Indians Associated with the Glacier Park Region
INDIANS ASSOCIATED WITH THE GLACIER PARK REGION
Geo. C. Ruhle
To the east of Glacier National Park billow the Great Plains, expansive, grassy, and treeless, except where their surface surges too high and breaks with a cover of lodgepole, ponderosa pine, and spruce, or dips in the troughs of coulees and eddies with cottonwoods fringing the edges of watercourses. Before the coming of white man, these were a glorious hunting ground, overrun with game, with buffalo, antelope, mountain sheep, bear, elk, and deer. These were the home of a score of wandering, predatory Indian tribes, each of whom ever returned to a particular sector labelled its own. Over their possession was waged a continual, relentless struggle.
Similarity of living conditions and requirements effected a resemblance of customs and manners which largely obliterated differences in blood relationships and produced a cultural type known as the Plains Indian. All Indians associated with Glacier Park and its vicinity were either of this type or were apparently descended from it. Plains' environment created a different aborigen from that of the sombre, dark forests of the Mississippi Valley to the East. True, both were savage, courageous, and of great endurance, but though the latter was taciturn, revengeful, cruel, and morose, the former partook of the openness, sunshine, and friendliness of his home, was affable, talkative, generous, and fun-loving. Those who have come to know intimately the Plains Indians pronounce them the most lovable and fascinating of all American aboriginal types.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Plains Indian was his association with the buffalo which not only furnished him with food, shelter, and clothing, and affected profoundly his tribal customs and religious rites but also had produced in him the characteristic, roving disposition and unceasingly prodded him to warfare. Every part of the animal was usable in some way or other, so that there was little waste. When buffalo were plentiful, life was easy and happy; when buffalo roved to far distant parts, hunger and privation made life grim. The flesh of the buffalo was the staple article of food. Dried, powdered and mixed with melted tallow and marrow, it formed pemmican, to which dried sarvis-berries, chokecherries or other vegetable matter was sometimes added. The skin was used for making clothing, shields, blankets, kettles, ropes, snowshoes, packs, and tipis. The sinews furnished bowstrings, thread, rope fibre, and backing for bows to give them great elasticity and strength. Horns and bones were fashioned into utensils and ornaments. Hair was woven into belts and ornaments and served as stuffing for cushions. Dried buffalo droppings, called "chips", were a principal fuel of the region.
Near the park, buffalo were taken by direct chase on horseback or by use of the piskun. Even with the introduction of the muzzle-loader and subsequent firearms, the bow and arrow remained as the principal hunting weapons, not only because of the difficulty and expense of obtaining ammunition, but also because of the great effectiveness of more primitive arms. One of the chief delights of the men of the Plains, white or red, was to ride a good horse on a buffalo run. A skillful pony would draw his rider close and slightly to the rear of the desired animal. The bowsman would place the head of a drawn shaft behind the ribs and would release it so that it would penetrate forward, fatally tearing the vitals. A rifle bullet, on the other hand, by boring a clean hole, would inflict the victim less seriously. A buffalo can wheel about rapidly on its front feet and can easily gore an unskilled pursuant horse. Immediately sensing the release of the arrow from the bowstring, the smart buffalo pony would shy quickly from the side of the pursued animal, which would stop in its tracks until it dropped dead from loss of blood. The hunter continued right on in his quest for meat, returning later to utilize his trophies.
In days before the Indians had ponies, other means of getting buffalo had to be resorted to, to insure the taking of large numbers of animals at one time. Chief of these was by use of the piskun, which word, translated, means deep kettle. This was a corral built of rocks or brush under a bluff and forming a high barrier. Higher cliffs needed no pen, while level country required the construction of a ramp to the top of the enclosure. Diverging like the arms of the letter V from this fall, two long lines of piles of brush or rocks extended far out over the prairie. When buffalo were discovered in a favorable location, preliminary ceremonies were held, and men would take places behind each screening pile leading to the corral or cliff. Meanwhile, a skilled caller would steal near the herd. By wildly jumping up and down, tossing up skins or blankets, he would attract the attention of the animals who are very curious by nature, so that they would start towards him to discover what they had seen. The caller would slink to the next rise to repeat the performance. With curiosity now fully aroused, the animals would follow, moving faster. Gradually, by repetition, they would break into a fast run and were lured fairly into the large opening of the V. Now each successive hidden Indian would leap forth and shout as the herd passed, stampeded with terror over the cliff or ramp. The foremost were swept right over the top by the momentum of the latter, and usually even the last animal plunged fear-stricken over the edge. Many were killed outright; the others were quickly dispatched with arrows shot from the top of the barrier. Often five hundred or a thousand animals could be taken by a single drive. Sometimes the Indians would lead and drive animals twenty miles into the trap.
