here where they made the canoes or they made the canoes they camped there 3 days Lou and Clark did or Clark did in his group within 12 miles of where Clark was camped there was a crow Sundance going on at the very same time there was thousands of Indians there it was on the Clarks Fork River as we know it today but then to the to the crow people the Cheyenne the sue the blackbeat this is the river where we all come to dance this meant all of the tribes of Indians come there to the Clarks Forks River they would do Sund dances and they would hunt they would they would take care of their hides their meat and think and get a year supply of meat and then then they would start venturing back home nees Pur I mean there was many many tribes shonne all of the tribes would come there because the Clarks Fork River we didn’t didn’t fight on that River when we all came to that River we know that that was a place that you could set down beside your enemy break bread eat hunt together maybe we even got together and we went off and raided somebody’s horse P horses see we never stole a horse I want you to know that we never ever stole a horse we captured a horse because to capture a horse was a very honorable thing for a crow yes to capture a horse is a very honorable thing when I be when I when I wanted to become a chief I had to do four things to capture a horse from within an enemy’s Camp was one of the things I had to do within the camp that didn’t mean that he was running on the hillside out here I stuck into the camp and I cut the the rawad that was holding that horse my friend Mike he’s a sue over here Mike’s laying in his lodge he’s sound asleep but he has that cord tied around his belly cuz he don’t want to lose his favorite warhorse I sneak into his camp and I steal his horse see but really in Crow I captured that horse because I did a very honorable Brave thing I took his horse while he was hanging on to the end of the light the cord yes and so when when when we got the when Clark came down the river we uh we didn’t get the first nine that was taken further west of the of the Three Forks it was nine that was taken over there and uh the black feet claim them them nine horses that that was taken I want you to I want you to know these guys had Shon and nesp horses Shon got most of their horses a good share of their horses from the NES Pur because the the NES Pur immediately started breeding horses to get a certain type of a horse they wanted a particular horse the apaloo so they started breeding to get the appolo that’s what the Appo came from and uh but they were strong horses small horses very very good horses us Crow knew a good horse when we seen one you know and here comes Clark down the Yellowstone River you know he’s just rambling along and he’s making maps and he’s doing all of these good things you know that he’s supposed to be doing but us Crow are sitting up on the hillside counting horses and you know and one of the things that in all my years of studying the military might protect their encampment but they would put their horses over here on the hillside three miles away to graze you know so they would just very easy to get to so we would just come down and we would relieve him of these horses and uh where uh according to the Diaries uh Clark left his horses approximately one mile from the camp where he was making the canoes uh we found a site that pretty much fits the entire diary as to where the horses was being kept because it uh says that from that position there it was one mile approximately one mile to the river crossing for the where the Indians who took the horses crossed the Yellowstone River and going south in in down into Crow country and uh so we we pretty much believe that we found the spot pretty much where the horses was being held but uh no they was they was nice horses and you know we was good the first time you know we only took half of them you know and do Gunn it he went on down the river you know and they got down near where Billings is today and that’s where they crossed the river with the last 25 head of horses that they was left we’d already get took 24 in a CT and when they crossed the river prior traveled about six 7 hours and he was at a place called fly CRI today uh fly Crick is is is a is is starts from a basin this Basin is large like this 200,000 acres in it but it only has one little dry stream that goes out of it to drain it one of these big old Montana Cloud bursts come along and here was Prior he was camped on this little Dry Creek and all of a sudden I mean he has a Roaring River between him and his horses and so he spends a a few hours trying to get his horse her back together but when he went to bed he was tired and he was sleepy so he really went to sleep and he got up in the morning and when he got up in the morning he just didn’t have any more horses uh one of the crow guys wanted to let him know who got the horses so he left a moccasin and uh so we had we we had a pretty good h of her of of horses but now I’m going to tell you a story about these horses uh the crow horses the horses that the crow T took from the Clark they were taken so easily there was no danger of any kind in us taking the horses so in our Crow tradition we could not keep I could not I I’m I’m the person that took the horses I could not keep the horses I had to give them away as gifts so you know really you know Clark he made a lot of pro Indian people very very very happy because I we gave away 50 horses 49 horses in a CO as gifts because in Crow tradition we were not allowed to keep the horses because there was no risk to our life we could only keep a horse for ourself that we risk our life to get but anyway when uh after after that you know then the crow they just took took off and and took the horses and they went kind of into the Southwest Mike and I been working on a trail that goes into Big Horn Canyon National Park called the bad Pass Trail these horses was headed right for the bad Pass Trail bad Pass Trail is a is an area that when you walk you step over this rock and you stumble over the next and you have next step you have a a rock roll under your foot I mean it’s a it’s a it’s a bad Trail but it’s a it’s a trail that’s probably 10,000 years old and uh very very well marked but and it’s marked with piles of rock some of the the the the rock piles in badp Pass Trail they are 10 15 ft apart from here to the other end of the camp they may be five or six piles of rock they will be this High probably a ton or two Rock in in this pile but you know what every one of them rocks are every one of them rocks is a prayer as I’m going down the trail I pick up this Stone I carry this rock it becomes part of me my my sweat gets on this rock I carry this rock for a while and I talk to this rock and then when I get to where the places where the prayer where the prayer piles of rocks are I get up to this pile of rocks and I spit on the Rock I put part of me on my saliva I put the rock in the pile when I put the rock in the pile I say thank you grandfather for the good journey behind me give me a good journey forward and I go on the next Indian person that comes along behind me does exactly the same thing I can take you to piles of Rock down in the crow country that is growing yet today because in our belief we cannot go go past these piles of rock and we we have to stop and do prayer say a prayer Sandy and I one time we was going up into the prior mountains and she was driving along and and uh I said stop we need to stop and do the prayer well let’s we’ll do it on the way way back and I you know I said no you got to do it now Sandy and I went up onto the prior mountains we spent the entire tail on the prior mountains had a wonderful day we was coming back down off of the prior mountains that night we got within 300 ft of that that that that rock pile she blew a right front tire just blew the whole side of it out I didn’t stop and say my prayer on the way up and ask for the good journey yes no we we believe in this very very strongly we do it yet today but uh you know that’s that’s why I like to talk you say tell you a little bit about Le and Clark when they came here I mean we had people who were painting the history on the Rocks the paintings that are on the Rocks today that are a thousand years old uh right now I we’ve got near 400 located on the Yellowstone River and his tributaries uh when you sat there and you you look at these and I don’t come come up here and say okay I’m going to paint on the rock 5 minutes I’m going down the I’m going down the trail no Takes Me Maybe years to choose my spot because I want absolute perfect light at a certain time of the year things such as this I go up here I abrate the wall Till It’s Perfectly smooth I take a a black Riverstone almost every abrasive stone that we have found so far is a Black River Stone so they packed this rock a long ways to do their do their paintings but they abrak this wall perfectly smooth and these walls in this one particular spot that has been carbonated 950 to 1,000 years old this Rock today is absolutely perfectly smooth Sandstone they have break this perfectly smooth they would have put a lot of House Painters out of business business if the house painters could figure out how they made the paint because they paint their paintings on the walls the paintings we we think are just something but no that painting is part of me it tells a part of a story it tells it it tells something about my people and uh some of the paintings we one of the paintings that we find it has a circle it has inside of the circle coming to the middle the shape of lodges all the way around in series of 13 there is 13 lodges make to make the circle on the bottom of each Lodge on the outside of the on the outside of the circle there is 13 fringes but the lodge is our home is our church that the lodge means people that’s where the people live so that that that that particular painting is very sacred to us because it tells us of of of the people okay there’s another one there and that’s right beside excuse me but uh there’s another painting that’s right there beside of it and uh the painting that’s right beside there it’s got what we call a two-headed water monster on it anytime that we find something that has two heads in the paintings it means one thing I actually it means two things actually good and bad good and evil one one head is for good one head is bad and I’ll tell you a little story uh that the time took time about in the late 1800s uh Chief plenty C had been on a raiding party we went down come down in Nebraska and he got some good Sue horses I mean you know our neighbors always had good horses and Crow always needed more cuz to to to to Crow horses were wealth the more horses I had the wealthier I was because I could always trade horses for anything that I wanted but anyway when plny cluz was returning he uh got back to the Big Horn River the Big Horn River was being flooded man he got to the river and oh man we can’t get across and we’re only a day and a half Journey from home good long day we could probably make it it didn’t know what quite to do to do big shoulder blade big shoulder blade was a very tall man uh at that particular time most inro Crow people were 6 feet and more taller very very very big people not fat just tall thin people but anyway big shoulder blade he was a very big man he was riding a very very large horse and he said well I’ll go into the river and he says I I’ll I I’ll find find the way to get across so he went and chose his place for where where he entered the river when immediately when he got into the river big shoulder blade and his horse was caught by the water and it started washing him down so immediately big shoulder blade he starts singing a chant this chant song it is to the good and the the evil of the water monster he’s chanting and he’s praying that the good the good water monster will get a hold of him and the good water monster will take him to the land the bad water monster will take him into the water this is the belief this painting is on the wall thousand years old that story is a thousand years old uh the other pain painting is there is just of a lodge but the painting that’s in the center the ball in the middle of it is green do you know that in the state of Montana there is only five paintings that have green in them one is over here at Hela along the lake the weather the other four are on the Clarks Fork River the other four are all within probably less than 30 feet distance of part now it’s it’s uh uh and so green is was something that was kind of hard but we we feel that that green was for Earth the mother the grasses cuz the land the Earth turns green so that that that’s part of this part of that particular prayer that big shoulder blade was was talk was singing when uh when uh the crow people would travel like I say they would Mark the trails with the markers and they had this highway system you can go out right around I I can go around here just about any place in the country out here and I can can choose a valley a river and I will find a a trail that is marked along that river valley maybe a ridge uh one of the things about the American Indian people was they were never afraid of anything that I can see I was never afraid of anything that I could see but I was afraid of what I couldn’t see that was what was bothered me more than anything so when I traveled most of the time I traveled on a High Ridge I Could See For Miles nobody could sneak up on me no that’s the way and that’s where I we find most all of the trails and we’ve followed these Trails crossed Wyoming Montana I have a friend who followed the same particular tra in Colorado and New Mexico no it’s it’s a I can get I can I can go out here probably within one day in this area right here and find the trail right here that takes you to Manan you know why the black feet the crow that’s just shown where Nomads we don’t stop to plant to grow the Mandan down here in the river they grew the stuff that we want the English the French everybody brought their stuff here the Mandan when they brought it to Mandan all of the tribes come here there is many many trails that come to and down am I getting out of time okay I I I always talk to the last second so you know that’s that’s one thing I always tell people you know about crow about Crow history we don’t we don’t have short songs we don’t have short prayers we don’t have short stories because in our songs they talk about our history in our life our prayers talk about our history in our life our stories talk about our history and our life and as an oral historian I have to tell you in detail as to what’s going on this is why I’m talking about something and all of a sudden I’m over here talking about something else because I have to tell you the details because otherwise you’re going to get the story messed up you you need you need the details and and and that’s how an oral historian is taught I’ve been taught all my life that when I tell a story I have to tell the details but the Lis and Clark Venture was interesting to the American Indian people uh I call it the beginning of the end it was the beginning of my of the of the American Indian way of life see I I I call you a Native American you are Native Americans I am a crow American Indian Columbus gave me the name of an Indian when he came and I’m proud to be called an Indian I’m always very proud to be called an Indian because I’m very very proud of my Heritage and I’ve studied my Heritage my entire life I just turned 66 years old two days ago and I’ve got 60 years of history behind me yeah yeah thank you Howard thank you for sharing your history and your culture and your accumulated years of knowledge with us we appreciate that very much here in the ten many voices there are regular programs every hour on the

