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Lee H. Whittlesey Native Americans, the Earliest Interpreters: What is Known About Their Legends and Stories of Yellowstone National Park and the Complexities of Interpreting Them The thermal wonders of the Park did not frighten the native peoples of the region. Euro-Americans originated this idea and it must be dispelled before we can understand the true nature of Yellowstone’s human past. —Joseph Weixelman, “The Power to Evoke Wonder” (1992) hat did the Indians say about Yellowstone? They must have told stories about its strange wonders, but what were those stories? His- torians have long wondered. Answers have been slow to appear. WNative Americans probably had many more tales, legends, and myths about the Yellowstone country than the few we currently know of, but thanks to Peter Nabokov and Larry Loendorf, we now know more than ever before about some of those early Yellowstone stories. Prior to the emergence of their manuscript American Indians and Yellowstone National Park: A Documentary Overview, his- torians trusted only one Indian legend relating to Yellowstone; that is, they knew of only one that appeared to be genuinely Indian rather than “white” (the Ralph Dixey story discussed below). Moreover, before the Nabokov book appeared, only small, unsatisfying tidbits of Yellowstone information were known to us in general about the Sheepeaters, Shoshones, Crows, Bannocks, Blackfeet, Flat- heads, Kiowas, Arapahoes, Nez Perce, Assinboines, Northern Cheyennes, Gros Ventres, Sioux, and other tribes who inhabited the upper Yellowstone country and its edges at various times prior to 1870. But now, because of that book, we know more than ever before about how these tribes related to Yellowstone. There seems to have been an effort attempting to completely segregate the by early whites in Yellowstone Nation- place in culture from its former Indian al Park to make the place “safe” for inhabitants, including their legends park visitors, not only by physically and myths. If historians cannot con- removing Indians from the park and clusively prove that whites conspired circulating the rumor that “Indians to do this, many of us who have spent feared the geyser regions,” but also by years studying Yellowstone’s literature 40 The George Wright FORUM Native Americans, the Earliest Interpreters certainly cannot escape the overarch- it in a rare book that came to the park ing feeling that something like that via the massive collections of Jack and happened. Superintendent P.W. Nor- Susan Davis of Bozeman, Montana. ris’s 1870s statements that “these The source is a man named John primitive savages” feared the geyser Hamilcar Hollister who visited Yel- regions are well known. Even as early lowstone in 1883 with the well-known as 1895, historian Hiram Chittenden Rufus Hatch party. Hollister pub- could not find much about what Indi- lished an account of that trip in 1912, ans thought about Yellowstone nor and in it he told the now disreputable about what they told whites of it. “It is story of Indians fearing the park’s a singular fact in the history of the Yel- geyser regions. But following that lowstone National Park,” wrote Chit- story,Hollister stated that his attempts tenden, “that no knowledge of that to find Indian legends about Yellow- country seems to have been derived stone had been unsuccessful. He, like from the Indians.... Their deep silence me many years later, wondered why he concerning it is therefore no less could not find such Indian legends of remarkable than mysterious” (Chitten- Yellowstone. He then made the follow- den 1895: 8, 99). ing statement that appears in no other One wonders whether Chittenden known place in Yellowstone literature: (like so many later writers) simply … there are but few [published] could not find information about Yel- Indian legends which refer to this purposely [!] unknown land. Of lowstone Indians, or whether the Indi- these I have found but one [other ans would not talk to him because of than for the Indians-fearing-the- religion (we know that many tribes geysers story], and that is this—- considered Yellowstone sacred) or that no white man should ever be because of other reasons (see the fol- told of this inferno, lest he should enter that [Yellowstone] region and lowing paragraph), or whether he pur- form a league with the devils, and posely fostered this thinking for by their aid come forth and destroy motives of his own. At this late date it all Indians. Hence the trappers, is difficult to point fingers at our who were the first white men to “white” forebears and accuse them of enter these western lands, learned little or nothing [about Yellow- such conspiracies, but that belief must stone] from that source [Indians] figure at least a modicum into the fact (Hollister 1912: 