Showing posts with label North Dakota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North Dakota. Show all posts

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Friday, October 28, 1921. Honoring the Unknowns, the Kendrick's on the street, Recall

General Pershing decorates the tomb of Britain's unknown warrior. General Pershing accompanied by the Duke of Connaught inspecting the British Guard of Honor before entering Westminster Abbey, London, to decorate the tomb of Britain's unknown soldier.

October 28

1921  Eula Kendrick, the wife of Wyoming Senator John B. Kendrick, was photographed on the street in Washington D. C. on this day.


Mrs. Kendrick had been born in Round Rock, Texas in 1872 and was fifteen years Mr. Kendrick's junior.  Kendrick was also from Texas, and raised in a ranching family, Mrs. Kendrick, née Wulfjen, indicates that at the time of their marriage Greeley Colorado was her home.

The couple had two children and it was really Mrs. Kendrick who was the primary mansion of their famous Sheridan home, "Trail's End".  Mr. Kendrick's political career took off shortly after it was built, and he accordingly resided in it very little.

She far outlived her husband, dying in San Antonio in 1961.

The couple's daughter Rosa-Maye was also photographed at the same time.



She was sixteen years old on the day the family moved into Trail's End, and she would ultimately marry Hubert R. Harmon, an Army officer who courted her for five years prior to their marriage.  Harmon was an Army aviator and rose to the rank of Lt. General, making the switch to the U.S. Air Force when that service was separated.  She would publish a book of letters from London after she and her husband lived there, during which time he was posted there as a military attaché.  

Gen. Harmon was instrumental in the establishment of the United States Air Force Academy.  He was interned there following his death as was she, when she passed away in 1979.

In North Dakota, Lynn Frazier, the incumbent Governor, was recalled.  He was due to discontent with the agricultural depression in the state, but which was being experienced nationwide.  Frazier as a member of the left wing Nonpartisan League and conservatives objected to state ownership of industry, which Frazier supported and which to some degree North Dakota had.

Frazier would go on to be elected to the U.S. Senate the following year and would hold the seat until 1940.  He was a teacher and farmer by profession, and died in 1947.  He's one of only two U.S. governors to be recalled.

Sunday, May 23, 2021

May 23, 1921. Cities on the Red River, Harding on Memorial Day, the Seeger's go camping.


Moorhead, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota, are a across the Red River from each other.  On this day in 1921 they were photographed. 



In Leipzig, war crimes trials commenced. Only twelve Germans would stand trial, but the concept of trying an enemy combatant was a new one which became established as a result of the Great War.  The results were mixed.

Also on this day, President Harding issued a Memorial Day address, which stated:

Our republic has been at war before, it has asked and received the supreme sacrifices of its sons and daughters, and faith in America has been justified. Many sons and daughters made the sublime offering and went to hallowed graves as the Nation’s defenders. But we never before sent so many to battle under the flag in foreign land, never before was there the impressive spectacle of thousands of dead returned to find eternal resting place in the beloved homeland…

These dead know nothing of our ceremony today. They sense nothing of the sentiment or the tenderness which brings their wasted bodies to the homeland for burial close to kin and friends and cherished associations. These poor bodies are but the clay tenements once possessed of souls which flamed in patriotic devotion, lighted new hopes on the battle grounds of civilization, and in their sacrifices sped on to accuse autocracy before the court of eternal justice.

We are not met for them, though we love and honor and speak a grateful tribute. It would be futile to speak to those who do not hear or to sorrow for those who cannot sense it or to exalt those who cannot know. But we can speak for country, we can reach those who sorrowed and sacrificed through their service, who suffered through their going, who glory with the Republic through their heroic achievements, who rejoice in the civilization, their heroism preserved. Every funeral, every memorial, every tribute is for the living–an offering in compensation of sorrow. When the light of life goes out there is a new radiance in eternity, and somehow the glow of it relieves the darkness which is left behind.
Never a death but somewhere a new life; never a sacrifice but somewhere an atonement; never a service but somewhere and somehow an achievement. These had served, which is the supreme inspiration in living. They have earned everlasting gratitude, which is the supreme solace in dying…

I would not wish a Nation for which men are not willing to fight and, if need be, to die, but I do wish for a nation where it is not necessary to ask that sacrifice. I do not pretend that millennial days have come, but I can believe in the possibility of a Nation being so righteous as never to make a war of conquest and a Nation so powerful in righteousness that none will dare invoke her wrath. I wish for us such an America. These heroes were sacrificed in the supreme conflict of all human history. They saw democracy challenged and defended it. They saw civilization threatened and rescued it. They saw America affronted and resented it. They saw our Nation’s rights imperiled and stamped those rights with a new sanctity and renewed security.

We shall not forget, no matter whether they lie amid the sweetness and the bloom of the homeland or sleep in the soil they crimsoned. Our mindfulness, our gratitude, our reverence shall be in the preserved Republic and maintained liberties and the supreme justice for which they died. 

Warren G. Harding

 The professor Charles Seeger family went camping.


The baby in the photo is Pete Seeger.

Monday, March 15, 2021

March 15, 1941. Storms

On this day in 1941, a huge blizzard struck in North Dakota and Minnesota. The storm resulted in 71 deaths by some counts and a 151 by others.  By some measures is regarded as the worst blizzard in modern history, although there could obviously be other contenders.

German surface raiders were busy:

Today in World War II History—March 15, 1941

Franklin Roosevelt gave his first public radio address on Lend Lease, promising to carry through until victory:

March 15, 1941: On Lend Lease

Glen Miller and his Orchestra released their version of The Song of the Volga Boatmen, sort of a surprise and a surprise hit.   The tune is a traditional Russian folk tune.

The SOE dropped Free French Paratroopers, five in number, in France on a mission to ambush German pilots on their way to their airfield.  The pilots no longer took that route, however, so the mission failed.  Ultimately two of the five would be extracted after a month, during which their commander independently had instructed them to conduct reconnaissance.