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Sam Robinson on Chinook history, culture, and federal recognition

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

well good afternoon and welcome to the tent of mini voices and core of Discovery 2 uh core Discovery 2 is a national traveling a multi agency Federal exhibit about the Lewis and Clark expedition it has a a partnership among many different federal agencies see many of them listed on the stage here the national parks service is the lead agency and those of us you see in uniform that are traveling with as exhibit work for the National Park Service what we do here in the ten many voices is we bring in a wide variety of presenters to share with us some different aspects of that Lewis and Clark expedition 200 years ago but also to look at the history and culture of all those various American Indian nations that we’re living here for thousand thousands of years before the arrival of Ls and Clark any the other Europeans or european Americans and we have with us a representative of one of those American Indian nations we have Sam Robinson he is chinuk he’s a chinuk council member and he is a longtime resident of Clark County he’s also involved in the Planning and Building of a let’s say for me one more time cotal plank house cotal plank house and he is going to talk and share with us some of the history and culture of the chinuk people so let’s give him a warm welcome here to the tanam voices behind my name’s Sam Robinson my father was Scott Robinson his mother was Dora Clark her mother was Annie Hawks her her father was John Hawk and his father was Tom Hawk huwel who who was a signer of the 1851 Treaty I like to I like to say this because uh um you know in Indian culture we really take a lot of pride of tracing back our history because for a long time in in Indian Country we were forced to forget a lot of our history so I like to talk about that who who were the who were the chinuk people you know the chinuk people they existed on this Columbia River out here and uh um oh these are some of my snapshots I thought I’d entertain you guys with anyway the chinuk people that existed along the Columbia River all the way from the Dows to the mouth of the Columbia River down the tilok up into the wiipop there was there was about 11 11 different tribes along the way and some of them you probably heard of you know up in the Northern Area you know the Wasco the click attack the molomo the wamit and the Cascades and a lot of those tribes were seated through treaties to uh uh to the warm up to the Warm Springs and and in the aamon and down into Grand Ron I myself today as a council member for the CH Nation I represent the uh the five Lower River tribes the clat the cath lamut the wiipop W kayak and the lower chinuk people we have about 2500 members there today the chinuk people they’re they were pretty dominant to the Columbia River they they lived in plank houses because of the uh uh they didn’t have to travel the river provided for them it provided smelt it provided sturgeon and steel head it provided Transportation so we hung along the river and we made our domain in the river it was uh one of the uh quotes that I like to use is Dr Steven Beckham from Louis and Clark College was our ethnic historian and he he uh did an interview for an article in the Seattle PI it made me proud when he said that uh the chinuk people were the the oceans of America you know because we knew how to uh manage that River just like the Pharaohs did their River and we have many many of uh Chiefs that along the river that that controlled it you know the Chiefs such as casino and and tomcin you know pre contact you know with the chinuk people you know we uh we were powerful back then because we did a lot of trade off the river to Indian tribes that were uh up in the desert area would come down and get fish oil that we had prepared and uh um and traded we traded for elk and and so forth and down to cotal Village down there it was thought that uh um Dr Ken Ames from Portland State thought that uh from their findings that the chinuk people were probably manufacturing armor made out of el tiddes and there was trading that as far as Northern California so there’s a vast trade going on in you know with the chinuk people and then Captain gray in uh uh Captain gray came into the river and then the whole new world of trade opened up for us you know and all of a sudden we’re getting things like iron and copper and and of beads and things that uh people definitely would want outside of our area so we were controlling all that Commerce in and out of the river and the chinuk the chinuk nation or the chinuk chinookan people along the river became so popular that other tribes outside the area would actually want to uh uh want to uh marry their daughters into the tribe for the endowments because there was large endowments that were arranged amongst the CH people so they would actually flatten their daughter’s heads flatten them back so that they would look Chinook and and to make them more appealing to the Chiefs so they could trade him their daughters into the into the tribe so they could have that connection with all the power that was going up and down the river and then of course in by the time Le lwis and Clark came in we’ve already been doing a lot of trading you know so when Lewis and Clark came in and they said you know we looked at these guys and they didn’t look any different than anybody else you know the other people were coming up the river the only thing differ these people were going down the river then actually they looked a little pathetic you know and they didn’t really have anything we wanted you know they came down and they were they were pretty down on their last maybe 10% of trade items and so forth and and it was just uh he didn’t have anything we wanted you know so we just kind of let him go on by you know by the time went to by Ridgefield you know a cotal village there The Village had 14 plank houses um but maybe about 800 people living there and we were wearing BB overalls and British jackets and we had Firearms you know so we were pretty seasoned to the trade but we didn’t let them start you know they got they got hunkered down in that dismal Niche and they thought it was the end of the world you know for four or five days or were hunkered down there and they kept many attempts to get around that uh around the dismo niche you know and uh they thought it was the end of it and then all of a sudden a chief from the C Lam Chinooks comes paddling across the river he’s standing in his canoe and he’s coming to trade give him food and uh they they just they couldn’t believe it you know first thing they thought that the canoes were magical and I tell you from my experience I think those canoes do take care of us I’ve been out in that Columbia River in our canoes and I have a lot of faith in in in in those canoes there’s one of ours that’s sitting out there right now and it’s they’re beautiful we hope to have some larger ones here you soon but so you know we talked them in the movie moving over to for cl you know they made that famous decision down there at the station Camp whether to move back up here to Stevenson or move down there to where for clot up is and they chose for clup that might have been their mistake because they got they got a little moist down there but you know we we we made sure that they they stayed alive and we we we fed them well and and when when of course when they left they signed over the fort to the chin people you know so uh um Lewis and Clark you know back then you know we we help them out today they helped us out you know I mean it was probably about four or 5 years ago we didn’t realize if we’re going to even participate in this whole entire commemoration um Council we had a tough decision to make what are we going to do you know and my my thoughts were to the council I was new on the council so I was a new voice uh was that one thing that the Lewis and Clark can give back to us is enlightened people on the plight of the chin people let everybody know where the chin people stand today and where our battle’s been for the last 33 years and so forth so there was something to be had you know and still the decision hadn’t been made yet so one day we put a canoe out on the water and it was it was uh weather kind of like this maybe not quite as cold but windy not rainy but windy and choppy down to mouth Columbia River we heard there were some reenactors that going to make a trial run down the river and there Scott Mandrell and his people so we’re curious we’re curious about those people and um when we did uh we waited in they waited in the river had a couple fish we were going to gift our elders they never came and then we get word hey they’re already on the beach they overturned their canoe about 20 mi up the river and they gave up so we came and we gifted them a fish you know and it was it was kind of a uh they didn’t expect anybody nobody came along and gifted them anything so they weren’t prepared to give back because it’s always traditional to give both ways and uh gifted them the fish they had no way to prepare it so we had an elder there he’s about 82 years old George leran pulls out a little pocket knife and he fets that fish out and Cooks it right on the beach for them and that at that time he had this bond with Scott Mandrell you know and Scott gets back to St Louis and he starts writing out he wanted to know who this George leren was and want to know where he lived and so forth and so George uh they finally got a hold of George and they when they kicked off in St Louis they FLW George and his wife Millie who makes wonderful baskets uh back to uh St Louis and uh it came time it came time for Jefferson to hang the medal on on Lewis there and stopped portraying Lewis uh stopped him and said George loger get in the crowd and he gives gied that metal to George and so there’s that Bond today and then then they made a trip to Bay Center and they picked up a little canoe called Little Wolf that Georgia carved out for his grandchildren and uh um little wolf they took Little Wolf and Little Wolf followed them all the way down the trail until it got to the plank house and then they gifted it back to George and Millie then and then so little wolf made the entire journey and little Wolf’s over up on the porch today you know it’s a great little canoe George’s got three other canoes in the works but they’re almost as long as the stage right now 82 years old and he’s still cares you know so and he’s also got he’s running cattle out there in Bay Center too it’s it’s just a great you know it was a great bond that we made that day and then we decided to move forward with the Lewis and Clark event and um and it has it has it every every place we go you know every place we put our canoes in the water people are happy to see us and then we we we feel good you know and then when we tell people of of of the uh of the tribe you know in in our in our plight well let me explain to you what you’re seeing here but I was just going to put this up here for you guys to see as a backdrop I’ll explain to you this is one of our ceremonies that you know in the last 5 years we decided we need to start bringing back our culture this particular ceremony here is our first fish ceremony and when you when you bring that first Salon into the river there’s certain ways you need to prepare it and there’s certain ways you need to treat the fish you know you uh you bring the fish up and one of the elders kicks the fish to kill the fish and then the children there they’re Fe putting berries in the fish’s mouth and feeding the fish and you honor the fish and then you cook him and everybody eats the eats from that fish and then when you’re done eating that fish you put it back into the river you put the bones back into the river and that allows that fish to go back out to the into the ocean and let all the other salmon know what kind of respect that you’ve treated him with and they’ll come up the river too some strange things have occurred you know we we’ve taken those bones out into the river in our canoes and you put them back into the water and we generally go out there on an incoming Tri tide so the water’s always coming up the river so we don’t get sucked out into the ocean and we’ve gone out there and you lay down the bones they’re on some cedar bowels and they’re floating there in the water you’re just taking and lay it down well one year we just set it down and those bones just shot out like a rocket right back out to the ocean and the wildlife they’re always around us too you know the eagles they come and check us out and the sea lions and the salmon so I think you know uh nature itself understands that the you know people are out there again and they really uh they they they like that we like that too this particular here is the opening of uh William Clark park it was a it was a great day and well how would you keep put it in anyway so so anyway so we we we decided to come out and we decided to go ahead and participate with certain LS and Clark events there were some of them that we couldn’t because of the politics of it but uh um but uh in real reality I I was um my cousin and I we we put it up to vote that we would come in the court too and and tell the story and the council voted to allow us to do that you know and today you know um today one of our biggest battles for the tribe is to uh is to uh battle for federal recognition um um in 1963 1967 we uh we were going to go for some