Railhead: Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming

When I first started this blog I hoped to explore, through the posts. . .and through the responses to them, the period of 1890 to 1920.  The blog has served that purpose, but not as well as I'd hoped, although through doing it we've learned a lot.

This blog became effectively the third version of what it is now, which means that it strayed from its original purpose and morphed into what two prior blogs were, while also keeping its original purpose as well.   That is, there were two prior blogs that commented on society, politics, baseball. . . whatever.  As I killed those blogs off and didn't want to revive one like that, I started making those comments here, still while developing the original purpose.

While that was going on, we started some photo blogs as well. The reason was that back in the pre COVID 19 days we traveled around the region a lot.  As we're interested in all sort of things, that gave us the excuse to photograph them. The first two were Courthouses of the West and Churches of the West.*  Following both of those in very short order was Railhead, which features photography associated with railroads.

I note this as every once and awhile we end up with a post on one of our other blogs that serves the first first purpose of this one, and nicely.  We just had one such example here:Railhead: Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming:              

Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming

 

This is the Burlington Northern Depot in Casper Wyoming.  It was built in 1916, which would place this building solidly in the era of the petroleum and livestock fueled economic boom that happened in Casper during World War One.

The following photographs were taken in June 2015 from a Ford Trimotor airplane.

I should know a lot more bout this depot than I do, and in trying to answer the questions that were posted, I now know more about regional rail than I did when the questions were posted even though the original post has been up for years.  Indeed, in thinking about it, I also know that I don't know as much about the local refinery industry as I should.

All of which opens up topics for future exploration. 

*The very first one was Painted Bricks, which predated any of our other blogs.  It's dedicated simply to painted building signs and advertisements.  It was earlier, I think, than any other blog we did.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne ...: 

Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne Wyoming.

This is Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  This church was built in 2012 and is located on the edge of Cheyenne.

This church is interesting in several ways, one of which simply the way it is named.  The Church is what would normally be called a Greek Orthodox church but presents itself as an "Orthodox Christian" church.  This stands in contrast to what we typically find with the various Orthodox churches which usually identify an ethnic component to them, such as Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox.  Indeed, while the various Eastern Orthodox churches are in communion with each other, they are all autocephalous and there are real distinctions between them at least to the extent that each of them has their own hierarchy.

They are also very traditional in many ways and to find one that doesn't note the ethnic component is simply unusual for them.  Also unusual is the design of this church which is highly modern (unfortunately in my view, as I don't care for this external office building appearance).

While not knowing for sure, I suspect that these departures from tradition here were intentional and reflect an effort to deal with a decreasing ethnic component in the Orthodox Churches which they are going to have to deal with in order to survive. At the same time, however, it also may reflect an increased interest in the Orthodox community among traditionalist Protestants of various kinds who have investigated their own churches origins in the wake of numerous doctrinal changes in recent years.  There's been a bit of a boom, more than a ripple but less than a tidal wave, of traditionalist protestants coming into the Orthodox Churches, typically the Greek Orthodox Church, as a result of that.  This church, in its name and design, seems to be designed with an eye towards accommodating that. 

Best Post of the Week of November 29, 2020

 The best posts of the week of November 29, 2020.

More on Societal Scurvy

Wyoming Myths. Sacagawea

On Vaccinations

The Free Issue. Wyoming Wildlife Grizzly Bear Issue

The Free Issue. Wyoming Wildlife Grizzly Bear Issue

Hideous example of European Americans hatred of nature. . . oh wait . . charming example of interaction with wildlife.  Mescalaro Apache, 1880s.

You really should read it.

Wyoming Wildlife

We've subscribed to Wyoming Wildlife, the excellent magazine of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department, for decades.  It's a great magazine.

This issue, as far as I'm aware of, is the first free issue they've ever produced.

And that's because this is the first openly lobbying issue that they've ever produced.

The topic is the delisting of Grizzly Bears as an endangered or threatened species.  

The Endangered Species has been a huge success in regard to grizzly bears, as well as wolves.  The fact that grizzly bears remain on the list in Wyoming even after twice the number needed for recovery has been long obtained and after their range has grossly exceeded what was originally set is a tribute to that fact.  Their numbers are still growing, and truth be known the Game & Fish is being conservative about their numbers and range. It's probably somewhat higher in terms of numbers than the Game & Fish states and the range definitely exceeds what this issue declares it to be.

The only reason that the bear remains on the list are due to the facts that: 1) the ESA is a complicated act and the procedure for desisting is accordingly complicated and: 2) the stupidity of our Federal Court system allows the remote D.C. Circuit to hear cases that have nothing whatsoever to do with Washington D. C. as a territorial jurisdiction; and 3) environmental groups don't give a rats ass about people who live in the state.

Some of that is a harsh opinion, but it's all correct.