Friday, December 4, 2020

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Myths. Sacagawea

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Myths. Sacagawea

Wyoming Myths. Sacagawea

Mural in the Montana State House by Edgar Paxson depicting Sacagawea and the Corps of Discovery in Montana.  Sacagawea's actual appearance, of course, is known only by description, but Paxon was a Montana artist particularly noted for his attention to close detail.  Having said that, she was just a teenager at this time and likely appeared younger than the female figure in this depiction.

Wyoming has an association with Sacagawea, sort of.

But not quite as close as we sometimes like to claim.

Route of the Corps of Discovery.  It wholly avoided Wyoming.

Sacagawea, the Corps of Discovery's justifiably famous guide, or pilot, or interpreter, has a real world close connection with our state in that she was a Shoshone.  Having said that, she was a Lemhi Shoshone. a name they would not have recognized.  To her band, and her times, she was a Akaitikka meaning "Salmon Eater".*  At the time of her birth in 1788 the Shoshone were widely spread throughout Wyoming, Montana and Idaho and, if you consider that their split with the Comanche had already occurred, but that the Comanche are an extension of the Shoshone people, they were widely spread indeed.**

She was born in Idaho what is now near the Idaho-Montana border.  No such border existed at the time, of course, and the Shoshone, including the Lemhi, ranged over wide territories.  Her band most likely ranged into northwest Wyoming, with it being certain of course that other Shoshone bands inhabited the area.

In 1800, at age 12, she was taken in a Hidatsa raid.  The Hidatsa are a Siouan people who are closely related to another Siouan people, the Crows.  Some consider the tribes to be the same, with the Hidatsa the parent tribe to the Crows.  It's important to note, however, that when the Sioux are referred to, its typically the Lakota and Dakota, and related groups that are meant. Indeed the Sioux and the Crows would be bitter enemies in the 19th Century, as would the Sioux and the Shoshone for that matter.

The Hidatsa were wide ranging and she was taken to a location that today is near Washburn, North Dakota. This means that the raiders had effectively traversed what is now Montana, an impressive feat for a raiding party.  The taking of captives in this manner was not unusual, and while this undoubtedly meant that the very young Shoshone girls life had taken a disastrous turn, her captivity by the Hidatsa, while real, was probably not terribly harsh.  In other words, she was a captive, but a captive with domestic duties that were likely not far removed from that of Hidatsa girls of the same age.

At age 13 she was sold to Toussaint Charbonneau as a "wife".  

Histories have sometimes addressed this in various ways, including using such terms as "non consensual wife", but there is no such thing.  Indeed, it's remarkable that even though the circumstances of her initial union with Charbonneau are well known, she's still usually routinely referred to as Charbonneau's "wife."  Effectively she was purchased as a slave, and if the niceties are stripped off of it, she was kept as a involuntary concubine at first, basically, or if you really want to strip the niceties off of it, as sort of sex slave with domestic duties, at first.  She was Charbonneau's second such slave, the first being the equally juvenile Otter Woman who was probably also a Shoshone captive of the Hidatsa.***

Edgar Paxon's depiction of Toussaint Charbonneau, notable perhaps in that its a flattering illustration.  In reality, of course, we have no period depiction for Charbonneau and his reputation has never been what can be called flattering.

In 1804 the Corps of Discovery visited Hidatsa villages in the fall in anticipation of their press across the the upper West to the Pacific the next Spring. They were in search of guides, and in that context hoped to find somebody who knew the territory. They were visited by Charbonneau, who was a French Canadian fur trapper.****  William Clark noted in his journal:
french man by Name Chabonah, who Speaks the Big Belley language visit us, he wished to hire & informed us his 2 Squars (squaws) were Snake Indians, we engau (engaged) him to go on with us and take one of his wives to interpret the Snake language.…

Spelling obviously had yet to be standardized and Clark puzzled out Charbonneau's last name.  He also used a lot of colloquialisms for the names of Indian bands.  The Snakes referred to the Shoshone, which is of course not what they call themselves (like most Indian bands, they call themselves "The People").  

It's of note, fwiw, and noteworthy without trying to be "woke", that the commanders of the Corps of Discovery did not appear bothered that  about Charbonneau's irregular situation with the two teenaged Indian girls.*****  They also didn't claim, as other writers have, that either of his girls were his "wives".  They only claimed that they were his "Squars", meaning his Indian women.  Polygamy was of course illegal in the United States, and Louisiana, the vast newly acquired territory, was within the United States, but there's no good evidence in this early entry that they regarded Sacagawea or Otter Women as wives, but rather simply his held women.  And of course Lewis and Clark were both fully acclimated to slavery, something they did not regard as abnormal nor wrong, and they had a slave with them of their own, York, who belonged to Clark and who was Clark's lifelong body servant.******

On that date in 1804 Charbonneau was contracted to be a guide that following spring and to bring one of his teenage women along with him as an interpreter.  They had no apparent early preference which one that would be.

Charbonneau apparently did, as that following week he'd bring Sacagawea into the Corps of Discovery camp and they took up residence there.  He did not bring Otter Woman.*******  Prior to the Spring she'd give birth to their son, who was named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, who'd live into his sixties and whom would have an adventuresome life and be the subject of his own Wyoming myth.  We'll get to that one later.

Otter Woman disappeared from history.  She was left with the Hidatsa and while there are oral history references to her, the story grows thin and her fate is unknown. She likely merged into the tribe that captured her and lived the rest of her life as part of the Hidatsa, but its of note that her story does not resume when Charbonneau returned to the Hidatsa for a time after completing his role with the Corps of Discovery.

Charles Russell's painting of the Corps of Discovery arriving at the camp of her native band, which was then lead by her brother.  This reunion occurred, in real terms, only a few years after she had been kidnapped by the Hidatsa.  Note that Russel, who was keen on detail, depicts one of the Shoshone as already being armed with a rifle, which was no doubt correct.

Everyone is of course familiar with the yeoman role that Sacagawea performed for the Corps of Discovery and therefore we'll omit it here.  Suffice it to say, she became the star critical guide, and a sort of diplomatic delegate for the expedition, outshining Charbonneau who seems to have been widely disliked, although the full degree to which he was disliked can be at least questioned as he'd retrain an occasional guiding role for the US Army into the 1830s, that coming to an end when Clark died.  Prior to that, he and Sacagawea would briefly live on a farm in Missouri, where she gave birth to a second child by him, named Lizette.  The invitation to live in Missouri came from Clark.  About Lizette little is known, and she's believed to have died in childhood.

