This tag was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Michelle Wilson.
The Search For "Facts" Goes in Circles
I find a fact and follow it back to its source, only to find it’s from the same poison well. Every new telling is contaminated. They repulse me with their rotten sulphur smell.
Who first brought the bison back to the Flathead Reservation?[1]
Thirty years after their return, a white trader named Charles Aubrey inserted himself into history by recording his story for Forest and Stream, a magazine that promoted the burgeoning conservation movement. Here is an abbreviated version of that story in his own words:
In the year 1877, I was located at the Marias River and engaged in the Indian trade…Close by, and on the north side of the river…was the great medicine rock of the Blackfeet…Here in spring, after the winter's hunt was over, was the general point of gathering; here passed the summer route of travel…My post was called Ft. Custer…
Among Pend d’Oreille Indians who made up the hunting party from across the mountains, was an ambitious, bright, middle-aged man – of the warrior class, but not a chief – whose Christian name was Sam.[2] He was known to the Blackfeet as Short Coyote... I often met Sam in the way of trade and he indicated more than ordinary friendship for me, caused by my fairness in trade.
My interpreter for the Blackfeet was a three-quarter blood Blackfoot, Baptiste Champaigne… Baptiste’s wife was a sister of Yellow Wolf, a Blackfoot warrior… She had a niece whose name was Mi-sum-mi-mo-na, and being a rather comely girl, had attracted the attention of Sam… Sam made propositions to her kinsfolk…that he be permitted to marry Mi-sum-mi-mo-na, and offered for her sixteen head of good horses. The offer being very tempting, she became his wife. A short time afterward Baptiste gave me the story of the affair. I told him very frankly that he had made a mistake…I said to him; “You are a strong Catholic and your Church does not permit polygamous marriages. By the rules and laws regulating marriage among the Pend d’Oreilles, Sam was punishable by both fine and flogging…
Sam’s Pend d’Orielle wife was very much opposed to his second marriage, and appealed to me to talk with him…In course of time Sam’s first wife made so many objections, and so continually quarreled with him over his second marriage, that there was no peace in the family.
By early spring (1878) feeling had risen to such a condition that Sam shot and wounded his first wife. It was a flesh wound in the shoulder. She was still asserting the rights of a Christian marriage… Conditions were such that the Blackfoot wife…found life in Sam’s lodge unbearable.
In the course of a few days, Sam…called on me…I signed him to sit down…I reasoned with him in the sign language…I told him he had made a mistake, but there was time yet to make it right…I said to him “When do you cross the mountain to your people?” He informed me that… he wanted to go, but he feared he would be punished by the fathers of St. Ignatius Mission…I thought there was still a chance to make peace with the soldier band of his tribe by getting a pardon from the fathers…I would assist him by giving him a letter to Father Ravalli, stating that he (Sam) was not a drunken or lazy Indian. I also suggested that in connection with my letter he make a peace offering to the fathers, in the hope that it would lighten the punishment…I then suggested…he rope some buffalo calves – now nearly a year old – and hobble them with my milch cows…and then give them as a peace offering to the fathers at the mission. He looked at me with surprise and doubt. I then showed him that there were no buffalo in the Flathead country, I thought the fathers would appreciate the gift. He at once agreed to try my plan…
Next day I made a visit to his lodge and found him and his Pend d’Oreille wife hard at work and both in a very pleasant humor. I asked in sign language of the wife, “Where is the Blackfoot woman?” She informed me in a very serious manner that when the Blackfeet had broken camp, her people had taken her away…
Sam was successful on his first hunt and soon drove in two fine calves…nearly yearling buffalo. The heifer was loose, the bull side-hobbled… Sam rested a few days after his first trip; his wife joining him in telling me the story of the wild chase and the fierce struggles with their captives…
He returned at the end of eight days with five young buffalo – two bulls and three heifers. Each buffalo was head and foot hobbled…Each bull was dragging a long lariat so as to be easily caught for night picketing… Sam told me he worked hard like a white man, as he expressed it – the rope skinning his hands many times…He told me of killing one heifer, which he would have liked to save. She had a very bright fine coat…In snubbing he gave her too much rope, and in the fall, which came an instant later, this fine heifer’s neck was broken.