145). that until American Indians and Yel- This is a fascinating assertion that lowstone was written, we knew less we can prove neither absolutely true about Indians in Yellowstone than nor absolutely false. Hollister does not about Indians anywhere else in the tell us whence he obtained this sup- American West. posed legend of Yellowstone, but the It now turns out that there may be a fact that he apparently heard it in fascinating reason after all for Chitten- 1883, very early in the park’s history den’s comment concerning Indians’ when hundreds of pre-1872 Indians “deep silence” about Yellowstone. I were still living, gives me great pause. I searched for this information for near- believe that we must consider this ly thirty years and only recently found story as possibly true until such time Volume 19 • Number 3 2002 41 Native Americans, the Earliest Interpreters that we get good information debunk- secret on purpose. Considering how ing it. In light of all that we know about we white people have spoken “with how fervently some Indian tribes forked tongue” in the past, I certainly believed in the park as a sacred place, would not blame them if they would the idea of not revealing it to whites not tell us. makes total sense. Of course we have One final point with regard to Hol- no idea exactly which tribes Hollister lister. A critic has suggested that Hol- referred to, and, again, we do not lister’s use of the word “devils” here know whence he obtained the legend. might somehow negate his statement If true, the Hollister rendering of this because it might show that the Indi- Native American story represents a an(s) he talked to were “Christian- very large and possibly final piece of a ized.” Here is why I believe Hollister’s long, incomplete puzzle relating to statement is not negated by that. Yellowstone, i.e., the fact that some Christianization and the accompa- tribes may have kept the place a secret nying linguistic translations about it and why they did it. back and forth from Indians to whites The idea that at least some Indians and vice versa were (and are) very (we do not yet know which tribes complicated things. And white men might have had such a policy or how were notoriously poor at understand- many such tribes there were) might ing Indian religion, whether it had have kept the existence of Yellowstone been “Christianized” or not. Note that a secret for religious reasons squares historian Colin Calloway says many well with both known native proclivi- white men tended to dismiss Indian ties for not telling certain things to religion as “devil worship” (Calloway white men and with Chittenden’s 1997: 68). Thus, just because Hollis- 1895 perception of a deep Indian ter used the term “devil” does not silence about Yellowstone. It also mean we should jump to conclusions begins to explain why historians about what he meant or what the Indi- Nabokov and Loendorf, Aubrey an(s) he spoke to meant. For all we Haines, Joseph Weixelman, I, and oth- know, Hollister simply mistranslated ers have all had a fair amount of diffi- what the Indian(s) told him into culty finding good numbers of litera- “white-man vernacular.” ture connections between Indians and Secondly, Indians did not always Yellowstone. Finally, it explains why “buy into” Christianization. In this we have so few known Indian legends case, if they did not buy into it, then about a place that must have generated their comments to Hollister were dozens or hundreds of such legends probably still based upon their intact among ancient natives. Thus, we now native religion. Even if their buy-in to must, in my opinion, begin asking our Christianity was partly complete, they Native American friends whether still might have been using a religion there is anything in their oral tradi- that involved pieces of their original tions to confirm this, and hope that religion and hence their statement on one or more of them will tell us the taboo might still have made it whether they indeed kept the place through Hollister to us as a true state- 42 The George Wright FORUM Native Americans, the Earliest Interpreters ment. Other than for this story, there was, Indians’ buy-in to Christianity ran until the production of American Indi- the gamut from “not at all” to “partly” ans and Yellowstone, little reliable to “completely.” That is a point Cal- information or documentation on leg- loway makes over and over again in his ends, myths, or other folklore that may chapter on religion entitled “A World have been communicated by Indians of Dreams and Bibles.” His chapter about the present Yellowstone Nation- discusses the complex interplay al Park. Even after the emergence of between Indian religion and Christian the Nabokov and Loendorf’s book, religion in the new world.

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