Russell painting depicting the Corps of Discovery on the lower Columbia, with Sacagawea with arms outstretched.  One of the impacts of her presence on the trip was the effect it had on Indian bands they encountered, which convinced them that their intent was not hostile.

Following the experiment with farming, the couple, which by that time they seem to have been, returned to the Hidatsa.  Sacagawea died of what was described as "putrid fever" in 1812.At the time, it seems that she left the security of Fort Manual Lisa, where they were living, to return to the Hidatsa in what would have been sort of a premonition of death.  It also seems that she had a daughter with her at the time, who may have been Lizette, or who may have been a subsequent child about whom nothing else was known.  Jean Baptiste was left in Missouri at a boarding school which had been arranged for by Clark.

And with Sacagawea's death in 1812, the myth starts to kick in.

Truth be known, in the 18th and early 19th Centuries deaths in the United States were not well tracked in general and they certainly weren't in the West.  Birth Certificates and Death Certificates were not issued.  Nobody made really strenuous efforts, moreover, to keep track of the deaths of Indians up until the Reservation period, which was far in the future in 1812.  That we know as much as we do with the post 1804 life of Sacagawea is testimony to how important in the Corps of Discovery, and hence notable, she really was.  Period recollections on her fate can be regarded as beyond question.

None of which has kept people from questioning it.

Grace Raymond Hebard, educator, suffragist, feminist, and mythologist.

In the early 20th Century the remarkable University of Wyoming political economy professor, Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, took an interest in Sacagawea and, with scanty evidence, concluded that she had not died in 1812 but rather had traveled to the Southwest and married into the Comanche tribe, and then came to Wyoming after her husband was killed. These claims surrounded a woman who was known by various names, including "Chief Woman", or Porivo.

The woman in question seems to have come on to the reservation in advanced old age and to have arrived with an adult son.  White figures on the Reservation at the time, including a prominent Episcopal missionary, became fascinated with the elderly woman.^^  Of note, resident Shoshone had a difficult time speaking to her, which was a clue to her actual probable origin.  Be that as it may, her advanced aged and presence with an adult son lead the European American figures on the reservation to believe that she must be the famous female "pilot", Sacagawea, and the adult son, must be Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, apparently not aware that Jean Baptiste's life was very well recorded, including his travels abroad and ultimate death in his early 60s.  No matter on any of that, those in question wanted to believe that the figures must be Sacagawea and Jean Baptiste.

In reality, they were almost certainly surviving Sheep Eater Indians.  

The Tukudeka, or Sheep Eaters, are a Shoshone band who ranged in the mountainous regions of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.  Like the Lemhi, they were named by outsiders for their principal foods source, which in their case was Mountain Sheep.  

The Sheep Easters are the Shoshone band about which the least is known.   They always lived in what European Americans regarded as remote areas.  They were highly adapted to their lifestyle and remains of their sheep traps and other high mountain artifacts are fairly common, but encounters with them were actually very rare.  They did not routinely share their existence with other, lower altitude, Shoshones. Their encounters with European Americans were fairly rare, and they didn't have hostile encounters with them until very late in the Indian War period.  The Sheep Eater War of 1879 was the last major Indian War in the Pacific Northwest for that reason.

Sheep Eaters were a presence on the Wind River Reservation as early as 1870, when the Federal Government acknowledged them as a band entitled to the Shoshone allotment, and Shoshone Chief Washakie accepted them as a Shoshone group, but they had no high incentive to come onto the reservation voluntarily and generally only did very late, as the era of Indian free ranging was drawing down.  In spite of their enormous success in their environment, they were not numerous and generally melted into the Reservation populations when they came in, but they were different at first.  Included in their uniqueness was a linguistic one.  Their language varied from other Shoshones to an extent.

Most likely the elderly woman and her son who came in onto the Reservation and were noted by the Episcopal and Reservation figures were Sheep Eaters.  Their language was different and they just showed up.  By the time that they did, the Sheep Easter era was drawing very much to a close.  Most likely the adult man and his elderly mother decided that they couldn't make it as a solitary two.  Or some variant of that, as in the son deciding that caring for his mother in the mountains had become too burdensome.

The figures noted very much took to them, although conversing with them proved difficult.  The degree to which they adopted their view of what she was saying to fit their romantic conclusion of the rediscovery of Sacagawea or that the elderly woman.  Whomever she was, she passed away in 1884.  If she was Sacagawea, which she was not, she would have been 96 years old, certainly not an impossibly old age, but certainly an old one, both then and now.

Dr. Charles Eastman.

By 1919 the myths regarding Chief Woman had spread sufficiently that they were referenced in a 1919 account on the Corps of Discovery in a second hand way, noting that that a sculptor looking for a model of Sacagawea had learned of her 1884 death on the Wind River Reservation and her supposed status as Sacagawea.  In 1925 Dr. Charles Eastman, a Sioux physician, was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to locate Sacagawea's remains.  He also learned of Porivo's 1884 death and conducted interviews at Wind River.  Those interviews, conducted nearly forty years after her death, included recollections that she had spoken of a long journey in which she's assisted white men and, further, that she had a sliver Jefferson Peace Medal such as the type carried by the Corps of Discovery.  He also located a Comanche woman who claimed Porivo was her grandmother.  He claimed that Porivo had lived at Fort Bridger, Wyoming for sometime with sons Bazil and Baptiste and that ultimately that woman had come to Fort Washakie, where she was recorded as "Bazil's mother"  It was his conclusion that Porivo was Sacagawea.