uh some aid for a few of our elders that needed some some Medical Aid and the federal government came up and told us you know U what you what are you talking about you’re not a ferally recognized tribe anymore we’re like what are you what are you talking about well there was a head of the diaa that decided he would go ahead and swipe over 100 tribes off the list of recognized tribes and us being a landless tribe was it was a pretty easy pick you know for them even though it took an Act to Congress to uh take us away and that never occurred but meanwhile they were they were gracious enough to uh create a process for you to go through to become recognized again and so we we went through that process for 26 years and uh only only to be turned down and then right at the end of a uh right at the end of the Bush Administration Kevin gr saw it in himself to uh take take a look at those the recommendations that were being placed upon his desk because he didn’t believe that the research was done properly and he had actually hired an attorney to go through all the paperwork and they looked through all the paperwork and he called our Council back there and he said I want your Council to come back to DC I want you to be back here in 24 hours and I want you not to tell anybody that you’re coming so it was a great day you know uh they went back there and had a big ceremony and people came in down from the house and the Senate and everything to witness the signing of the the chinuk recognition and then we uh my granddaughter and then we went to a uh a 90-day appeal process and uh with that on the 89th day of the 90-day appeal process on our federal recognition the corol tribe decided that they would go ahead and appeal appeal us and uphold our recognition and um so we we appealed it we won the appeal and then the qus stated nine questions to Gail Norton on whether the process was even a good process to begin with and upheld it again for another year and a half well Gary Johnson our chairman happened to be back in Washington DC about 3 days before Neil uh mcb’s decision to uh whether to carry on with a recognition or not and he was there to kick off the Lewis and Clark and there was only three chair three chairmans from three tribes back there so we thought that this was this was a great sign for us that out of all these tribes that were along the trail that car was back there with George and Laura Bush having lunch only only 3 days before the decision came at the end of uh at the end of the uh week about 4:30 Gary’s getting on the plane to come back and uh he gets a call from the the Bia and the B told they told him as they were close the doors that they turned us down so today this this lady right here she raised my my uh my uncle down on Goose Point Goose Point is a small village in Bay Center it was over over the over the uh Bluff it was down in some swamp land and uh the reason there was a village in goo Goose Point there is because we we refused to sign a few of the treaties some of our treaties were ratified therefore they they forced us off the rivers to hide from the from the military and when we went down onto the when we went down onto the uh uh into the wiip we had to hide in lands that nobody else wanted anyway but the good story about this one is that Philip might He he’ll be speaking here in a couple weeks he he was raised by chicha his grandmother there and he didn’t even speak English until he was 5 years old and went in the kindergarten but he still remembers you know ch and and living down on Goose Point and have a happy life you know it was a good life for him it was you know and he learned how to respect the land and he definitely uh she kept him working hard you know chopping firewood and and everything going there that’s my great great great grandmother Catherine George she was a wealthy person she’s wearing a lot of detali in there she’s got a nice fourpoint huts and B blanket on that’s that’s my grandmother I was unfortunate I never was able to meet her but anyway so um you know we we we battle ahead but you know as a tribe for recognition but we we also we’re proud we’re not waiting we’re not waiting for things you know I mean the triy we’re trying to bring back our culture things such as Lewis and Clark such as the plank house you know uh really helped us bring back a lot uh the thing about the plank hous is you know all of a sudden now you’re starting to learn how to uh uh use cedar again you know making Cedar houses you know making Cedar headbands you know gas GA in and so forth you know because the chunuk people that they were they were heavy on the Gathering they made they they used uh Spruce root from the spruce trees to weed baskets and that that Spruce Roots would swell up and and make you water type baskets so that you could cook in you know cedar cedar was the Tree of Life Cedar provided you with clothing in the inner bark you could weave clothing you could make canoes um you could uh make plank houses you could also uh uh they used it for diapers for their babies you know so I mean um there there was a a lot given from the earth there the plank house is a beautiful project I don’t know if many of you have been out there it’s over in Ridgefield at the Wildlife Refuge but a lot of a lot of heart and soul went into went into that building to build this this the replica I well I don’t even like to call it a replica anymore I just call it the most modern chip PL house today cuz there was so much life in a plank house you know I mean the family’s been gather in there during the winter and each house each house was actually a um you had a head of a household in there and there could be 60 to 100 people living in that house and he was responsible for the Health and Welfare of all those people in that house so he would live on the wealthy end of the house you know and uh he uh he was took care of everybody from his immediate family down right on down to the slaves you know that have been taken in from other tribes and it was warm it was cozy there was a lot going on there a lot of Storytelling there a lot of basket you being made maybe could be Nets that were being made from netts or uh a lot of stones and so forth to be pecked to make fishing wngs but we lived on the river therefore water water was everything you know we had no need to move off from the river and today we still would like to be stay on the river but a lot of our ceremonies like I said a lot of our ceremonies are first fish ceremonies we’re bring like naming ceremonies we got three canoes that we’ve named just recently uh we hope to get more canoes on the water uh we’re we’re putting together a canoeing Society with grand Ron because there’s a lot of chimin people in the grand Ron from this Middle River area and they’re recent they’re right now they’ve got a 35ft canoe in the works and and we hope to uh build a 36t CU we want to have a bigger one and um we we just recently paddled the paddle to ilwa you know it was our first time to being in the paddle and we paddled uh uh 9 days a little over 110 miles up through up through the sound and next year um we plan on paddling our second year we’re going to paddle to maau and uh we uh the shortest route seems to be up the coast but I don’t know if feno allow us to land on their Beach or not so we’ll probably end up going up through the sound but uh it’s great you know it’s a great to be able to stop in every one of those Villages and you’re accepted onto their shorelines and they they feed you and and there’s a lot of drumming and dancing and just it’s it’s just a great and then you pick up the next morning it might be 4:00 in the morning you start paddling again and you’re tired by the time you reach the shores but they take care of you again and you do this day after day until you reach your final destination and then they usually have about a three or four day party going on there today we exist down in Chinook down in the coast we we’ve existed in a uh I believe is about a 1926 School building uh we able to they’ve been able to provide us with a space down there for the last 33 years one of the hard things is right now is I know the school the school uh District down there wants to get rid of that building um they they don’t want to turn it over to a large developer U they’re hoping that the tribe can somehow come up with some monies to buy it but we don’t have the money so we’re hoping that we can work out some kind of a long-term lease with them it’s not much we just had a commemoration event down there a couple weeks ago uh four days we’ve had a lot of free salmon dinners and and we did some drumming and ceremonials and talked about our culture and our past and history and it it was it was a great time had a lot of friendly faces come down we had a lot of people from up here a lot of people that I see up here every day came down to visit us and and uh just to just for people to come down and say hey w wow this is how you exist you guys deserve a little bit better than this and we said well this is just we’re we’re glad to have this right now we move forward you know I’ve had people come up to me and say well chin you’re chin you got a casino I said no that’s not us we don’t have a casino in fact we voted in 1999 not to go into gaming you know had we had we voted going into gaming we may be fly recognized today but we we we didn’t want to sell our souls to to become fly recognized we thought there was a better way to do that um but then then people are just just ODed by the fact that the you know the chin tribe is not a fairly recognized tribe because most of them say hey I’ve read about you in school you know and sure you’re still there you you’re in the journals you got to be around you know the Louis and Clark journals you know I said yeah you know but but we’re not we’re not we’re working our way back I said it may take a a federal lawsuit or it may take a bill from Congress you know so I always promote the fact that if you see your Congressional people your Senators to you know lobby lobby for that chinuk recognition and I think with this Lewis and Clark this whole Lewis and Clark scenario it’s really uh brought a light to the to that fact and more people are putting a little more pressure on the politicians it seem like politicians a little more apt to talk to us nowadays so I we really appreciate any of that that you can do for us we did a reenactment with a lady Washington out in Baker Bay and it was it was a beautiful day and they they they FL flew our F flag for us all the way up from uh Oregon all the way up into Baker Bay any day in the out on the canoe is a great day and any day drumming is a great day also we’re going to be doing a reenactment this Saturday too um prob about 12:00 out here by uh by Hong and Larry we’re going to do a reenactment with one of the long boats from Lady washingon do a trade reenactment weather providing of course weather probably won’t bother us too much we don’t mind the rain you not too bad that there is at uh chinuk Point down there by Fort Columbia um there’s a Cove down in there where people used to sit down inside the cove and wait to watch the ships come up into into the mouth of the Columbia River so they could go out and trade trade was trade you know I mean we could like it refer to the trade and how we controlled the trade once once the first ship came through and we realized that they wanted they wanted those Furs we started stuffing those plank houses full with Furs you know and we start trading with the other tribes and really bringing them in there and in the plank houses there was there would be trenches or storage facilities dug underneath the bunks or Hind to the floor so um when Lou and Clark Ste into the plank houses for the first time down there at capotal they didn’t see a whole lot going on as far as storage but there was a lot of stuff stored on the floor that they didn’t see and uh so we would fill those plank houses full and trade out and build that Empire one of the one of the sad stories is that uh in about the 1850s

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Omaha elders on community life, ceremonies, and cultural continuity

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

maybe uh their education and different things it’s up to them the idea is you know it’s our opportunity to preserve these things and um uh so that our children may be able to use them in school and identify later on they’ll know this is this is my who is my grandfather it’s my grandma so we’re it’s our opportunity to do that so first um I’d like to introduce my brother here Elmer blackberg and then uh my aunt sitting next to him is wife Nancy and my aunt Grace over there and my aunt Isabelle gin and my sister Blan I wanted to uh they’ll Pro they’ll introduce themselves again but I wanted to say that so but first we’re going to start with my brother here again uh I say good morning to each of you from uh what my brother was saying uh uh I really believe in the tradition about Omaha people but this morning I’ll be going against the Traditions uh What uh my grandfather used to tell me not to talk about yourself don’t brag on yourself people know how you live but just not my brother said to talk a little bit about about our lives Omaha reservation so so I’ll will be talking about myself and what I have done during my lifetime I was born the on reservation in 1921 I was born in the hospital which was named after M grad uh Susan LEF pikot Hospital in Wild Hill Nebraska and I uh completed High School in Walt Hill Nebraska from kindergarten to the 12th grade following my graduation from high school I left the reservation here and uh went to California and found employment that was during uh the war time 1941 when I went out there and sometimes when I tell some people that I had gone to California them I tell them I couldn’t go any further cuz I wasn’t that good a swimmer to uh swim to another country from there but I was out there uh 2 years and uh and then I I went into the service uh some of my high school friends I was um kept in touch with them we wrote letters to each other they wrote to me and said they were going into the service so I quit my job and join the service like they did 1943 to 1946 and all that time when I was in a service I never came back to the reservation I was gone 5 years I was in the service 3 years and following uh my service I returned back to the reserv to visit my parents and my mother asked me one morning what are your plans now since you’re out of the service well since I’m out of service now I’m going to go back out to California and probably go to school at uccla and uh after I told her that at night I’d hear her saing so I