His wife advised him to quit now…she did not like the signs brought out by the death of this fine animal…
Sam herded his buffalo with the milk stock for five days, resting and making arrangements for his trip across the mountains…On Monday he bade a cordial good-bye…Sam brought up the rear, the buffalo following the pack horses. The three bulls were head and foot hobbled, the four heifers loose; seven head in all is my recollection of the bunch…I afterward learned…by some accident…one bull had died…I also afterward learned, through Indian sources, that immediately upon his arrival upon the reservation he was arrested and severely flogged…
In the course of time I heard of Sam’s death…passing away peacefully in his lodge or cabin. His wife followed him some time after.
This primary source, written thirty years after the events related, sets out the narrative for all the accounts that follow—every telling cites Aubrey as a source.[3] In a preamble to the article, the editor of Forest and Stream notes that Aubrey claimed he "made an effort to get together one hundred calves, this effort was postponed a few years too long for it was not until the year 1883, at which time the buffalo were finally destroyed".
How many stereotypes can a person fit into a tale before it becomes suspicious?
Okay, does any other part of this tale not sit right with you—beyond the stereotypes and slurs?
How about the complexity of communication that is achieved with simple sign language?
Why doesn't he name Sam's first wife? Settlers would have known her as Sabine.[4]
How about the age of the calves? As yearlings, they would have been nearly ready to wean and far too strong. They wouldn't have needed milk, so why would they have willingly left their herd? There is no account of Sam slaughtering mothers, returning with hides or meat.
Would Sam and Baptiste really have needed this outsider to warn about each other’s cultures?
At least Aubrey allows Sam to die peacefully in his home.
Other tellings of Sam’s story seep into my consciousness. I can picture a photograph: Michel Pablo and Charles Allard are standing; Samuel Walking Coyote is sitting, and in front of them is laid a blanket with 25 piles of gold. They wear the death masks of indistinct 19th-century faces; hats pulled low, just above their dark smudged eyes. I recall a caption that tells me about a that rabbit ran by in the middle of this transaction, and all three men jumped up and chased after it. Luckily when they returned, the treasure was still there. I can find no record of that image or story anywhere, but I cannot shake the feeling that I read it, somewhere, on this long search for truth.
I’ve nearly given up when I find it, a written account,[5] in a book I hadn’t even taken notes from because its author, Sheilagh Ogilvie, was so repugnant, racism oozing between every word. She writes:
The story goes on to say that Walking Coyote was determined to be paid in "real money." The two businessmen and Coyote met by a stream on a fine autumn day to make the exchange. Bills and coins in piles of one hundred dollars were being counted out and placed under paperweights of stones, when a squirrel or a mink ran by. Business was forgotten! Allard and Pablo chased after it. When they returned, breathless and concerned, they found Walking Coyote still brooding silently over the gleaming piles of wealth. Walking Coyote went straight off on a $3,000 binge. He ended his days under a Missoula bridge two years later, completely broke. A less-than-heroic exit, but one that matched the spirit in which he had lived and captured the calves that were now prospering on the rich grasslands of the Flathead. 26-27
The words sit like bile in my mouth. But where did the story come from? Did she invent it? I wade deeper into newspapers and websites, and then I find its source, in a Christmas edition of the Winnipeg Evening Tribune:
Walking Coyote insisted on having actual money; he refused to accept a cheque. Allard and Pablo were busy counting out the greenbacks into piles of $100, each of which was placed under a stone, when they saw a mink. Instantly Walking Coyote and both the ranchers went after the mink, and for some minutes forgot the piles of money, to which they hurried back, to find it safe, with a lone Indian looking at it with covetous eyes.
This was written in 1922 and signed only "Old Timer." Note that there is no mention of Walking Coyote's death. Ogilvie wrote her book in 1979 for Parks Canada. She couldn't resist spitting on the memory of Walking Coyote. There are no citations, but I find a name I recognize in her bibliography, George D Coder. His 1975 dissertation is the first mention I have found of Walking Coyote’s death. He writes
[His] good fortune proved the undoing of Sam, however, for shortly thereafter his body was found washed ashore under the Higgins Avenue bridge in Missoula. His death is attributed to the results of a drinking spree.