Not all of Porivo's reputed accounts, if taken fully at face value, are fully easy to discount at first, but by and large they become so if fully examined.  Long journeys are in the context of the teller, and peace medals were much more common than might be supposed.  None the less, the retold story was picked up by Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard who massively romanticized it.  Hebard's historical research has been discredited, but her 1933 book caused a widespread belief to exist that Sacagawea didn't die in her late 20s but rather in her 90s, and not in North Dakota, but in Wyoming.  That suited Hebard's Wyoming centric boosting of her adopted state, and her feminist portrayal of an Indian heroine.  It provides a massive cautionary tale about the reinterpretation of history in the context of ones own time and to suit a preconceived notion of how the past ought to be a perfect prologue for hte future.

It is, however, simply, if unknowingly, false.

And the falsity of it gives Wyoming a claim on Sacagawea that it frankly doesn't merit.  One that lead to monuments in the state to Sacagawea, to include a tombstone or over Porivo's grave that identified her as Sacagawea, which is a sort of tourist attraction.

Indeed, there's no actual indication that Sacagawea ever set foot in Wyoming.  She may have, as a young girl, as the Lemhi Shoshone ranged over the mountainous regions of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.  Be that as it may, the Lemhi Valley of Idaho is named after them for a reason.  They're not one of the Shoshone bands that distinctly associated with the state prior to the Reservation era.  Be that as it may, during the known established period of her life, we can place her in Idaho, Montana and North Dakota, in terms of regional states, but not Wyoming. . . at any time.

That does not mean, of course, that she's not an admirable and important figure.  Nor does it mean that she was not an important Shoshone figure, and the Shoshone are an important people in Wyoming's history.  Its almost certainly the case that relatives of her, but not descendants, live on the Reservation today, although that claim would be even better for the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho.  Through her son, Jean Baptiste, she likely has living descendants today, although not ones who would identify as Shoshone.

But giving people a long and romantic life rather than a short and tragic one doesn't do them or history any favors.  In reality, Sacagawea's life was heroic, tragic and short.  She was just a girl when she was kidnapped from her family, and still just a girl when she was sold to a man a good twenty years older than she was and of an alien culture to be a type of domestic slave, kept along with another similarly youthful domestic slave he already held.  In that capacity she went across half the continent and back with an infant, and did come to be hugely admired by the members of the Corps of Discovery.  It was that respect that lead, in part, to the post expedition opportunities afford to her and Toussaint Charbonneau, who seems to have evolved into her actual husband over time.  That also lead to the education of her son at the behest of William Clark.  It didn't save her, however, form a 19th Century death, still in her twenties.

She was a remarkable young woman by all accounts, and deserves to be remembered as such, and accurately.

*Lemhi comes from Fort Lemhi, which was a Mormon mission to the Akaitikka.

**Comanche is a Shoshone word meaning "Arguer"  The argument was over the adoption of horses, and the argument took place in southeastern Wyoming at the time that the Shoshones first encountered horses.  The Comanches were the early adopters of horses.

***The details regarding Otter Woman are extremely obscure.  It's known that she was in an identical status to that of Sacagawea in 1804 and the best evidence is that she was a captive Shoshone.  There are other claims for her tribal origin, however and additional assertions as to her fate.  Like Sacajawea, her history suffers from an unfortunate association with the work of Dr. Grace Raymond Hebert who places Otter Woman in the Corps of Discovery camp in the winter of 1804 and who even has her remaining in domestic union with Charbonneau in later years, along with Sacajawea.  In reality, she seems to have simply been abandoned in 1804 or 1805.  Charbonneau's reasoning for this isn't clear, but Sacajawea was pregnant at the time that Charbonneau was hired by the Corps of Discovery.  It is clear that the Corps desired that one of Charbonneau's wives accompany them to act as interpreter, and he may have chose her due to her pregnancy, not wishing to abandon her in that condition.

Of course, if Otter Woman was in fact not Shoshone, but Mandan or some other tribe as has been claimed, that would also explain why she was not chosen.  

What occurred to her is not realistically capable of being known.

****Toussaint Charbonneau was probably born in 1767 and was from a town that is near Montreal.  His first name means "All Saints Day" or "All Saints".  He had been a fur trapper for an extended period of time by 1804.  His reputation has never been particularly good and for good reason.  One of the earliest records regarding him, prior to his time as a trapper, notes him being stabbed by a woman in defense of her daughter whom Charbonneau was attempting to rape.  

Charbonneau appears to be almost uniformly disliked by people who associated with him over the course of his long life.  He appears to have been temperamental.  He also seems to have a predilection for young women as he had four or five Indian "wives" during his lifetime, all of whom were teenagers at the time of their "marriages".  This includes one who was a teen at the time of his death , which is notable as he was in his 76 at the time, assuming the 1767 birth year is correct (if it isn't, he would have been 84, which seems unlikely).  The name of at least one of his wives is unknown (the name of another was Corn Woman, leaving at least one, or perhaps, unknown as to name).  It's known that two of the four or five where Shoshone, if Otter Woman was Shoshone, and one was Assiniboine.

His estate was settled by his son Jean Baptiste, which is interesting in that it would indicate that he was in some sort of contact with his son at the time of his death in about 1843, at which time he was back in North Dakota.  It's also interesting in that it would suggest that Jean Baptiste may have been his only survivor.  The existing information confirms that he had at least two children, both by Sacagawea, and may have had a third by her.  Only Jean Baptiste is known to have survived but the information about the possible third is very limited.  This is notable as his having four or five native women in domestic arrangements, with only one bearing children, would seem to be unlikely.

Charbonneau's long life is testament to his lifestyle in the wild being of a generally healthy nature.

*****Nor were they apparently bothered by the fact that the enlisted men of the Corps of Discovery indulged themselves with the favors of Indian women, making treatment for venereal disease a medical necessity for the expedition.  This was at least in part due to the fact that some Indian tribes of the period offered Indian women as favors to visitors, although I'm not noting that in regard to the Shoshone but rather to other bands the Corps encountered early in its trip across the western half of the continent. This is significant here only in noting that while Clark in particular came to really respect if not outright adore Sacagawea, the overall view of the men of the Corps was of a rather isolated and not egalitarian nature.