finally asked her what the problem was she said you’ve been gone for 5 years and never came home and and uh I don’t want you to leave there’s uh colleges around here that you can go to so she kind of talked me out of it and I enrolled at the way State College at way Nebraska 1946 and uh I knew I had to go to work and earn a living and so I started in the summer 1946 summer school and I went R stated on through finish my 4 years College in 3 years cuz I know I had to go out and earn a living so following uh my graduation from high College uh I taught in a a public school Northwest of your called L Nebraska I majored in physical education so I coach sou Sports at the high school after 3 years there I went to work with the beer of IND Affairs and education and uh got employment in the southwest uh Colorado on a southern you reservation at ignasio Colorado and I was there four years uh teaching and coaching Sports here after 4 years the school closed as a uh boarding school and Ray Town they Consolidated with a public school and uh so they couldn’t find me another job in the physical education so I had enough courses in college and I was qualified as a counselor so I went into guidance and counseling programs in high schools and 1975 I guess 1960 uh I went to Lawrence Kansas to has school IND Junior College there and I was there for 15 years and uh I was a guidance and in a guidance and counseling program there and uh when I retired there I was a director of a that program at that Junior College and retired in 1975 and came back to the reservation uh prior to that I had three more years to be an Indian service to get 30 years in to retire and at that time I planed to retire in Drang of Colorado or Flagstaff Arizona and I talked to uh the tribe offered me a a job back here on a reservation as a director of a program called a action program uh which was a heavy equipment training for our young people and uh so I had opportunity to come back here uh after following my retirement from a Bureau of Indian Affairs I talked to my wife about it and I said you like to move back to Macy so we kind of talked about it at that time I our mother and our mother both mothers were living and they were up in years so we just we kind of determine our returning home again said we said well we might as well move home and be near our mothers so that’s what we did so I had uh com back to the reservation I had some good experience again um following my employment Indian Action Program uh well even prior to that uh uh I told the tribal council I don’t think I’ll would be qualified to be a director of that program cuz uh I don’t know not anything about heavy equipment let alone uh Learners in anything about my car I said well you don’t have to know anything about it you’re going to be a director you’ll have instructors that can teach it so I I took a job and came home and uh I was there for 5 years uh directing the program The Ed Action Program then election came up with Tribal Council or tribal government some people asked me to run for travel Council and I told them about think it’s too soon for me I’ve been gone a long time I’ve been away from here for about uh over 30 years when I left home here so I told him I didn’t think I was home long enough to burun for that but uh at that time uh we were having problems on our financial problems among our Omaha people so I thought I’d go ahead and grun for Council maybe I could uh be of some help to my people that was 19 1980 1983 I was a tribal chairman of the Omaha tribe and uh so following that uh my uh term as tribal chairman a kind of quite on temp retirement again and uh uh I was kind of fortunate to be elected as president of the Native American Church of North America the national Church organization in 1985 to 887 and following that again I returned back to work with the Omaha tribe uh with the vocational education program affiliated with Western Iowa Tech in s City Iowa and following that 99 again I ran for Tribal Council again and uh uh I don’t know whether that was fortunate or unfortunate but I became a tribal chairman again and uh through 1999 to 2001 so that’s uh about my experience I retired and so came back to my retirement and come to work again with Pier thank you talk about yourself where you was born your parents your children you went to school what Macy was like Macy was like when I went to school yeah I’m Nancy Blackbird my maiden name is Miller my parents were Bertha and John Miller both Omaha we were raised on a reservation here I had five brothers one sister and myself but I’ve lost all of my brothers except one and I’ve lost my sister and there’s just my brother and I left now here on the reservation and I went to school here at Macy at the time when I went to school they used to call it Macy Day School and I started here from kindergarten finished to 12th and after graduation we didn’t have any money so I I couldn’t go on to school so uh later that summer I I uh got married and I had four children two sons and two daughters we have one adopter daughter and uh I belong to the Thunder Clan my Indian name is that’s a name given to me by my parents my Indian name but I have a lot of relatives a lot of cousins and right now I have a lot of grandchildren great grandchildren how many stores were in Macy then see there was one two three at Le and there was uh two or three cafes in ma post office was there a post office in Macy yeah we had post office post office talk a little bit about the hanging if you could well the other night yeah you can talk about the other night well my husband and I are handicapped so we don’t hardly go anywhere anymore we stay home and the only time we go is when I go up to get groceries and he sits in the car and waits so I don’t get no help from him I have to pick out all my groceries and when I get home I have to hold it all in again so right now he’s really retired all he does is sit in front of the TV and watch TV all day and I have to do all the work around the house sometimes I get disgusted Stu with him and I tell him I feel like a slave around here all you do is sit around breakfast you come and sit at the table and wait for your breakfast so I guess he’s earned it he’s worked all these years and taking care of us taking care of my family even my grandchildren he helped me raise so I’m thankful for that where did you live in Macy we lived uh we lived west of Macy for a while with my grandparents I remember as a little girl and then from there we moved east of Macy my uh folks to took care of an old man his name was Ed Mitchell he had a home out there but there was no one there to take care of him so he had asked my folks to come out there and live and take care of him so that’s what they did he lived in a l c and we lived in the house but and my older sister used to wash his clothes and get him and bring him to to the house for breakfast for his meals and then when he passed away well uh for doing all those things for doing his long and going after him and bringing him to the house for his meals he went and left the Native American Church staff to her and later on my parents took over that staff so right now that staff has gone on to my nephew Milton Miller so that’s how he uh come in on that staff and that’s all my folks got the staff the Native American Church staff then after we moved to uh after moved to Kansas I don’t remember how many years we lived down there but like in 75 like he said we moved back to the reservation and uh he worked for the tribe tribe and I also worked for the tribe as a uh sh um from Johnson program getting children off to boarding schools and helping them fill out their applications and and uh when it’s time for them to come home I go up there and supervise and chaperon the kids home and after that program ended I work the health center as a activity director and it was too stressing for me to see our elders like they were I keep getting sick so I finally had to quit and I haven’t worked since and I’ve been a hom maker since then thank you you my name is GRA my parents is Harry Walker my mid name’s Walker and my mother is from San tribe Del Walker wolf and I lived in Mas born raised in Mason and I went to school and I worked through all my lives since I was 16 old I worked here and there so that’s how I made my living I worked at the school I worked all over a senior citizen and at um Health Center I worked through all my life ever since I was 16 years old how I made my living and I was married 56 years my husband passed away May 1st he was sick he couldn’t anymore and he worked at uh he working at that one progr they used to work forgot what you call that progr but he worked there that’s all I got to say thank you an Grace my name is Isel and mother Je carival hold it closer and is hold it closer to you yes sir yeah my name’s is my mother is a j CL and my stepdad is Charlie B rais me then I went on and on so I went to work to me Nebraska then and I got three children to live with me and then could tell us what your children’s name are huh what what’s your children’s name are oh yeah Robert and um Carol and Louise and Harris they don’t what said he didn’t dance um sh and got I mean and um Carol names uh shag and my girl name is m time and they don’t live with me they all live in oh I just got two sons living with me and they take care of me that way I was you live in Macy all your life oh yeah I live in Macy all my life where did you all go to school at me you go to no boarding school it’s School in Flo and me and then I went from there on I say thank you to my Isabelle give it to good morning my name is uh blanch Robinson Harvey and I come from the hunga people and my parents were Bice Walker and my dad was Albert Walker I’m Robin and U I had nine sisters and brothers and there’s only two of us left and I grew up in Macy west of Macy and I lived in a a big house first time and then I went to school and May see life was hard for us at the time we had no running water we had no inside plumbing and when we missed the school bus we had to walk when we missed the bus at at night we had to walk home and during storms and rainy weathers we had to walk to school now I seen it now nowadays it’s so convenient for on these kids because school bus goes right up to their door and pick them up and I was that uh our kids here could see how we lived we Tred to tell them because everything is convenient for them now they have indor plumbing and hot water cold and hot water in the house and I wish they could see how we we lived and how we were they it seem like everything is so convenient for them now I I went to school here in Macy and I got my GED and I went to school in Northeast College in Northfork and I got married and adopted four children two boys and two girls some of them were my relatives and one was Sue and I during my I married a Caucasian and his name was Ron Harvey and we were in construction he worked in construction many years when I traveled with him and during those two in two weeks of the year he pick a he like to travel and he pick a place and that’s where he went so I went all over I went to Africa China uh Japan Australia went on cruises so I seen all these people how they live and I wish all our kids here could see how the country is how how it is for them it’s it’s so big and huge and it’s you learn a lot of things when you travel and see different people how they live and all that and I came back here to to Macy to live and my husband’s retired and I live uh about 3 miles from here and I teach school now I teach culture I grew up in a home that my parents talked Indian I understood but I married a non-indian and I never talk my language but since I came back and I grew up I I’m trying to learn my language now and I’m trying to teach these young ones here to carry this on because it’s dying out because our kids are they learn this language at school but when they go home the kids their mothers and fathers don’t speak it so it’s just we’re trying to teach them now and that’s what I do at school I’m going back into teaching and trying to carry our tradition on of our language so it never dies out so thank you to um my relatives here uh there’s a lot more that I know that they can share that uh uh I was just thinking myself you know when I was a little boy my sister over there she used to be the boxing coach for a while my sister blanch I never forget that I say and it’s real hard it’s a difficult thing for uh some of us to talk about or to just get up in front and talk and I really appreciate my elders for coming up and doing the best they can because this is important and I want to say thank you to the uh National Park Service and uh uh for having this and giving us this opportunity the park rangers uh to be able to come to this T many voices and to be able to uh talk and have my elders um uh involved here so that uh uh years to come our children will be able to uh identify with them and they’ll know who they are so I wanted to say thank you like that to my elders my brother Elmer my Aunt Nancy my aunt Grace and my aun Isabelle uh I was thinking about that I was going to help her out because I know one of her sons Carol his got Indian name is the same as my dad’s shun number I was I always call him that all the time when I see him so um I want to say thank you like that round tips um the way we say uh when we end things talking like this we say HEI in our language it means all my relatives and say thank you I that behalf of Elders um uh we want to have some more Grandpa juicy can you uh we want to have some more Elders come up we’re going to set up and uh do the same thing again and ask my sister if she come over and my other sister here if they come up and U share as I said any questions questions yeah if there’s any questions for uh any of my relatives here Wanda there will bring them microphone up uh so you can ask questions if you have any questions for our relatives here I really enjoy holidays of Christmas and Easter and 4th of July I was wondering an example of a holiday memories when you were young uh in particular holidays that you Bree maybe oh you cated holidays when you were young well the holidays I usually went with my parents like here on a reservation to social activities and take uh some of you people came here working with this L and Clark experienced one of those the other night uh it’s about the only traditional uh social activity we have left to called hand game and uh they have that at different uh holidays and even different celebrations birthdays anniversaries like that and uh sometimes uh uh we have a dance here that uh were given to us by the kaiwa tribe we call it Gord Dan we have that too never doubt then