His only source seems to be an article by Ellen Nye. Nye wrote her piece in 1933 for the Montana News Association Inserts, a company that sold filler for Montana newspapers. No record of this article remains. I assume Coder’s dissertation was accepted, and Walking Coyote’s legacy as a drunk, wife-shooting, greedy Indian became further entrenched in the dominant archive.
How far did this contamination spread? Did its effluent disperse into the consciousness of Walking Coyote’s kin and community?
I have found a strange book that gives me a glimpse into some of the stories passed around the Flathead Reservation in the early 20th century. I Will Be Meat for My Salish is a collection of interviews conducted by settlers employed by the Montana Writers Project. This New Deal initiative, led on the Flathead Reservation by Bon I. Whealdon, began in 1935. The initiative contracted unemployed (white) white-collar workers to catalogue the state’s history, and part of that history was the tale of Samuel Walking Coyote.
I want to record here the words of Chief Mose Michell, but please remember that Whealdon’s hand recorded them before me, another outsider with his own biases and ignorance. These are not transcripts; we will never honestly know the weight of his hand. Chief Mose Michell’s wife acted as interpreter, so she may have chosen words that the recorder would have been able to hear.
I know that Samuel Wells, whom the whites called “Indian Samuel,” brought four calves…from the other side of the mountains. Several times I went to see the calves…Our old Pend Oreille [sic] and Flathead Indians were very pleased that we had buffalo in our country, as the herds across the mountain had been killed.
I had heard some old Indians tell that once our tribesmen had been angry with Samuel because he took as a wife a woman not of our nation. Samuel then left us and went to Sun River. He was there several years. Then he became lonely and unhappy because he could not come home. His wife told him, "Samuel, the buffalo your people love will soon be all gone… You capture what calves you can, and take them to your people. When they see them they will be very glad, and they will forgive you that you married not one of their women”…Now Samuel’s woman was smart…so Samuel did as his wife told him.
When the Pend Oreilles [sic] and Flatheads heard that Samuel and his woman had brought back buffalo calves, they were happy and made a feast for the Samuels. My father, Chief Charley Michell of the Pend Oreilles [sic] arose and talked to the people, saying, “Our brother is back with a gift for us. Now, we shall bring gifts to his teepee.”
Another tribal member, Que-que-sah, remembered a day from his childhood when “Samuel Welles” whom the white people called “Indian Sam” rode through the village of St. Ignatius with four buffalo calves draped over the backs of his pack ponies. He recalled,
they were rather small. One in particular was very young and weak…As we gathered about Sam while he was unloading, he told us how he acquired the calves. He had traded with other Indians (I believe he said Piegans) for the three older ones. The youngest had been given to him by a Piegan, Its mother had been killed and it was too young to eat grass. Sam had managed to save it by feeding it with milk from a pack mare that had lost her colt. I heard that he taught the bull calf to suckle the mare, but I do no know if that was a true story.
Even here, I wonder if the tendrils of Aubrey’s story have made their way in. The first section of this book, written by Whealdon, is devoted to recounting the “official” narrative.[6] So did the interviewers seek out those that would corroborate it? Or did the keepers of more profound knowledge withhold it for fear of contamination?
Pend d’Oreille Elder and historian Mose Chouteh would have been 50 when Whealdon had come calling in 1941. He waited until 1978 when he was 87 years-old, to record the story of Ataticeʔ, his son Ɫatatí, and how bison returned to the Flathead reservation. Here I will let Mose Chouteh’s words speak for themselves, as I did the settler writers I read from before. I hope in giving elder Chouteh the last word I handle his account with respect and lift it up above the putrid mire of the others.
I leave you with the narrative that should replace all others because it is the one told and retold by Sam, Ataticeʔ, and Ɫatatí’s kin.
By the bison’s kin.
Listen everyone I am 87 years old, While I was growing up I heard this told by many elders…I heard this story from many of them. This one story I’m going to tell you. It is about a man called Ataticeʔ.