******York had been a slave in the Clark household and had grown up with Clark.  His post Corps of Discovery fate is poorly documented but it seems that Clark likely freed York at some point, probably a decade or so after the expedition, and due to repeated York requests that he be set free.  During the expedition he became a fairly participating member and his slave status, therefore, would have started to wear off.  He seems to have entered the freighting business upon being freed, and it further seems that Clark had granted him a status approach freedom sometime prior to actually freeing him.  York died at approximately age 60, apparently from cholera.  His death in his sixties came a few years prior to Clark's in his sixties.

*******Hebard says that Otter Woman spent the winter of 1804/05 win camp with Sacagawea and Charbonneau and was reunited with them upon the Corps of Discovery's return. She has Otter Woman going to Missouri with them and then returning to North Dakota with Lizette.

In short, it seems that Hebard disliked abandonment and death, and who likes them?  She was an important Wyoming figure and educator, and a suffragist.  Never married, a person is tempted to see in some of this a large element of projection of a period feminist sort in which not only is Sacagawea an important figure in the Corps of Discovery, but a feminist herself, with Otter Woman as an unconventional companion, associate and friend.

The reality of it was much more harsh.  Charbonneau abandoned Otter Woman upon obtaining employment with the Corps of Discovery, which at least left the pregnant Sacagawea with support.  As noted above, her pregnancy may explain why she was chosen over Otter Woman.  At least some oral histories indicate that Otter Woman later married an Indian man, and irrespective of their accuracy this is likely.  Given her slave status, Charbonneau's abandonment of her may have been a better fate for her in real terms.

^There's always a temptation to speculate about what a disease like "putrid fever" is, but in the context of the times its impossible to know.  While in a year like this one its easier to understand than others, even routine diseases could be lethal at the time and a disease like influenza was a real killer.

On an unrelated topic that fits in to this period, it might be worth noting that the actual story of Sacagawea, like that of several other 18th and 19th Century Indian women heroines, was uncomfortable for their European American contemporaries as well as for later generations, and therefore its continually recast.  Sacagawea is, like Pocahontas or Kateri Tekakwitha, an uncomfortable example of a Native American who was acculturated to more than one culture.  This was much more common among Indians than modern Americans would like to believe.

In her case, she had spent the first twelve years of her life about as isolated from the European Americans culture for an Indian as would have been possible south of the 48th Parallel and perhaps about as much as possible outside of far northern North America. This would have changed once she was with the Hidatsa, particularly upon her enslavement to Charbonneau.  It would have changed even more upon her accompaniment with the Corps of Discovery and its notable that at the time of her reunion with the Lemhi she made no apparent effort, nor did they, to rejoin them.  By that time, of course, she had a child and in the reality of the 19th Century her die may have been caste, if not by her own will.  Indeed, her fate was was at that point similar to that of the Sabean women who plead for their attackers after becoming pregnant by them in legend.

But only a few years later she was found in Missouri, a farmer's wife, with the farmer being Charbonneau.  She felt sufficiently comfortable with European American society to surrender Jean Baptiste to Clark before returning to North Dakota.  Her going back and forth between the Indian world and the European world is not seamless, but its not absent either.  This is true of many other period Native Americans including some very well known ones.

^^The Episcopal connection is what caused this thread to be written, although we'd debated doing it for years.  On one of our companion blogs, Churches of the West, a recent comment was posted about the Episcopal church in Atlantic City, with it being noted that the church had been moved from another location and that "Sacagawea" had been baptized there.

It's perfectly possible that the church had been moved from the Wind River Indian Reservation or some other locality in Fremont County, but Sacagawea wasn't baptized there.  Porivo may very well have been, given her close connection with the resident Episcopal missionary at the time.  It isn't known if Sacagawea was ever baptized, but if she was, and its quite possible that in fact this occurred, she would have been baptized as a Catholic.  Charbonneau had been baptized as a Catholic in his infancy.  It's additionally clear that Charbonneau, in spite of his lifestyle, gave his children distinctly French Catholic names and that a known descendant of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was baptized as a Catholic.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church. Belfield, North Dakota

Churches of the West: St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church. Belfield, No...:

St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church. Belfield, North Dakota


Belfield, North Dakota has a population of 800 people and four Catholic Churches, which says something about the nature of this region of the United States.  One of those four, St. John's, is a Ukrainian Catholic Church.


We featured a Ukrainian Catholic Church here for the first time yesterday.  Here we are doing it for a second time in the same region, and in fact at a location that's only a few miles down the highway from the one we featured yesterday.


In parts of the United States we've featured before, such as East Texas, seeing something like this in regards to Baptist churches wouldn't be unusual.  Here we're seeing a much different cultural history at work, and a very interesting one at that.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Demetrius Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Church. Fairfield, North Dakota

Churches of the West: St. Demetrius Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Church. ...:

Monday, August 14, 2017


St. Demetrius Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Church. Fairfield, North Dakota


This is St. Demetrius Ukrainian Catholic Church which is outside of Fairfield, North Dakota.  The church is over a century old and gives testament to the enduring Ukrainian presence in the prairie states and provinces of the West.


This is one of several Ukrainian Catholic churches in western North Dakota and its the first Ukrainian Catholic Church to be featured here (a prior entry on the topic of the Ukrainian Catholic Church referenced a biritual priest then in Lander Wyoming.  People with a casual familairity with the Catholic Church tend to believe that all Catholic Churches are "Roman" Catholic, but this is far from true.


Just as Catholic as "Roman" (Latin Rite) Catholic Churches, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, to give it its full name, is one of a collection of Eastern Rite Catholic Churches.  The Catholic Church features three major groupings of Rites based on this initial early transmission of the faith. These are the Latin, Antiochian, Alexandrian and Byzantine, with the Byzantine having derived from the Antiochean.  All still survive in spite of the rift created by the Great Schism which caused separate churches that are not in communion with Rome, typically called "Orthodox" churches, to also come into existence which also descend from all but the Latin Rite.  From these four groups come something on the order of twenty three Rites, of which the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is one.