that we some family sponsor a traditional War dancing uh so they have that too some of our social activities thank you anybody else have any questions for the elders we’ve got up here very opportunity okay well I would like to thank all of you for coming today and for sharing your stories with us I know it’s difficult um to do that but we sure appreciate it it’s a great opportunity to get this sun film for many many generations to come so thank you so much we go BEC um yeah we kind of he was asking about naming children uh some of our young younger people have forgotten the traditional ways uh when we name them we follow some of our religious ways of uh doing it uh anyway uh we name our children at Daybreak early morning hours we named them and uh uh all the reason uh we were told that uh good spirits around and and they said God we hear your prayers and we use tobacco I mentioned tobacco in our talk about Native American Church the the smoke uh takes the prayers to God so I’ll prepare tobacco and use toac when uh I named him and and pray in language and tell God the name that she’s going to go by and and try the families and other people know her that name so I do that and then after we name the baby uh the mother brings it to me I hold it my arms and I talk to it in OB language the kind of uh life that we live and is not an easy life difficult time and just he will be facing all those problems and uh going to have to make every effort to uh to be strong and yeah and uh and to be a good person to uh help people respect to Elders I talk to in our overall language and that’s one of the ways uh we do that tell them to be good to the parents CU someday I said they’re going to depend on you to take care of them and that’s what uh and we advise the parents side too uh you take good care of them teach them good things and uh cuz someday you’re going to depend on them to take care of you when you get old so and and we want people to respect them so teach them the good ways of life is kind of advice we give them so that’s uh one of the ways that uh is our procedure of David children usually the baby smiles to see they say they are understand when when uh we’re talking to them and the baby will just lay there smile yeah we uh even like she said the the young people they understand you know uh they even understand when there’s lack of security in the home you know the parents don’t treat them right they know that even as small as they are they know that and sometimes you think they not paying attention even when they’re watching TV or we talk about some things they turn around and ask us a question about what we said or tell us something what we had said so there they listen more than uh we realize you know yeah they’re aware of stuff yeah our grandchildren do anyway we think they’re not paying attention or listening to what we’re talking about but they actually are are listening cuz they all say and what did you say grandma or what did you say grandpa yeah they’re turn around and ask yeah now is the if the naming ceremony then is the first ceremony that a child would go through what is like the next stage of life is there like another ceremony like when a young man becomes a man or there used to be a long time ago but but we don’t do that anymore what were some of the older ceremonies that you had as you went through different stages of Life do you remember going through some like when you were a young girl or when you got married or no not really uh a long time ago um they uh named them over again and when when the trial is is uh not well there all right we’ll try and do it again hopefully it won’t be too much Jingles going on oh come some more maybe some more jingle we’ll turn it back on we’ll see if we can do it maybe it won’t be too noisy it doesn’t happen very of but once in a while they rename their child you might be having a a discipline problems they renamed it give them a name that somebody has a good reputation and they want it to be that way so a different day and they pray like tell they pray do that and the other one is they may have a health problem they may be having a health problem and uh uh they Chang their name they give somebody’s name that’s a good house and may God will answer will recover from whatever heal probably they might have that’s what all the time they renamed their children do you remember other ceremonies that you went through as a Young Man I mean as you got older did when was like I know this they’re getting ready for the Sundance and often like did you go through the Sundance as you were getting older like what was the first time you went to a Sundance well the sun dance uh we don’t really fly get involved in the sun dance they come from Another Side just new here now oh okay the uh Su did that subject but some of our people went up there participated and uh uh they were authorized to do that here on our reservation so in recent years they were doing that but uh we go to it go to the subes here any way and maybe one or two away from here because some of our family members were involved in dancing in it and to kind of give them moral support we get involved with it and those have sometimes dance sacrifice for sh die on our beh we get involved with with or maybe you sponsor somebody who’s going through the sun dance some people do that was something they did here not did not so it is Sue like the sweat Lou ceremonies has always been here since the beginning of time of the Omaha people and I like my on Native American Church in this early 1900s we start that religion was shared with us by the way of people and uh so that did originate uh here on that reservation how old do you have to be to go into the sweat lunch is it and I do men and women both go to sweat obviously they don’t together in the same they take turns yeah they how old do you have to be to the fames can participate in there’s there’s no uh age uh requirement or no age limit to participate if you believe in that way of worship uh uh you go and uh just like my son uh I was away from here and uh we lived uh away from here uh I was getting involved in our Native American Church on Omaha reservation and uh that’s what one of my sons asked Dad how old you have to be to participate in the day American church we have worship and I said there’s no age once you want believe in it and want join you can go any time so he start to go with me whenever I go way he got involved in how old were you the first time you went to a sweat do you remember to a sweat mhm I really did U she and I moved back to a reservation in 1975 and uh and the sweat LS was here then and uh and she uh uh start having health problems uh she couldn’t walk she was in chair and uh so one family was having a sweat l a sweat ceremony at their home invited us said to might help her so that’s not we started to go that must be about what 1976 or 77 we started to go to sweat L ceremonies okay but uh Sunday we start getting involved in it maybe about uh soon after that yeah about 20 years ago cuz we had an adopted son uh in fact he adopted us and his parents and uh he was Su dancing and sacrifice for us so that’s how we got involved with sances oh so there’s no uh no uh age requirements okay whatever they feel like they want to go and participate I didn’t know if they had to go through certain stages or learn certain things before they would be allowed to participate they learn while they’re in there ah okay so their participation they learn oh and we teach them what little we know about it you know and we’re not fully uh involed in a subance uh some of the rituals that they go through but uh but we’re where’re Le they too yeah well that’s good now when you two got married did you get married in in the church in the Native American church or did you get married out in the white world white man’s church or justice of peace I didn’t know and following that uh uh we had one of my elders uh in fact uh he’s closely related to her as a spiritual leader and we went to him and told him that we got married and we’ like to have our marriage blessed in the Native American church with so he did that for us oh okay but some do get married in the Native American Church way and we have a nonan uh he was a Methodist preacher uh asked her and I about it uh the ways of the UN American church prayer service so we shared that with him and uh he uh uh sat in a prayer service with me it’s all all night service and uh I explained to him each time they did something uh in the uh uh service T night in the service and then even our prayer songs when they sang those prayer songs I interpret to him the Omaha words that were in there they’re comparable to the hymns that you have in your church so that next morning uh when we came out of the TP uh I asked him I said well my friend uh I said what do you think about our uh humble way of worship he said you know uh I can’t find words to describe how I really feel spiritually he said I have never felt like this and so my own church he told me so that made me a feel pretty good but God must have showed him something through that alter I was talking about and he believed in it so much that he even got married in a Native American Church way can you tell me something about what the marriage ceremony is like in the Native American church or is are you not allowed to talk about that well we never got married that’s just uh what the procedures hard in there uh only I thing that uh I assume the marriages uh in a uh uh sometimes uh after midnight uh they have a special prayer for them they come in front of the altar but like they do around the in the church and uh pray for them and tell God about their marriages and and uh uh uh uh they can bless them in two ways one with a uh Cedar smoke bless up with the cedar smoke or they use water too we use water at at American church too and uh so that’s all the way I I know uh uh and they usually read the marriage vows to them too in there oh okay now does somebody else read the vows do you write your own vows know the the one that’s marrying you in there he’ll read them to you oh okay okay we went to one in Wisconsin one year that was pretty cuz he was dressed in all by bu skin they dressed traditionally yeah Buck get dress bu get l sure it’s very nice I think they did that uh hours after cery there we go um now are there other like ceremonies or anything that you do in your home on a daily BAS basis like when you get up in the morning are there certain prayers or rituals that you go through or at the end of the day is there anything that you have from your culture that you do every day in your regular life well we don’t do it every day but uh every now and then holidays and uh uh birthdays for our children grandchildren but we say a Grace at the table uh we burn Cedar follows some the native americ churchway burning Cedar and blessing our family with the c and even bless our home with it too when we do that that’s about time but we can pray whenever you know like before we go to bed I usually say say a prayer before I fall asleep and then uh in the mornings I used to get up and go out to our fireplace and go out there and pray but I haven’t been able to lately so just haven’t been doing it right yeah and I’ve met other people from other tribes that will um every morning we’ll do like a purification ceremony or smudge or you know burn something they have sort of different little rituals that they do to keep in touch with you know their culture yeah traditionally too uh I’ve always heard our elders uh say that uh a long time ago our omahas uh start start today with a prayer but I think so many of our young people we don’t do that anymore you know we just get up and go to a breakfast table and give thanks and pray for the day that we’re going to enjoy and and the kind of a day that God has given us blessed us with uh I think just like uh the water is real sacred to our Omaha people they say it’s life lifegiving has healing powers but uh so many we take it for granted we we don’t uh uh think of it that way anymore even if not made it the same way you know right and you said about going out to the fireplace you know to say prayers and stuff is fire or is it smoke that’s used more in the ceremony is it more is smoke what’s in our teepee they build fire in there and that’s what we call fireplace we have a teepe ground out there okay that we take care of and okay I used to go out there in the mornings oh okay just stand out there face East and pray right you know one of the things that my wife and I do too since she talked about that fireplace uh well I go on long trips or vacation or something uh I take tobacco we go out to the fireplace and offer a prayer for safe journey that we might meet our friends and relatives in good health and uh ask God to protect us and reur us in a safe Manner and uh leave a to back over there at the fireplace and that and uh I have a adopted brother in Oklahoma he’s a p Indian he’s he’s about 96 years old now wow I think he’s 92 or 93 but he’s up in the years and uh uh he honored us to pray for his family uh in the Native American church wayway so we went down there and we did that for him so he tells us not says uh you did that every morning I’ll go to the fireplace and offer a prayer he said so oh that’s good so he has that much respect for a native amican churchway and a fireplace uh when you review the uh my presentation on the Native American Church uh why we feel that fireplace is real sacred because the fire is sacred we we feel that it’s life lifegiving it also has healing powers so uh that’s why we uh believe so much that way and the respect that we have for the fire in early years uh uh before they had gas and troped and all that uh people here go to Timber cut wood for their home for fire like lot of people still do today have fireplaces they go cut W for that before he cuts the tree down he prays and tells God what he’s going to use that word for for fire light and to prepare food and probably for healing purposes they do that today I don’t think a lot of our young people do anything yeah wouldn’t they do the same thing like years and years ago when they would go hunting same thing if you were to take another the life of another living thing it was to do the same thing as to have a prayer as to why you were going to kill this Buffalo or this deer or whatever the same thing yeah yeah they they did that uh there might be a few that do that today I don’t know but uh ask God for forgiveness to take the life of the animal to they to use it for food food or shelter or whatever they can use it for they tell God about that right now they go deer hunting most of time so I think they I’m sure they pray see before they kill