[While on a hunt several buffalo followed their camp] And so in the evening, [the men] went into the tipi. The chiefs were smoking. One of the chiefs said, “Hello, Ataticeʔ. Is there something that you come for?” Ataticeʔ said, “Hello. I have come to ask you, my chiefs. I think that it would be good if we took these buffalo back to our land to live there.” Some of the chiefs said, “that’s exactly right.” And some chiefs said, “No. Because it is good that we come here to ‘play’ with these different tribes. We come here to make war with them. And we come here to gather food. And we come here to relax and pass the time. For all three reasons, it is good that we come here, and if we take them back to our land, we will be tied down, it will be tiresome for us. We will not be able to go anywhere. We will just be in one place as we gather our food.” The chiefs disagreed with each other. Half of them said yes and the other half said no. [After three days the council remained at an impasse and out of respect for the tribal need for consensus on major decisions Ataticeʔ withdrew his proposal].
As he mounted his horse, he made sounds, saying “Qeyq, qeyq-eeee.” He waved at these buffalo, like sending them to different parts of the prairies. Ataticeʔ said to the buffalo, “It’s pitiful that we were denied for you to follow me back. it will be up to each of us whatever happens to you and whatever happens to me. That is all.” And all these buffalo turned towards the east, the rising sun. It’s like they were going off forever in different directions. The people were crying as they came on. As they were coming up the long range of mountains, they looked at the buffalo again and already they were far away, the great black forms of the buffaloes. They were going away. And Ataticeʔ cried.
Ataticeʔ’s son Ɫatatí having the same deep connection to the buffalo as his father, renewed his father’s request to capture calves in the 1870s. The council, seeing the effects of the unchecked settler slaughter of the buffalo, approved Ɫatatí’s plan. Six calves were brought over the mountain range, they soon flourished and became twelve. Ɫatatí’s mother, meanwhile, remarried Samwel Walking Coyote. While Ɫatatí was away, two people went to see Samwel. One was called Charles Allard, and the other man was called Michel Pablo. These two men met with him and told Samwel, “we’ve come to buy your buffalo.” Samwel said, “ok, it will be so.” Maybe it was two days later, maybe later, Ɫatatí returned to his house and missed the presence of the buffalo. He looked around and all the buffalo were gone. When he got home, he asked his mother, “where are my buffalo?” And his mother told him, “your stepfather sold them.” And Ɫatatí cried.[7]
[1] Years ago, I was at a gathering with fellow artists Andrian Stimson, Michael Farnan, and Lori Blondeau. I told them about my quest to track five bison and their ancestors as they were shuffled around North America. I think Adrian said that they had worked with a guide out in Alberta who had been told a different story than the one the Parks and conservationist groups tell. In this telling, a Piegan or Salish man called to the bison, and his wife helped carry them over the mountain on their horses.
I knew a story that held more truth was out there, so I kept pushing to find it.
I knew a story that held more truth was out there, so I kept pushing to find it.
[2] Sam will be referred to in different accounts as Samuel Wells, Indian Sam, Samwel, Walking Coyote, and Samuel Walking Coyote.
[3] Take a moment to pull back and view the broader timeline with me.
1855 – The confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes signed the Hellgate Treaty ceding title to the majority of their lands to the United States government with 1.3 million acres reserved from cessation for the Flathead Reservation. This territory was to be protected for their “exclusive use and benefit.” They also maintained the rights to hunt, fish, gather, and pasture animals on their ceded lands. Smith 13
1870s – The final Pend d’Orielle hunt brings in only 7 bison.
1877? - Ɫatatí brings in 6 live bison calves to the Flathead reservation. The same year the federal government banned the sale of guns or ammunition to any Indigenous person in Montana (Bigart 15).
1904 – After years of bitter protest by tribal leaders Theodore Roosevelt signs into law the Flathead Allotment Act in violation of the 1855 Hellgate treaty. This law forced members to take individual parcels of land, opening the remaining lands within the reservation to non-Indian homesteaders. “In all, over half a million acres – the vast majority of the most productive and valuable land of the Flathead Reservation – were lost from tribal ownership. Proceeds were used to fund the “Flathead Indian Irrigation Project” which largely benefited white farmers. (Smith 16-20)
1906 – The herd on the Flathead reservation, owned solely at this point by Michel Pablo, is sold to the Canadian government. It takes five years to round them all up. (Distant Thunder 23)
1907 – Aubrey publishes his account of ‘Indian Sam’ in Forest and Stream.