In 1881 General Hugh Lenox Scott was located at Devil's Lake, North Dakota, from which buffalo had been wiped out for several years. He was sent some buffalo meat from the Missouri. Scott gave this to an old, blind Indian who, as he took it, smelled it first. This started the tears streaming down the ancient wrinkled face, for the Indian dreamed of the old buffalo days which then had passed never to return.
With the disappearance of the buffalo in the seventies and early eighties, terrible privation was the lot of the Indians. Many refused to believe that so numerous an animal had been wiped from their hunting ground forever, that the last great hunt had been held. This was natural, for in former days, too, there were times when buffalo were scarce, having migrated to territory far away. In fact, the Indian believed that these animals periodically entered a hole in the ground to rest and revive themselves, and thus accounted for their absence. One of these holes was supposed to be somewhere near the Eagle Hills in Canada, one near Harney's Peak in the Black Hills, and one on the Llano Estacado of Texas.
The only truly domesticated animal of earliest times was the dog. This was used for hunting and carrying burdens, and, among many tribes, for food and ceremonial purposes. With the introduction of the horse about 1800, a great change was effected in the mode of and attitude towards life, for it allowed much greater freedom of movement, made more certain an adequate food supply, brought about a new conception of personal property and wealth, served as a medium of exchange, added horse-racing and other equestrian sports as recreational diversions, and stimulated, as a means and as a prize, the expeditions of war parties. The plainsmen were great riders in war, chase, or sport.
For transportation of goods, the travois was extensively used. This consisted of two poles as shafts which rested on the shoulders of the animal while the lower ends trailed over the ground. A cross piece near the latter supported the burden. Dogs in earlier days and the horses up to the present day have been used for pulling the travois. Trails frequently used were worn widely and deeply by the dragging ends. In moving lodges, an improvised travois formed of the tipi poles and skin cover was generally used.
Most characteristic was the conical skin dwelling, or tipi of the Plains. This was described by George Bird Grinnell as the warmest and most comfortable portable dwelling ever devised. It consisted of skins cut and sewn together in a single piece, and covering a circular framework of poles. Its lower end was pegged to within an inch or two of the ground. A low opening facing eastward and supplied with a skin cover, frequently decorated, served as the entranceway. An opening at the convergence of the poles at the top permitted the escape of smoke from the hearth which was centrally placed inside. Two moveable flaps, called ears, on each side of this hole enabled the course of the smoke to be regulated as the wind changed. Extending upward five or six feet on the inside of the lodgepoles was a strip of skins drawn closely to the ground to shut out cold. The air-space between this lining and the main wall served as a perfect ventilating system, cold air rushing in from the outside and sweeping the smoke upward through the top hole. Lodges were generally decorated with figures of traditional and mythological significance.
The chief weapons of the old Indians were the bow and arrow, a short, heavy spear, a shield of rawhide, generally circular, stone hammers and war clubs, and knives of bone or stone with wooden handles. Arrows were grooved to allow blood to flow freely. Arrowheads and lanceheads were of bone and stone, though later scraps of iron were used. Hammers and war clubs were made by lashing stones to suitable handles with wet or green rawhide that shrinks greatly on drying. Like horses, the appearance of firearms influenced greatly the lives of all Indians.
Contrasted with Eastern Indians, there was almost a complete absence of agriculture and such arts as weaving, pottery making, and textile manufacture among the Plains tribes. Social organization was rather loose, the tribes being composed of gentes or societies, some of which claimed definite purposes. Tribal head chief and a council of older men guided the political career of the tribe. Polygamy was almost general, the number of wives serving as an index of wealth and esteem. Only in modern times did wealth based on ownership of material goods, especially horses, figure in the estimation of the individual. Distinction came from valor and success in war, from charitable deeds, and from oratorical or "healing and psychic" powers.