him or when they’re going out there while they’re sitting out there waiting I’m sure they pray and tell God what they’re going to use that for yeah animal now when you were very young did either of you like learn how to ride horses or anything like that did people were people still riding horses out in this area because I’m guessing there were not very good roads or anything like that for automobiles to get around or anything so did you all ride horses around when you were here when you were growing up do you remember riding horses yeah we used to ride horses yeah did you m in fact I don’t know how uh my parents did it but uh when I was growing up I had three ponies and uh one was in between a Shipman and a a big horse and I had one of them and I had a pinto it was a black and white pinto and a sorrow Pony and uh and I used to ride along the river up north here uh with uh three other guys and after we moved back to the reservation here uh uh one of still living that I used to ride horses with but I didn’t remember him I was little boy about like these kids went they riding horses he used to say well remember El how we used to ride horses up there and they had to spring up there to where we rode our PES and we’d water our pis there W he talk about that too but uh he’s gone now it’s where the old mission was there that spring was there the Old Mission Old Mission that’s where our school used to be when the missionaries came they build a school there teach our well how long ago was this it’s like the 1920s or something or before that yeah imagine it was in uh around uh in early 20s probably and where was this this you said there was an Old Mission that’s what they called it Old Mission School it’s north oh okay is it closer to where the wneo where the Mission School is up there or not that far no not that far it’s just out out in the country north of uh Macy there oh okay it’s not very far either later years that’s when they call it Old Mission people inever uh some of their parents went to school there grandparents went to school there they call it Old Mission uh did they have to go to school there I mean was that you know like a boarding school type of thing or they went there that’s what it was a kind of boarding school they had to stay at that mission go to school yeah yeah that was probably the only school at that time on a reservation yeah that was on the reservation yeah other than that how far away would you have to go to go to school well later later years you had these country schools you know different sections like uh prob from here to decater uh I know there was one before you get to deater it’s South South near uh near these Indian homes that’s where most of them were built did a lot of your friends go to boarding schools or did they mostly go to the the little country schools that were nearby I think most of them went to boarding schools uh our age group most of them went to boarding schools uh real far away I mean it’s quite I don’t know how far Genoa is maybe 15 miles out yeah they go there and a pipe show in Minnesota used to be a Bard school there yeah and some of our uh uh tribal members went to school there and South Dakota place they called flandro South Dakota and Pier South Dakota they have Bard schools there right and they had a mission schools that a lot of our tribal members went to even up here Wago was Catholic School right they went and so the Mission schools would have been on the reservation and the boarding schools would have been farther away a big town just like just like now a lot of our children go clear to Oklahoma to boarding schools W California yeah now is that by choice I mean that’s a good thing to be able to go to the boarding school like that or it’s not not that good that’s a long way for a young person it is to go but they want to go yeah it’s not mandatory they they want to go they put it out applications they accept it uh they go there but uh I think it was uh but middle 1970s uh well I guess during Reagan’s Administration guess he he was too much for idiots rean uh while he was a president uh they closed several of federal boarding schools uh some were in towns and they became affiliated with the public school there and uh like in Oklahoma there several Bard schools that were closed by the government there no longer barding schools and uh even at that time uh uh even a uh Public Health budget uh uh President Reagan was having his administration cutting budget did at he programs yeah so difference hang on one second I’m going to change the tape again e for

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Pat Jones on Lewis and Clark Bicentennial at Omaha Nation

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

Al got got four of make sure secur well be here all day long we can take up the slack on this take her back we got we’ve got a fourth one right we have a fourth one we we have a fourth row okay you’re going to have to do three take Mo this one over here this you brought four ropes up or did drop sry this this beautiful country up here to Rolling Hills yeah power uncover got get for recover oh know hey he again day over ho love down hey cor three cheers to the Maha Nation J off pil secure your pil facing to the left hey out right ready step you h okay are we going to do that we’d like to invite everyone to come on in and have a seat we have a little presentation that is going to continue so please morning my name is Pat Jones and I’m the chief of interpretation for the L Park National Historic Trail and for the cor Discovery te project I’d like to welcome you this morning here to the T of many voices I HED you enjoyed the short ceremony we had here this morning uh doing a reagin of a flag raising that occurred fairly near here over 200 years ago and you’ll hear a little bit more about that uh historical event here shortly but we have some presentations that we would like to do and some individual that I would like to introduce you to but first of all I would like to thank the Omaha people for our wonderful visit here it was way too short we’ve only been here for uh less than a week though we have been on and off the reservation uh meeting with individuals everything from organizing a wonderful hand game that we had on Sunday evening to uh planning the events that you’ve seen over the last couple days so the National Park Service is very grateful to the Omaha people from W welcoming us into their uh community and into their homes and I think we’ve made a lot of wonderful friends here um I would particularly like to uh thank wona sere who has been one of our main contacts here and organizing this event as well as Pierre mer who I don’t think is with us this morning but uh he is uh busy getting ready for the Sundance that is coming up uh so he’s got his hands full both trying to organize the events here and other things that are going on in the community so um and what I would like to do now is uh introduce those of you that don’t know him uh give an opportunity to uh make some remarks uh the chairman of the tribal council for the alah tri Donald gr cool I want to thank everybody for being here today um the relatives and among people you know maybe some I don’t know right off that are visiting here from the city I apologize for that for not knowing you um you it’s always a an honor to be treated as well as we have by the park service and by geted with all these soldiers and everything it was also you know honor to watch what happened there you know something that uh took place it’s part of our history 200 years ago and so I think I can speak for all the M that are here that we one of the very few tribes that have never been removed from their Homeland this is our original Homeland you can he over you know 300 years so I think that’s really says something about how we’ve survived and how we’ succeeded for all these years and I think uh the people that have more knowledge of our and our culture and everything should be up here and I I kind of feel misplaced up here but I think we have a lot of individuals in here that you can visit and we tell you about not only our spirituality but our real Heritage as as it’s grown through all these years these of these individuals that were presenting up here seeing and are part of that and they’ve carried it on through all these years with their ancestors as well so I think it speaks well not only our pres people but our our ancestors you know that they have enough time took enough time to hand all these things down to family generation to generation so I’m really grateful for that again before I closer I would like to also mention that we’re crating our 200 uh years of power and that’s going to be on through the 26th August 26th through 29th so anybody’s in the area you know your more wel to come down and see some our original dances with that I I’ll close I to thank everyone the Park Service Pat all her staff Adam and I just met and say a real special thanks for the prayer that was given by one of our ERS thank you for that and really nice hear you want to thank you for thank you we have been blessed here in the Ten of many voices with numerous representatives from the Omaha people who have come and shared their stories with us and with the general public we’ve had a significant number of Elders of the community who have come down and spent time with us um Pier mer who I mentioned earlier Joy how have actually traveled to other locations where this exhibit has been and U Rufus white and his wife Maxine were us when we were down in in Omaha and we have just been uh very fortunate to have them come and share their stories uh with us in the tenament voices uh it’s a significant part of what this project is all about is to give a voice to uh the tribal people during this CL intentive commemoration and with that I would like to introduce you now to the superintendent for the Louisa Clark National Historic Trail Steve thank you p uh I would like members of the Park Service staff and the Legacy staff who can come up and join come up here now gr human uh chairman Durant and members of the Omaha Nation I’d like to Echo Cat words thank you so much for hosting us and for taking us into your community uh life Centennial simply would not be any event worth undertaking without the voices people from the first Na and they want to express our for you’re allowing us to come here with that okay we’re going to turn this over to Captain RS I’m going to go without the microphone it kills the pictures they give us enough trouble about having Motors on the boat Steve what a little microphone first of all I’d like to thank uh chairman Grant uh for something that was very important to us is and we’re going to have a presentation a little later this morning talking about the discovery Expedition but one of the great things that’s happened with the discovery Expedition as we’ve moved across the country has been the fact that we’ve been able to help communities from the very from Washington DC all the way to the St Louis area last year celebrate not only commemorate not only the vice IAL but celebrate their own Heritage and their own communities along the way and that’s something that’s been very important to us is while we’re commemorating Lewis and Clark and this journey that took place 200 years ago we are excited about the opportunity to celebrate the communities and the people who we encounter along the way and there and and while this overall Bicentennial is a commemoration and we want to make that distinction the people along the way need to celebrate their Heritage and and the pride that they have in their communities and their people and we are so pleased to continue that tradition as we move into Indian country and we’re very excited about the prospect um that flag that went up this morning on that pole up there there are two flags there one was a pennant flag that was typical of those used by the core during this period 200 years ago and the other is the tribal flag of the Maha people today and if you notice they’re flying together up there and that’s significant because 200 years ago two cultures met two distinct and fully realized cultures met one another and came together near this place to to find some middle ground and to communicate with one another and when they came to that meeting they came as proud and independent peoples on both sides so those flags are flying up there today together and co-equal and we’re very proud of that and as you may know two members of the original Expedition were of a Maha extraction leish and crat and despite the fact that kisat would later shoot Captain Lewis in the rear end we don’t hold that against and we want to honor both of those members of the Expedition and uh one of the things that we’re proud to do is as we leave here today we were very flattered to be presented by the chairman with that flag to fly here today and when we leave here that flag will fly on our red perog as we move through this traditional homeland of the imaha people to both uh indicate our regard for your people today and recognition of your Sovereign Nation status as well as to recognize those the the heritage of those two individuals who served with distinction on this Expedition 200 years ago in service of what would become all of our country one day and we’re so proud to do that and with that in mind chairman Grant if I could ask you to come up 200 years ago when the core came by much of the cargo they were carrying on the K boat was intended for use with negotiations with Native people it’s important to remember that a lot of times we put this Louisiana Purchase in the perspective of a purchase that we bought something outright and fact fact what happened was we acquired from France the right to negotiate a relationship with the native nations that existed in this territory and part of the purpose of this mission was to negotiate those relationships and regardless of what came afterwards it is my strong belief and I know it’s the strong belief of the membership of our organization that that expedition from 1804 through 1806 moving across the interior of this nation that the Expedition under the command of Captain’s Lewis in Captain Clark was one of peace and friendship a promise of hope for the future of people working together to a common goal and history has given us all twists and terms but we are here today as the discovery expedition to reiterate the message of the first expedition on of peace and friendship and a hope for shared Commerce and mutual benefit as we move forward into the 21st century and a new day as we help to restore the hoop of trust between our people thank you chair with that in mind I’m going to let cther Clark