The Piegan View of the Natural World, 1880-1920
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2015 The Piegan View of the Natural World, 1880-1920 Rosalyn R. LaPier The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation LaPier, Rosalyn R., "The Piegan View of the Natural World, 1880-1920" (2015). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 4582. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4582 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE PIEGAN VIEW OF THE NATURAL WORLD, 1880-1920 By ROSALYN RAE LA PIER B.A., Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, 1986 M.A., DePaul University, Chicago, IL, 2000 Dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in History The University of Montana Missoula, MT July 2015 Approved by: Sandy Ross, Dean of The Graduate School Graduate School Jeff Wiltse, Chair History Department William Farr History Department Wade Davies Native American Studies Department (Affiliate History Department) Trent Atkins Department of Curriculum and Instruction Frederick Hoxie History Department, University of Illinois COPYRIGHT by Rosalyn Rae LaPier 2015 All Rights Reserved LaPier, Rosalyn, Ph.D., Summer 2015 History Title: The Piegan View of the Natural World, 1880-1920 Chairperson: Jeff Wiltse Abstract: This dissertation is a new interpretation of the stories told by the Piegan people (now known as the Blackfeet) from 1880-1920, about their relationship with the natural world. It is a history of the transition to reservation life, the economy of the reservation, individual Piegan who told the stories, the ethnographers who recorded the stories and what those stories tell us about Piegan views of the natural world. It is a blend of different methodologies within history: archival research, ethnohistory, oral history and first-person narrative. This new interpretation argues that although the transition to reservation life was difficult, the Piegan worked with ethnographers to share their stories and their view of the natural world which had provided them stability and continuity since ancient times. The Piegan View of the Nature World, 1880-1920 By Rosalyn R. LaPier Preface: Something Vital Was Missing. 1 Introduction: Methodology & “Re-righting history”.. 7 Chapter 1: A Beginning of Sorts.. 18 Chapter 2: The Piegan Reservation in 1910.. 50 Chapter 3: Storytakers, Ethnologists Visit the Piegan.. 88 Chapter 4: “Invisible Reality,” the Piegan Universe.. 119 Chapter 5: Visible Reality, the Saokio-tapi.. 153 Chapter 6: Sto-ye, the Closed Season. 190 Chapter 7: Na-pos, the Opened Season. 226 Chapter 8: “Control of Human Affairs”.. 258 Chapter 9: The Dogs Separate. 273 Bibliography. 278 Appendix A – Map of Northern Great Plains.. 306 Preface SOMETHING VITAL WAS MISSING People often ask me how I became interested in plants. I sometimes jokingly reply that, “I’m not sure if I am that interested in plants.” I am asked this question because I sometimes give public talks throughout the Rocky Mountain west regarding the topic of historic Piegan plant use, also called ethnobotany or traditional environmental knowledge. I came to this knowledge in the old fashioned way. I apprenticed with two old women. Over two decades ago my oldest aunt Theresa Still Smoking told me, in a matter of fact way, that I needed to learn about plants. My aunt was not asking me if I was interested in learning about plants. She gently implied that it was my responsibility to learn. At the time I was living in Chicago and only returned home to Montana a few times a year so I was not sure how this was going to progress. I come from a family of women who know about plants. My grandmother Annie Mad Plume Wall was well-known for her medicinal plant knowledge. She was still going out to collect plants well into her nineties. She finally stopped going out into the field when an old ankle injury that she sustained as Preface Pg. 1 a teenager came back to haunt her and made it too painful for her to walk around. She relied instead on those of us who knew what she harvested. She learned about plants from her grandmother Not Real Beaver Woman and her great-grandmother Big Mountain Lion Woman, and they probably learned from their grandmothers as well. I had been collecting plants all my life, as all the children were expected to participate in plant collecting expeditions. However, as children, we were not expected to learn what we were collecting. We were just free labor. My aunt Theresa started telling me about plants that summer. I took her on long drives across the prairies and foothills of the Blackfeet reservation, up into the mountains of Glacier National Park, up into southern Alberta and around ancestral Piegan territory. During these excursions I would get drive-by lessons on plant use, some that I knew very well, others that I had collected but did not know their uses, and yet others that were brand new to me. The expectation was that I would just listen and not ask too many questions. At the time I remember thinking to myself I am never going to remember all this stuff. I started scribbling down notes after each trip. Being a bookworm, I decided if I was going to learn anything about these plants that I had better start looking for some books to read. I was in luck. On a family visit to the Head-Smashed-In Preface Pg. 2 Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre in southern Alberta I purchased Alexander Johnston’s monograph, Plants and the Blackfoot, published in 1987.1 This was perfect, I thought, I would not have to memorize all these plants after all; I could just read about them. However, even though Johnston included almost 200 plants in his monograph, many of his descriptions did not provide sufficient detail of their uses. He did not discuss when certain plants were collected or how they were processed. He also did not even include some of the plants that we collect on a regular basis, like “blue root” (Comandra umbellata). We collect bags and bags of this stuff every summer. I wondered how he could not list that one. I asked myself, isn’t this a book about plants and the Blackfoot? Well, so much for the easy way out. I concluded that I was going to have to rethink my approach. As I continued apprenticing with my aunt and my grandmother, I also continued looking for everything written about Piegan environmental knowledge. I also consulted Walter McClintock, an early chronicler of Piegan life, who wrote the first study of Piegan ethnobotany or environmental knowledge when he published “Materia Medica of the Blackfeet” in 1909 with the Berlin 1Alex Johnston. Plants and the Blackfoot. Occasional Paper No. 15. Lethbridge: Lethbridge Historical Society, 1987. Preface Pg. 3 Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and History, based on research he conducted in the 1890s. He reprinted it in the appendix of his book The Old North Trail or Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians in 1910. In his book he relied on the knowledge of his female relatives from his adoptive Piegan father Siyeh, Mad Wolf. McClintock called these women “botanists” who had learned “the knowledge of herbs and wild plants” from an early age. McClintock sent the dried plant specimens he collected in the 1890s to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and Mr. O.E. Jennings, the Assistant Curator of Botany, identified them. Although his study only listed 66 plants it was considered the most thorough review of Piegan plant use for most of the 20th century.2 The work of McClintock and other early recorders of Piegan life encouraged me, and I began to consider their relationship to the plant knowledge I was gaining from my family and the stories I had heard growing up. My grandmother loved to sit and visit with people. One day my grandmother told me a story about Spotted Bear, her maternal great-grandfather. It was a story that I had heard many, many times before. I stress this point to show that I can be a slow learner. Spotted Bear was a great warrior, “one 2Walter McClintock. The Old North Trail: Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1999. Preface Pg. 4 of the greatest,” as she emphasized. Her favorite stories of Spotted Bear were his adventures raiding the Crow. He always seemed to get into a predicament and then of course he was able to get out of it. In this particular story my grandmother mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that Spotted Bear used his personal “medicine power” and changed the direction of the wind. Whoa, wait one minute, I thought, he changed the direction of the wind! How did he do that? At that moment I realized that Spotted Bear’s understanding and relationship to the natural world was dramatically different from the one that the chroniclers of Piegan life often wrote about in their books. Spotted Bear’s knowledge and use of nature was not the same utilitarian story found in those academic monographs. I had heard stories all my life of how the Piegan altered nature, from stopping the wind from blowing, to controlling animal behavior, to creating a snow storm so powerful it could freeze a person in mid-step.