The history of this particular Rite is not well known to me and it is difficult to fully know it without an in depth study.  This is part made confusing because it is one of the two major churches of the Ukraine, both of which use the Eastern Rite liturgical form, but only one of which is in communion with Rome.  The other major Ukrainian Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, is an Eastern Orthodox Church (usually called "the Greek Church" by native Ukrainians) which is regarded as a self governing church by the Russian Orthodox Church, but only by the Russian Orthodox Church.


The Ukrainian Catholic Church has an ancient history dating back to the Christianization of the Ukraine itself.  Because of the Ukraine's close association with Russia there has always been some tension between its status and that of the Russian Orthodox Church and this was greatly increased during the life of the Soviet Union as the USSR suppressed and drove underground the Ukrainian Catholic Church while favoring the Russian Orthodox Church.  Today the Ukrainian Catholic Church is claimed to have the allegiance of a minority but growing percentage of the population of the Ukraine, at the expense of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but frankly telling what is what in regards to this history is difficult.


This church predates the establishment of the USSR, of course, and reflects a strong late 19th Century and early 20th Century Ukrainian migration to the prairie regions of North America.  Coming from a wheat growing region and stemming from a population of independent small farmers, Ukrainians were reestablishing that pattern of life on the North American prairie.  It's perhaps telling that so many Ukrainian Catholic Churches are present in this region, rather than Russian Orthodox, and that either says something about the populations that migrated or the allegiance of Ukrainians at that time.


The Ukrainians have proved to be enduring as a culture in North American in these regions, which these churches show.  In terms of their organizational structure, while fully Catholic (any Catholic is free to worship at any Catholic church, irrespective of Rite) they are subject to their own jurisdiction. Therefore, they are not part of the Diocese of Bismarck, but rather the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saint Nicholas of Chicago, which covers over half of the United States and all of the western United States.


Indeed, in recent years the Ukrainian nature of this Eastern Rite church, together with the Slavic and Eastern nature of the second major Eastern Rite Catholic Church in the United States, the Byzantine Catholic Church (sometimes called the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church) have increased.  In the late 19th Century the Church in the United States had a Latinization policy in an attempt to unite all Catholics in North America more fully under the belief that this would help incorporate Catholics into society more ably, but this has been reversed.  At the present time the Catholic Church has sought to preserve the Eastern Rites wherever possible and this has lead to a de-Latinization process and a revival of practices that never diminished in Europe.




Sunday, July 5, 2020

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Peter Canisius Catholic Church, Grassy Butte, North Dakota.

Churches of the West: St. Peter Canisius Catholic Church, Grassy Butte, ...:

t. Peter Canisius Catholic Church, Grassy Butte, North Dakota



This Prairie Gothic Catholic Church in tiny Grassy Butte, North Dakota, is closed, a victim of the declining fortunes of small farming towns in the West and Midwest.  The church was quite active until the fortunes of the town changed and services were switched to another local building that had more modern amenities.  In 2007 the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota, sold the church and its obviously fairly well maintained, although I don't know what its current use is.




The name of the church reflects the German heritage of the town, as St. Peter Canisius was a Dutch Jesuit who was active and successful in countering the Reformation in Germany.

Sunday, June 7, 2020

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Lutheran Church, Watford City, North Dakota.

Churches of the West: First Lutheran Church, Watford City, North Dakota....:

First Lutheran Church, Watford City, North Dakota.



This Gothic style church is the First Lutheran Church in Watford City, North Dakota. The church was originally built in 1915, expanded in 1939, but destroyed in a fire in 1945.  The church was rebuilt in 1950.

Monday, March 16, 2020

March 16, 1920. The deadly storm.

Yesterday we posted on a lot of turmoil on our entry: Lex Anteinternet: March 15, 1920. The Ides of March sees Germany in...:

Included was this item:

Closer to home, the deadly Spring Blizzard of 1920 hit North Dakota.

And on this day, that storm resulted in the tragic death of Hazel Miner


The death of the 15 year old was tragic in every sense.  It came as part of an effort to send children home early from school.  She and her siblings traveled to and from school in winter by sleigh, but a sleigh driven by her father.  Her father in fact was at the school and asked Hazel to hold the horse that was tacked up to the sleigh in check as he went back to the barn. She wasn't strong enough and the horse bolted into the blizzard with her father out of sight. 

The blizzard was so intense that the slight couldn't be found.  It wrecked, getting her wet, and she kept her to younger sisters war as she slowly succomend to hypothermia.

On the same day Herman, Soren, Ernest and Adolph Wohlk all died from hypothermia trying to return to their family farm.  The school boys, ages 14 through 9, nearly made it before their sleigh became stuck.  The oldest died attempting to walk to the farm for help. Two of the others lived long enough for their father to find them in the sleigh, but they died shortly thereafter.

They weren't alone, a total of 34 North Dakotans died in the storm.  Miner was lauded as a folk hero for her actions for years thereafter.

Sunday, March 15, 2020

March 15, 1920. The Ides of March sees Germany in near revolt, the Allies in Constantinople, Congress Acting on the Versailles Treaty, and a Blizzard in North Dakota.


The headline was quite correct, a new civil war loomed in Germany, but at the same time the Reichswehr was pulling back from the putschists, proving once again that the army's instinct for self preservation remained paramount.

And perhaps it also reflected the fact that the rank and file of the Germany army differed little from the average man in the street to some degree.  This was no doubt not the case for the Freikorps, but German soldiers had played a role in the revolution of 1918, something that their leaders couldn't afford to forget.

Not forgotten in the U.S. was the Treaty of Versailles. The Senate ratified it, but not as written, substituting a compromise alternative Article X.


On the same day, but only hinted at here, British forces, acting under the Treaty of Sevres, occupied Constantinople.  The Allies in Turkey were acting as if the surrender of the Ottoman regime meant that the end of Turkey as a state capable of waging war against those on their own soil was over, which was far from true, and which would ultimately lead to disaster.

Allied troops marching in Constantinople, Greek flag flying from a building.

The occupation of the Ottoman capital city did not go well.  It commenced the night prior and was expansive on this day.  British Indian troops engaged in gunfire at a Turkish military school, killing ten students and British authorities arrested Turkish nationalist, including some members of the Ottoman parliament.  The overall human toll on the occupation isn't known.