present a couple of items that would have been typical on the original Expedition and these are gifts to you sir as well as to your people as a whole this is this is a replica of the Jefferson P metal that was carried by the core of Discovery it has an image of President Jefferson on one side and the message of peace and friendship on the other with the clasp hands the cross pipe and Tomahawk chairman Grant my privilege chairman Grant this is a traditional Pye tomahawk in peace and friendship we would like to present pipe Tomahawk and traditional bag while these items are are for you to hold to but we want you to know that these are extended to the to the Oma people as a whole but uh we know how hard that any politicians life is and that at some point in the day you probably are on the weekend want to go fishing or hunting or get away and do something for your own self and this is a personal gift for you sir that we’d like you to use with in good health and enjoy it in whatever Endeavor you may decide to use it in and this is a this is a hunting knife made by a member of actually a friend of our organ organization who makes these by hand as is the hawk pipes that you have there these are made by folks who are involved with our organization as we try to keep the traditional skills of our people alive and that’s becoming increasingly difficult for all of us to keep our traditional skills alive but uh this again is a personal gift to you sir and we hope that you’ll use it in good health thank you very much four three cheers for Thea hipip hipip hipip private deing H CH ground your p we and last but not least it’s only fitting since you gave us a flag that we would give you one this is the 15st star 15 stripe flag that flew over the boats of the Expedition when they arrived here 200 years ago today and despite the fact that your people were out hunting and many of them were gone and may not have had the opportunity to see that flag 200 years ago we’d like you to have one now to keep in your a gift from us to you all and uh we want you to when you look at this to think of us the discovery of condition of St Charles Missouri and we want to assure that assure you that you have friends on the trail who are continuing to tell the story of the M people as we move across this country and we want people to know that your nation is alive and well and prosperous and each day has a brighter future thank you thank you I don’t talk CU L as white people thank you for all the pr gifts you honored us I’d like to mention yesterday they had some Elders sitting up there and telling their stories about their their lives and I don’t think uh there was one of them that didn’t say they were real proud to be Omaha so that’s how I feel right now very very thank you very as Captain Lewis mentioned 200 years ago when the core of Discovery came to the homelands of Maha it was with a message of peace and friendship and it is that that same message that we share today and with the discovery Expedition and with all those involved in the bicentennial uh we look forward to 2006 and Beyond to look back and talk about what our Legacy is what what the legacy is that we left after our adventure our core of Discovery Across the Nation and we hope in fact at this point I think we know that it will be a legacy of peace and friendship and that events like this brought our communities and our nation closer together and our Legacy will be one of coming closer together as a nation as an American family and it is is it’s an honor to stand here today and a privilege where my ancestors stood with your ancestors and to be a part of making that Legacy become a reality thank you chairman it’s an honor to be here ladies and gentlemen on behalf of National Park Service and the and discovery Expedition St Charles thank you for coming to our event this morning and also on behalf of the Oma Nation um our next program here in the tend to many voices going to start very briefly Captain Lewis Captain Clark Scott Mandell and K bu Clark Discovery Expedition St Charles we’ll be talking a little bit about the Journey of the second core of Discovery momentarily and I want to thank you for coming to our opening event this morning and hope you enjoy the rest of your time here with our core of Discovery too ladies and Gentlemen please come join us uh our 11:00 program is about to begin and I’d like to thank you all for coming out this morning we’ve got a beautiful day nice little breeze blowing and uh we’re very happy with the temperatures we are part of the National Park traveling exhibit the Lewis and Park traveling exhibit and we are following along in the footsteps of Louis Park and stopping in towns and cities and reservations along the way to talk about the ls and Clark Story and when we talk about the Lewis and Clark Story it’s not just their story it’s a story of Lewis and Clark the men that went with them the woman that accompanied them on this journey and of all of the peoples they met along the way so hopefully our tent of many voices is a place where all of these voices can be heard and shared to tell the entire Lewis and Clark Story and the stories of those people who have followed them Andross this land as well so welcome to our traveling Exhibit while you’re here take time to go over and visit our exhibit tent there’s a 35 minute audio tour you can do of the exhibit we have our scale model keelboat and our PLS Indian TP out in the front so you can see some of the artifacts that Lewis and Clark would have seen on their Journey that were used by the Plains Indians of that time so today let’s go ahead and get started with our program and we’d like to thank you for joining us and we’ll have Scott Mandell and pton Bud Clark here to talk about the Journey of the second core of Discovery so I’ll turn it over to you all thank you we don’t have to hold anything great well thank you all I I probably most of the people sit here a number of people already know about who we are there’s a lot of small crowd but we we want to let you hear the story of our organization um the planning for the vi Centennial has been going on for a long time I guess by a lot of different people people who uh all across the country who had some different connection to the story or whatever and some places in excess of 30 years people have been anticipating this Bicentennial which is really the bicentennial of New West as many people have referred to it it’s the vice Centennial of everything west of the Mississippi River with regard to the United States of America as a nation and uh one of the individuals who was keenly interested in taking steps to prepare for the vi Centennial was a man by the name of Glenn bishop and Glenn and Bishop was from St Charles Missouri and he was a contractor and businessman and among other things he was an antique boat hobbyist and he had built wooden boats in the past and sort of thing it had a real love for boats and particularly old boats Wooden Boats and had built a couple and uh living in St Charles Missouri in 1979 I actually had the privilege in 1979 when I was a little kid of uh of attending the very first Lewis and Clark uh Heritage Days event that took place there 25 years ago in that town and from that time on roughly uh there was a deep commitment in the community of St Charles to tell their story as it related to the overall expedition in in this chapter in American history and one of the things that frustrated Glenn very much was the fact that despite the fact that in Clark’s field notes from Wood River there had always been available to anyone who wanted to go and look and see but there was a an image of the kilbo that Clark had drawn in his field notes and yet everywhere you went across the country every sign for Lewis and Clark had two guys in skin caps in a birch bark canoe paddling up the Missouri River and this really irritated Glen he was a kind of he was a mild mannered guy but there was one thing that was a bur under a saddle blanket it was it was this image of two guys in skin caps in a Birch Park canoe so he decided that in an attempt to set the record straight that he would build a model of the original Kel booat so people would have an understanding of what this vessel was like and you have to remember that 200 years ago the largest vessel that had ever plied the Missouri River was the kilb that L and Clark had taken with them this was this was a massive BFF by comparison to to anything else that been up there there were 50 foot canoes but they were dogouts and things like that and there were there were large boats but nothing like this on this order so he built the model of it and in 1982 kind of showed it to the world as it were and and people were very excited they thought it was neat and that model still exists and it’s really quite beautiful and all but it was a 1 in to 1T scale so even though it was 50 5 in Long which is pretty pretty big model it did not heat though communicate in full the scope of what this vessel was like and particularly it did not communicate what this boat looked like moving on the water and if you haven’t seen our boats you should they really are quite spectacular when they move on the water and so he decided to actually start constructing a replica of the first boat based upon field Nots from Clark and Wood River based upon good information from the uh Maritime Museum smithonian Institute and he studied a great deal about boats that were common and typical at that time the man who built the original boat for Lewis we believe is a man by the name of John Walker and there was a great deal of information about John Walker who was a boat right on the 9 Hill River and using this very good research and having been both a carpenter in his own right as well as a boat right he was able to bring a lot of common practical understanding of what was needed to make this boat operational and that sort of thing so he started working in 1983 on building this boat in his backyard if you’re not aware a boat has to be boats like this are built upside down well it’s a 55 ft long structure that’s bowed and when he was making the frame of it for the longest time people thought that he was building this wooden Greenhouse in his backyard and he was kind of the object of ridicule in his neighborhood people would kind of laugh at him and thought he was kind of this Ecentric kind of crazy old guy and then one day as the planks went on and it started to look like a boat and he flipped it over then people really started kind of giving him a hard time and kind of foking fun at him because Glenn had a big white beard and they used to sort of make Noah jokes you know and laugh at him that you know his old guy thought he was Noah building his ark that was in the mid 80s late early ’90s then in 1993 we got the great flood and everybody stopped laughing and at any rate in ’96 the boat was finally finished and we took a 1,000m trip from Wood River Illinois to St Joe Missouri and back to St Charles it took us 7 weeks and if it started out it was only going to be a trip from Wood River up to St Charles for the vice or for the for the Heritage Days event and it kind of grew and grew and grew before you know it was 7 weeks in 1,000 miles and it changed many of our lives fundamentally those of us who were involved with the project because we started to see not only the possibilities with regard to the bicentennial but we started to have a much deeper understanding of the Missouri River Corridor and what it represented to us as a nation environmentally historically spiritually even as this this Great River coursed through the interior of our nation and all that all the things that that that commentated to us as a society the Missouri River is more than simply a river it is a it is an idea in many ways and it became a passion for many of us and we had started to plan on what we would do the next year and indeed we started working over the winter on the white pero the first of the two smaller boats and we had that boat all framed out and the last day I worked on that boat was the 30th of January of 1997 on the 31st of January of 1997 Glenn and another CJ Lanahan who’s been instrumental in our group over the years they did some finishing touch some touchup work on the kbo because that next week we were going to move the kill booat down to the transor Dome down where the Rams played football for a big boat show it was going to be a display item there with all the boats around it and they were doing a little touchup on it on the 31st of January and they left the warehouse that night about 5:00 Glenn got home at about 520 the phone rang and it was the fire department the warehouse had caught on fire and the boat that had taken him 13 years to build with his own hands by himself in about 40 minutes was reduced to ashes it was a terrible terrible thing was a devastating experience for all of us and I remember the next morning standing in the still smoldering Embers of that moat completely for Lor with a tremendous sense of loss because this vote had come to sort of represent what might be and when I asked Glen what are we going to do his response was I was never completely happy with that vote anyway and that was the day and I’ve said this many times before but that was the day that I truly understood the meaning of undaunted courage if a man could spend 13 years of his life by himself his own money building this thing that he only wanted to give as a gift to the American people by building it if he could experience this tremendous loss and go forward without any without any hesitation that was the kind of character and a man that I had tremendous respect for and I swore my allegiance to him that day quite literally and from that day on our organization actually grew it’s sort of like sometimes when you cut a tree back or PR a tree back it it grows more hearty and healthy and that’s what happened with our organization and in countless members of our greater St Louis St Charles Community came forward retired individuals men who had carpentry skills or some other skill and we immediately started working on the fleet of boats because our Dream had grown by that time to build the whole Fleet of boats and we knew that we couldn’t get the kbo done in one year so we started working on the white perog because we knew that as important as the boats were just like the original Expedition the most important thing on the trip with the men and it was important to train a crew and if we had to wait until the kill boat was done we would lose valuable and precious time training Crews so in 1997 we completed in 6 months the white pero and that year we took that boat from down to Mississippi from St Louis down