Most of the tribes were intensely religious. The sun was the supreme diety, though innumerable lesser supernatural beings were recognized and supernatural powers were generally ascribed to many animals and objects of nature. Intimately connected with religion and most important of all primitive ceremonies was the Sun Dance which is still celebrated today. This was a dramatic ritual held in summer to overcome or direct certain cosmic forces, or to expiate vows made in times of sorrow and distress. Late in the last century the Ghost Dance became all important. It expressed the hopes for restitution of a dejected and broken people, as it symbolized the coming of a Messiah who would bring back the buffalo, would restore the primitive state of simplicity and happiness, and would drive the white man back into the sea whence he came. Few individuals of Indians associated with Glacier Park believed in the Ghost Dance. Its celebration was quite common among Siouian tribes to the east. Until recently, the Kutenais held their summer ceremonies on Glacier's Lake McDonald, wherefore it received its old name, Sacred Dancing Lake. The holding of the Two Medicine Lodge Ceremony by the Blackfeet on the shores of Two Medicine River gave that particular feature its name.
All of the tribes of the park region had historically or traditionally moved their home territory with recent centuries. In the earliest days the Snakes roved the country east of the park; the circles of stones which weighted down their lodges and marked their hearth-fires still are found undisturbed in their camp sites from Red Deer, Alberta, to the Black Hills of the Dakotas. With them dwelled the Crows, Flatheads, Kutenais and Nez Perces. The Algonkian peoples living north of the Great Lakes spread in several directions, the Blackfeet vanguard pushing the Chippeweyans and Beavers further and further northwest. They were followed closely by their kinsman allies, the Crees. Two hundred years ago they were forest Indians, the former living in the Great Slave Lake country from which they would repeatedly sally to strike at their Shoshonian neighbors on the Plains. Early in the eighteenth century, the Blackfeet obtained Hudson Bay Company guns from the Crees. Armed with these they struck again their hereditary enemies, driving them out of the North Saskatchewan territory. Later the Blackfeet obtained horses - tradition says it was from the Kutenais - and they pushed ever further south, driving every one before them: the Snakes into the mountains of Wyoming, the Crows to the Valley of the Yellowstone, the Nez Perces, Kutenais and Flathead tribes over the Rockies to the plateaus to the west. The Blackfeet Nation was a confederacy of three tribes, the Piegans, or Pikuni, the Bloods or Kainah, the Blackfeet proper or Siksikas, living east, northeast and far to the north of the park, respectively. Allied with these were their relatives, the Gros Ventres, and the Athapascan Sarcee. The former were also called Mokowanis, Utsena, or simply Big Belly Indians. They were an off shoot of the Algonkian Arapaho who had migrated westward from their Chippewa relatives and who lived at the headwaters of the North Platte and Arkansas Rivers. The Sarcee were a small but ferocious tribe who separated from the Beaver Indians in the North as the consequence of a quarrel. They lived at the headwaters of the Saskatchewan.
The great Sioux Nation sent several branches westward as it grew in size and spread. A band of Yanktonai Sioux, disrupted from the main body by quarreling, were driven to the Bow River Rockies by the vicious Blackfeet. These were later called Stoney Indians. Several hundred miles to the east of the park dwelled another great Yanktonai offshoot, the Assiniboines who came from territory north of Lake Superior. The Crows, hereditary enemies of the Blackfeet, also were Sioux moving westward. They lived in the Valley of the Yellowstone.
Most warlike and feared by all, the Blackfeet came within the territory today called Glacier National Park only to cross the Divide to carry on their ancient feud with the Selish who dwelled in Flathead Valley and the Kutenais who roved in the north. The Blackfeet regarded the mountains with great awe, and regarded as a feat of much bravery to enter into them alone for visions. The Stonies and Crees sometimes entered the park by passes to the north, thus keeping safe from the Blackfeet bogie of the plains. Place names in the Belly River Valley, though not officially recognized, indicate to the penetration of the Gros Ventre Indians into the park. Most closely associated with the park proper were the Kutenais who came to it in summer to camp, fish, and count coups against bears and wild animals.
Thus it is that there are represented in Glacier Park history a number of tribes of different stocks, Algonkian, Kutenehan, Selishan, Siouian, Shoshonean, Shahaptian, and Athapascan, which add a glamor of ethonological interest to the region of which there are still traces left in the old Blackfeet dances held nightly by the Blackfeet at Glacier Park Station during summer months, and in the stories of the oldest inhabitants in whose memory the buffalo still rove in countless millions over the broad expanse of the plains, in whose veins the pulsations of blood, torpid with senility, quickened by the glow of the chase over flowing landscapes, whose hearts still beat warmly for the circle of painted tipis with smoke curling lazily upward in tranquil cold of the early mornings of long ago.