The occupation of the parliament effectively eliminated the Turkish government which in turn put only the Sultan in a position of supporting the peace treaty with the Allies.  This would discredit the peace and a putative government anticipated by the treaty, which in fact had not yet been signed by the Turks.  The entire affair would strengthen Turkish nationalist who were already fighting the Allies in Anatolia.  

Constantinople would be occupied until 1923 when it was evacuated under the terms of a treat with the new Turkish government, the result of which would in part be the expulsion of most of Turkey's Greek minority population.

Closer to home, the deadly Spring Blizzard of 1920 hit North Dakota.

And U.S. passports suddenly became invalid due to Robert Lansing departing the office of Secretary of State with no replacement in place.  The crisis would continue for a week until Bainbridge Colby was confirmed for the office.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

The Enigma of Western Writers.

This post is on Western writers.



By which I mean writers from the West who write about the West.  By the "West", I mean the West of the Mississippi United States in general, and the various regions of the West as well. 

I don't mean writers like Annie Proulx, who move into an area, write something that they set in the area, and then are celebrated by reviewers outside of the area who are completely ignorant on the area in the first place.  Or even ones like Sam Western.

Nothing was western about the originator of Western writing, Owen Wister, who was an East Coaster through and through.

I'm not saying, well not saying completely, that a person has to be born in one area to write knowledgeably about it. There are certainly examples to the contrary.  Cormac McCarthy has notably written about the west of Texas and in the Southern Gothic style, but he's from Rhode Island originally.  Owen Wister, who is sometimes credited with inventing the Western novel (and at the time he wrote The Virginian he was writing about the recent past) was very much an Easterner.  His friend Theodore Roosevelt wrote beautifully about the West of his day, but he was a new Yorker.  Frederic Remington, the legendary illustrator and painter, is not only famous for his Western paintings and illustrations, which dramatically capture an era, but he was a writer as well, writing on the same topics that he depicted in his paintings.   Edward Abbey was from Pennsylvania and didn't experience the West until he was 18 years old.  Thomas Berger who wrote the only really great novel about Indians, Little Big Man, lived on the East Coast his entire life.

President Theodore Roosevelt, who was also a prolific reader and writer.

But I am saying that there's something different about writing on a culture that you are part of and about a region you are from.  I'd even go on to say that its really difficult to do that without being born in an area. Some writers can pull that off, but they are few.  So if you were born and raised in New England, or Zimbabwe, two actual examples for recent "Western writers", you can probably credibly pull off novels about the shipping news, or not going to the dogs tonight, but your regional novels aren't going to appear authentic to anyone from the region at all, because they are not.

Indeed, could Go Kill A Mockingbird have been written by anyone but a Southerner?  What about anything that Flannery O'Connor wrote. . . would they have been just as impactful if written by a Vermonter?   Would Doctor Zhivago have been what it was if it was written by a New Yorker?  Could Musashi have been written by anyone other than Ejii Yoshikawa?

I doubt it.

Boris Pasternak, who was born in Imperial Russia in 1890 and who died in the Soviet Union in 1960.  His famous work is the novel about the Russian doctor Zhivago, who would have been born right about the same time and and have experienced many of the same things.  Hardly anybody would maintain that a non Russian, let alone a non Russian who hadn't experienced these things, could have written a novel like Doctor Zhivago.

So I'm talking about writers who have spent their youth, even if not perhaps born here, in the real West.  Writers growing up, like Norman Maclean, in Montana, or writers growing up in Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, New Mexico, and so forth.  And writers, I will credit, from Texas.  Having said all of that, I'd currently exclude writers, for the most part, who may be from any of those regions but whose lives have been spent in the really big cities of the region, like Denver, Dallas or Houston. Big cities are their own thing, and that thing isn't the West.  Modern Denver, and indeed increasingly much of the Front Ranger for hundreds of miles around it, are no more The West than Newark is.  So too with Las Vegas, Phoenix, or any of the giant Texas cities.

Anyhow, some observations.

Western writers, as I've defined them, clearly have a deep, deep, love for the region.  If you read, for example, Norman Maclean's work, he clearly loved Montana.  Indeed, no other writer described the Rocky Mountain West as accurately and deeply as Maclean.  Nobody.

Mari Sandoz clearly loved Nebraska and the plains.  So did Willa Cather.

And what's so notable about that is that they all left the region they loved.

In the film A River Runs Through It and in the novella, Norman Maclean has his brother express the view that he, the brother, will "never leave Montana".  Indeed, Maclean has Paul, his brother, express the view that those who moved from Montana to the West Coast suffered from moral defects, a view a lot of Westerners do in fact have.  But both Paul Maclean and Norman Maclean, in real life, moved to Chicago. At the time that he wrote his works, late in life, Norman Maclean had spent more years in Chicago than in Montana.  He died in Chicago in 1990 at age 87 (his wife, Jessie, had a much shorter life, dying due to respiratory aliments in 1968 at age 63).



Mari Sandoz was born in Nebraska in 1896. She moved to Denver, which at that time remained a Western city, in 1940, at which time she was 44  years old, but then moved to New York City in 1943, where she remained until her death at age 69 in 1966.



Wila Cather, was born in 1873 and her family moved to Nebraska in 1883.  She was steeped in the West from her youth, but she moved to Pittsburgh in 1896, at which time she was an up and coming writer.  She moved to New York in 1905, which is where she remained for the rest of her life.

What's going on here?  It seems that "Western" writers don't achieve success at that unless they've moved to somewhere distinctly non Western.

Maybe some of that has to do with what Garrison Keillor, who is a Western writer (Minnesota and North Dakota are part of the West the way I've defined them) noted about the region in general.  Our number one export is our children.  While we often don't credit it, and we frequently argue about it, the West has both a small population and a good educational system.  We work hard here to educate our youth, but we really don't have anywhere for them to go, as a rule.  That's been noted by outsiders, such as non Westerner, Sam Western (who is in  the non Westerner import class of writer), but they rarely seem to grasp the nature of it.  The West remains the West, where it has, because of natural features which translate into economic ones.  This means that while we really appreciate the need for solid educations, it also means that we educate generation after generation of Westerners who have no place to go with their educations. So they go elsewhere.