and up the Ohio to Fort Massac on the Ohio and then in 1998 we built the red boat in about 8 months and that year we took the white and red Pro together from yank from South kot back down to St Charles passed by here that first time in 1998 in 1999 we began work on the kbo the second kbo and now there were many hands to make the labor light and the work went much faster and in addition to working on the kbat we took the two proges in 1999 from Louisville Kentucky down to Fort Massac on the Ohio River and then in 2000 we took the two foges continued work on the kilbo and took the two foges to Elizabeth Pennsylvania we brought them down to manongi hila to the Ohio and down the Ohio to Louisville and then in 2001 the kilbo was finished and we took it up to Pier South Dakota and brought it back to yanes so by 2001 we had trained on the entire water route from Elizabeth Pennsylvania where it began all the way to Pier South Dakota below D and that was a tremendous amount of training we had a very qualified crew by that time in 2002 we were very worried it was only a year away from the bicentennial and we were very concerned about putting our boats in the water and having an accident and then not having time to have them rebuilt for the bicentennial but we wanted to continue to train Crews so we took 30 men in five dugouts five dugouts not Dugout canoes no such thing a Dugout is a Dugout is a dug at it’s a log and we took five big logs and 30 men from Beacon Rock to the ocean to the mouth of the Columbia River 140 Mi to continue to train those Crews and so we were ready the B Centennial was about to begin and then it kind of dawned on me that Lewis hadn’t rided a car from herds and ran out to Pittsburgh to get the boat and he had to get there some other way and part of this story is about understanding how vast a nation we are how big a nation we are and how difficult things were for all of our forefathers as they moved across this great continent and I realiz realized that in order for the story to be complete Lewis had to get to Pittsburgh and so last year on the 5th of July I mounted a horse at Washington DC and rode to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania the core gathered in Elizabeth Pennsylvania in August and in August we departed Elizabeth Pennsylvania we came to abang Gila River to the Ohio down the Ohio River to Koo Illinois up the Mississippi to our winter camp at Wood River arriving there on December 12 just as the original core had done day for day mile for mile and then we spent the winter at camp deis and that fellow who had been helping Glenn years before CJ Lanahan he had dedicated the last three years of his life to building a replica of camp deis in Wood River Illinois a working functioning camp deis that would allow us to train there over the winter and learn the skills necessary for what we were embarking on and over the winter we brought men from our organization now up to 250 members strong from 36 different states and we brought them there over the winter and we trained there and we learned infantry skills from the time and that sort of thing we participated in the three Flag Ceremony which changed the The Sovereign flags that flew over St Louis 300 200 years ago on in March when when Spain and France relinquish their claims to Louisiana and then in may we put the boats in the water on the 7th of May and on the 14th of May the same date and the same hour of the original Expedition once again we were underway and we entered the mouth of the Missouri River and we’ve ascended the Missouri River now 691 miles on a journey that this year will take us 1350 mil to waser North Dakota and Fort Mandan and we will complete those miles in the same time frame that the original Expedition did it is a tremendous honor for us to share sh this story with America but as we talked about today this story is about much more than simply two individuals LS and Clark and for a long time that’s been the way we referred to this story as Lewis and Clark but Lewis and Clark is like an icon on the desktop of your computer that you never clicked on you know it came with all that preloaded software that you never used and one day you clicked on that icon and all those great applications were in there and you thought wow if I’d known this was here earlier I would have used it that’s what Lewis and Clark is like and while it’s important to tell the story of the many tribes along the way before we even get to the tribes last year one of the big things we had to talk about was the many tribes that comprised the core itself in 1803 this nation was not a homogeneous Nation it wasn’t a bunch of people who got up in the morning and thought of themselves as Americans there’s people who got up in the morning and thought of themselves as Virginians and pennsylvanians and new englanders and Kian and tennesseans and they thought about themselves in a very colloquial way yeah they had joined together to fight the British and gain independence and autonomy from the British crown but a Virginia was a Virginia a Pennsylvanian was a Pennsylvanian and there the two would meet unless maybe in the case of the Whiskey Rebellion and when they met there they were on opposite sides this story is about the moment when those East eastern states started to understand that they were part of something bigger and the men who comprised the core of Discovery were not one group of people they were Scots and Irish and Germans and Welsh and French and it was an Eclectic group of individuals to begin with some like Lewis and Clark from the upper class Gentry aristocracy as it were some from the very lowest levels of society poor dirt Farmers from Appalachia people who knew that this Expedition and being on it would change their lives fundamentally if they could go on this trip and come back that they would reap rewards that would change their lives and the family’s lives it would give them a chance to have a fresh start in the world a chance to have a leg up upward mobility and it was very important for that group of individuals but they were not a common group of individuals and there was a tremendous amount of angst between them which at Wood River we see played out it was very difficult for the captains to bring discipline and order to this group of unruly individuals but they finally did but then LS and Clark even complicated matters further because they went to St Charles and they recruited all of these French batment to help make the trip possible another chapter in the story of America a melting pot that strength is in its diversity leis and Clark bring into the story Frenchmen who are not only French and speak a different language but are Catholic which is a very complex issue in the late 18th and early 19th century and we see the eclecticism and the diversity of this group of people growing day by day as these people join the crew and then ultimately as they make their way across the nation so many times over and over and over again the turning point in success or failure pivots on the assistance that they are given freely and hospitably by the native nations that they encounter along the way and that is the message and the model that this Bicentennial continues to offer us and that we must Embrace and share Across the Nation is that the story of this core of Discovery 200 years ago is a story that reflects the character of America today it is eclectic Multicultural and diverse and that was its strength then and it is the strength of our nation today it is a great honor for us to be able to bring this story to life it’s a great honor to be here with you today I’m going to stop talking let Bud say a few words Bud as you know is the great great great grandson of William Clark we have several descendants with us today and it’s tremendously it’s a special honor for us to get to serve with them as we move across the country in this exercise but it’s also magical to be at places where we get to stand next to descendants of the original Expedition once again grasping hands with descendants of those native people who met them for the first time 200 years ago and see evidence that once again there is an opportunity for the promise of Thomas Jefferson to come true that one day we can live in peace and friendship together and this hopefully is the beginning of that age oh thank you thank you Scott as Scott mentioned we do have some uh other descendants here today the uh um Bob if you would stand please Bob Anderson who is a collateral descendant of George Shannon and his grandson Josh Josh lus um Josh is the youngest member of our organization making the entire trip as George Shannon was the youngest member of the original Expedition also Church my cousin Churchill is here the back Churchill is part of our organization planning to make the entire trip um you know I think that very early on as students of Lewis and Clark one of the first things we recognize is that uh perhaps the the title Lewis and Clark expedition is sort of a misnomer I think if I could change any of the written words that uh my ancestor wrote I I would change that title and give it some a name something like uh the core of Discovery Journey Through the lands of the Native Americans because in fact that is exactly what it was and one of the things that that makes this event today so significant and and so important and why we feel so honored to be here is that quite frankly without the the help without the hospitality and the assist of the Native Americans there there’s a very good chance that I wouldn’t be standing here we can say with absolute certainty that the Lewis and Clark expedition would not have succeeded how dismal that failure might have been well we’ll never know because they had the assistance of the Native Americans and it did succeed and as we proceed across the country and travel through the homelands of the Native Americans we hope that there’ll be many more like days like this one where we can really enjoy coming together as a nation and as we mentioned earlier this morning that’s that is what we want our Legacy to be it’s quite straightforward it’s really quite simple when this is all over we want to stand tall and say we were a part of bringing this nation closer together as a family and we can see that happening on days like today and it’s magic it’s really magic I think Scott did you want to yeah like to entertain any questions now I think that’s probably best because yeah why don’t we do that we’d like to answer questions either about the original Expedition if we can if you have interest in something that happened on the original Expedition something about our Expedition something about the boats um just raise your hand we’ll bring the microphone as you have questions wave to us Angeles on that side I’m on this side and we’ll be glad to entertain those questions for you question um maybe I shouldn’t say do you plan to do this but will you do this will you write a book are you keeping journals as the original Le and Clark did and write a book to compare what they went through as compared to what you are going I uh my journals are online at Lewis and.net um they are you I’ve been writing journals for this organization for many many years our our previous training exercises were brief so those journals are shorter but I have journaled since last year since I left Washington DC last year that’s a journal that probably might be a good historical document to compare what happened on a daily basis as far as books go I don’t know on the 23rd of September 2006 I’m probably going to put on jeans in a sweatshirt and you know try to think about something else at least for a little while um I know some of the guys are planning on writing book one of the guys actually last night told me that he’s got a title for his book they’re all writing books they’re all talking to agents and Publishers all the time but the uh one of the guys last time told me and sarden pry appreciate this one one of the titles that I heard last night that one of the guys is working on is sweet corn and Anarchy on the Missouri River yes I’m sure there’ll be a book out of it I don’t know whether the market can bear too many more can’t throw a stick without hitting a new book on leou and Clark you know uh I’m trying to keep a journal I I have to tell you I I have a newfound admiration for the members of the core Discovery and their diligence in terms of keeping journals men like orway and white house and my ancestor um I don’t know how after those long tiring days those physically taxing days that are that were were so much much more strenuous than taxing than anything that we experience you know I get falling down tired doing what we do and it’s nothing in comparison and I find myself thinking that I should be catching up on my journals and it doesn’t always happen um in terms of publishing something later um I can tell you this I I did inherit one uh trait from my ancestor and that is the ability to spell extremely creatively in fact uh I have the talent and the ability to even stump spell check and get that sort of sinking sensation when I see that message no suggestion so I’m probably more of a nuts and bolts guy than than an author but I am trying to keep uh keep a journal my kids me about it you got to do it do it for your grandkid and they lay the guilt trip on me then I can’t sleep at night cuz I know I should be up working on my journals by candle light but anyway um Le are you related to the actual Le that went on Expedition no Mary Mother Lewis did not have any uh legitimate erors now he did have collateral descendants but he did not have a direct descendant however uh we do believe that he may have uh a direct descendant although not recognized not recognized through a formal marriage or anything that he may have had a child with the lower bruy woman when they passed through the bruy Sue uh in in the late September of 1804 that he may have had a child in the spring of’ 05 uh with with her and uh there’s some speculation about that I am not a descendant of Mary M Lewis however I curiously enough when I was an act Duty in the Army I am an Army soldier and uh when I was on active duty service I’m in the guard now and the unit that I served on served with when I was at Duty was the unit that evolved out of the very same unit that Mary weather Le served with other questions all right let’s give them all a big hand thank you very much it’s our pleasure to have the discovery of St Char with us and to have Scott and Bud with us to talk about the discovery Expedition thank you both so much and thank you all for coming as well we have another program scheduled at 12

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