1909 – The American Bison Society, headed by Theodore Roosevelt, convinced congress to seize “16,000 acres of the Flathead Reservation in order to form a National Bison Range.” As with the funds from allotment, the dictated payments went back into the coffers of the US government. The bison range is seeded with bison that trace their lineage back to the Flathead’s original six. For a significant part of the National Bison Range’s existence tribal members are barred from working there.
1990 – The confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes applied to assume management of the National Bison Range under provisions of the American-Indian Self-Determination They have been fighting to enact “a modern manifestation of the very old tribal commitment to take care of bison, who have taken care of the people from the beginning of time.” Smith 21-22
2021 – After thirty hard fought years the National Bison Range, and management of the bison there, has been returned to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “The restoration of this land is a great historic event and we worked hard to reach this point. This comes after a century of being separated from the buffalo and the Bison Range, and after a quarter-century-long effort to co-manage the refuge with the FWS (Fish and Wildlife Services),” CSKT Chairwoman Shelly R. Fyant said in a statement to Char-Koosta News.
1855 – The confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes signed the Hellgate Treaty ceding title to the majority of their lands to the United States government with 1.3 million acres reserved from cessation for the Flathead Reservation. This territory was to be protected for their “exclusive use and benefit.” They also maintained the rights to hunt, fish, gather, and pasture animals on their ceded lands. Smith 13
1870s – The final Pend d’Orielle hunt brings in only 7 bison.
1877? - Ɫatatí brings in 6 live bison calves to the Flathead reservation. The same year the federal government banned the sale of guns or ammunition to any Indigenous person in Montana (Bigart 15).
1904 – After years of bitter protest by tribal leaders Theodore Roosevelt signs into law the Flathead Allotment Act in violation of the 1855 Hellgate treaty. This law forced members to take individual parcels of land, opening the remaining lands within the reservation to non-Indian homesteaders. “In all, over half a million acres – the vast majority of the most productive and valuable land of the Flathead Reservation – were lost from tribal ownership. Proceeds were used to fund the “Flathead Indian Irrigation Project” which largely benefited white farmers. (Smith 16-20)
1906 – The herd on the Flathead reservation, owned solely at this point by Michel Pablo, is sold to the Canadian government. It takes five years to round them all up. (Distant Thunder 23)
1907 – Aubrey publishes his account of ‘Indian Sam’ in Forest and Stream.
1909 – The American Bison Society, headed by Theodore Roosevelt, convinced congress to seize “16,000 acres of the Flathead Reservation in order to form a National Bison Range.” As with the funds from allotment, the dictated payments went back into the coffers of the US government. The bison range is seeded with bison that trace their lineage back to the Flathead’s original six. For a significant part of the National Bison Range’s existence tribal members are barred from working there.
1990 – The confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes applied to assume management of the National Bison Range under provisions of the American-Indian Self-Determination They have been fighting to enact “a modern manifestation of the very old tribal commitment to take care of bison, who have taken care of the people from the beginning of time.” Smith 21-22
2021 – After thirty hard fought years the National Bison Range, and management of the bison there, has been returned to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “The restoration of this land is a great historic event and we worked hard to reach this point. This comes after a century of being separated from the buffalo and the Bison Range, and after a quarter-century-long effort to co-manage the refuge with the FWS (Fish and Wildlife Services),” CSKT Chairwoman Shelly R. Fyant said in a statement to Char-Koosta News.
[4] Her Pend d’Oreille name was Sapin Mali. Smith 19
[5] The photograph seems to have been a mental invention.
[6] Yes, I know it is a sin I am guilty of, but at least I have the self-awareness to be ashamed of it.
[7] This transcription is taken from a short film produced by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes titled, “In the Spirit of Ataticeʔ”. This film conveys so much more of the cultural and historical context than I can or should attempt here. Please go and listen to Mose Chouteh and learn of the unbroken relationship of care and reciprocity the Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Orielle people continue to fight for. https://youtu.be/S1WvkSN8zDQ.