That seems to me to be the story for Maclean and Cather.  Norman Maclean obtained a degree in English from Dartmouth in 1924. What use would that have been in the Montana of 1924, or for that matter in the Montana of 2019?  It'd be limited, at best.  He clearly retained his affection for Montana and spoke of himself, from his actual home in Chicago, as a Montanan in his writings.  He married a woman from Montana in 1931, showing the extent to which he retained actual roots there. But he lived and died in Chicago.

The situation for Cather was likely even more pronounced.  An educated woman in the West in the 1890s, her career options were necessarily  highly limited.  Indeed, they were limited in the Western world in general. She never married, something very unusual for her era, and focused on her writing career, but that would fairly obviously be a lot easier to do from New York than from Nebraska.

Sandoz doesn't quite fit this mold, but maybe she provides another example.  Sandoz was a difficult character from her youth on but first found herself published while living in Nebraska, having relocated to Lincoln from the Sand Hills. She's struggled up to that point to establish herself as a writer, but when she did, it was with two novels both of which met with gigantic disapproval in Nebraska.  So she moved to Denver, and then on to New York.

And perhaps Michael Punke gives us another example.  Punke is the author of The Revenant.  Punke was born in Torrington Wyoming.  He's a practicing lawyer, as well as an author (and therefore obviously a much more disciplined person than myself), but he has worked nearly exclusively outside of the West, both inside of and outside of government.

And maybe Punke's example brings home that this phenomenon is widespread with Westerners in general.  At what point you cease to be a Westerner by leaving a region can be debated.  I think it that does happen, and am one of the many who disregard lamentations published in the letters to the editor section of the newspapers that start off with "I read the article about so and so last week, and while I left Wyoming forty years ago. . . .". 

But it's clear that people who were largely raised in a region conceive of themselves, quite often, as remaining part of it their entire lives.  Which I suppose makes sense.  Wendell Berry has lamented that modern American life means that people don't become "of" a place, but maybe they do more than we might imagine (which is another reason that novelist from Zimbabwe or Vermont don't become regional authors by moving here).  Beyond that, however, what we see with writers may be nothing more than what we see with legions of Westerners.

For a long time, at least for rural Westerners, which is a definition that would fit many in the West, growing up and getting an education has meant either narrowing the scope of your education or leaving.  I.e., if you are educated as a lawyer, doctor, veterinarian, school teacher, accountant, or engineer, you can find work here.  But if you have a PhD in English, you probably better be looking elsewhere.

Indeed, even with these other professions, as time marches on, this is becoming more and more true.  In 1990, at the time I graduated from the University of Wyoming's law school, it was already the case that maybe 1/3d of the class was headed to Colorado.  In some recent years over half the class has, as changes in the nature of practice have made that necessary.  Indeed, with the passage of the UBE, there's really no longer a reason for a Wyoming law school at all, and its only a matter of time until the legislature realizes that.

For some this is compounded with the American ethos of money meaning everything.  There are areas of various professions you can find work in the state, to be sure, but it won't pay the same lucrative amount that it might elsewhere.  So people move for the money.  Interestingly, they often find themselves in personal conflict after that, and are often among those writing to the editor with letters such as; "I'm distressed to read that such and so is going in near my beloved home town of Little Big Horn. . . I want it to be just like it was when I left in 1959 and I'm planning to return soon from the hideous dump of Los Angeles where I've been piling up cash since the early 1960s . . ." 

So, maybe it's the nature of the regional economy, and perhaps the national economy at that.  Writers gravitate to where the writers are, and the writers, by and large, are in the big cities.

Not all of them of course, but a lot of them.

Maybe.

Maybe something else is also at work, and perhaps that's most notable in what we noted above about Mari Sandoz. She didn't leave Nebraska for more futile publishing grounds.  She left Nebraska as she was taking a lot of heat after getting published.  Indeed, her second novel was censored in the state.

So maybe its the classic example of a person not really being too welcome on their own home ground in some instances.

In fairness, Sandoz's writing was always very critical of various things, and indeed quite frankly her histories, for which she remains famous, aren't terribly accurate in various ways.  At least her histories haven't born the test of time except, perhaps, for Old Jules, the book her extraordinarily difficult father asked her to write about him after his passing.  But still, maybe the West doesn't welcome its own writers much?

Or maybe it does.  Novelist Jim Harrison, who was from Michigan, which is pretty rural in some locations and the near west to a degree, lived in Arizona and Montana after leaving Michigan.  Garrison Keillor, mentioned above, flirted with New York after already being well known, but returned to Minnesota.  Patrick McManus, the humor writer, lived in the West his entire life.  Current crime writer C. J. Box, whose protagonist is a Wyoming Game Warden, is from Wyoming.  Tim Sandlin, whom I've never read, was born in Oklahoma but lives in Jackson.

Indeed, if Oklahoma is sort of like Texas in some ways, it's worth noting that Texas has had a lot of native authors who have continued to live in Texas, Larry McMurtry notable among them.  McMurtry grew up on a ranch outside of Archer, Texas, a town so far north in Texas its nearly in Oklahoma.

So added to that, maybe these long distance travels aren't as far as they seem. . . in some instances.  In my grandfather's era Chicago was the hub of the western cattle industry and Denver just a very large city on the plains.  Chicago's role in that went away, but the point is that economists and politicians who are baffled by the fact that the West doesn't spawn very many large cities are potentially missing the point that it has. . . its just that everything is more spread out here.  So Chicago, a Midwestern city, may have more of a link to the West of an earlier era than we might suppose.  Denver serves that purpose for much of the Northern Plains now and, I dare say, Calgary does as well at a certain point.

Indeed, those cities filled that roles, or fill them, as they were, or are, centers of industry for regions.  And while we don't like to think of writing as an industry, it's a type of one, so perhaps some relocation makes sense.  Indeed, it might even now, in spite of the electronic age, which seems to be pulling the working population towards the city centers like a black hole draws in light.

Anyhow, something to ponder.