Indeed, back in the 80s and 90s Wyomingites, and by that I mean the people who are really from here, not those who come in for work and stay awhile, found themselves under a sort of odd academic assault from those who openly advocated for turning much of Montana and Wyoming into a giant park. Their position was that these regions were losing population (which they were at the time) and living here was passé. Never mind that what was really going on was an petroleum contraction and those employed outside of that industry, particularly the natives, weren't going away at all.  Related to that way, although not organizationally, are the efforts of the bear's extreme advocates who view the entire state as essentially bear territory.

Truth be known, most Wyomingites, again those really from here, might be accepting of that view if the Game & Fish could manage them, which would mean allowing their hunting.  Otherwise, however, humans are put in the freakish position of being held to be out of nature. There's never been a period in which humans haven't been able to hunt a healthy bear population for legitimate reasons, except for the current ones.

The lawsuits that keep this idiotic situation going are always technical in matter and pretty much simply designed to throw a wrench in the works. They're always filed in the District of Columbia which, in a jurisdictional system that made sense, would never have jurisdiction over matters like this.  This means they're always heard by judges who don't have to live with their decisions in any real sense, and they're always heard by Federal judges who are part of a system which keeps them on the bench unless they commit a crime as long as they can breath.  

All of this points to several things.  The most important thing is that its time to delist the grizzly and let Wyoming manage it.

It's also time to enormously restrict the territorial jurisdiction of the D. C. Circuit down to something rational.  

On Vaccinations

Veterinarian vaccinating a horse for meningitis, Fremont County, Idaho.  1940.

Every year I participate in the vaccination of hundreds of cattle.  My dog is vaccinated for diseases that dogs get.  The dear old cat, who lived a rough outdoor life in his occupation of slaughtering vermin, was vaccinated.

When I was a child I was vaccinated for various diseases as an infant, and then in school again.  I don't recall what all I was vaccinated for, but I know that it included measles, small pox, and polio.  

I was vaccinated for small pox twice more at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and for polio twice more at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, as a soldier.  And the Army vaccinated me for Yellow Fever when I was a National Guardsman.  I've been vaccinated for Tetanus a time or two as well.

I'd get a COVID 19 vaccine today if I could.  But like most people, my turn will come much later, assuming of course like others who have to wait their turn that I don't catch it and die first.

That latter statement may sound excessive dramatic, or morbid, but I've known one member of my occupation who has died of the disease already and quite a few who are sick or have been.  We're waiting now for information about a colleague we've all worked with who went into the ICU a couple of weeks ago and that's the last news we received from him.  The last time that happened was when the member of our profession I've noted went in and then came out, weeks later, dead.

And then we get statements like those from a physician employed by the State of Wyoming who called into question the vaccines, referring to them as a "biological weapon", and suggesting that the Chinese and the Russians developed the virus in a laboratory in order to spread Communism.

When I was young my parents often mentioned how people lived in fear of going to swimming pools during the summer lest they contract polio.  They regarded Dr. Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine, as a hero.

Jonas Salk.

Men of my father's age also looked back on World War Two, which he was too young to have served in but old enough to remember, and often commented on the "miracle drugs" that had been developed in the context of the war that saved lives.  The war was awful, but the resulting medical developments were often noted.

My father's war was the Korean War, and oddly enough a physician from my town, who had gone through one of the rushed upper educations of World War Two, and who served as a doctor during the Second World War, had also been a critical figure in the identification of Korean Hemorrhagic Fever, something that was always noted about that individual as an item of admiration.

As noted above, when I was of school age we were vaccinated at school.  I'm sure our parents were informed, and I do recall that one kid who was a Jehovah's Witness did not receive the vaccinations, but he was the only one.  Our parents were happy to have us benefit from what medical science had developed and spare us from potential agony from disease.  And certainly nobody in the shot line at Ft. Sill though anything about receiving an entire battery of vaccinations, including one for a disease that was already regarded as extinct at the time.

So what happened?

I really don't know, although I have my suspicions, and it plays a lot into what I've sort of lined out above.  My parents and their generation were personally familiar with disease, death and fear being a part of everyday life and had personally scene massive efforts to overcome disease in their lifetimes.  My mother, after all, bore the name of an aunt she'd never met who had died of the Spanish Flu.  There have been great medical developments since the 1970s, to be sure, and many are simply amazing, but the old diseases that arrived every year and took people seemingly at random are a thing of the past.  Somehow, therefore, we no longer look at this the way we once did, as dying from small pox or the like is like something out of the movies.

And in the interim years  the huge public health efforts that started during the Great Depression and were then ramped up due to World War Two and continued on during the Cold War have evaporated.  In an era in which we worried about 1/3d of the population being out of work, and then fighting the Germans and the Japanese, and then potentially fighting the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China science, engineering  and medicine was a big, big, deal.  When the Soviets faded, and even prior to that, that no longer was the case and we lapsed into an era and regard concerning  them that harkened back to the 1920s in some ways.  One that emphasized personal beliefs over such matters, as an individual conflict between the two didn't seem all that important really.  In other words, in a life or death struggle with a series of opponents, your personal views were still yours, and you could voice them, but they were likely to be subordinated at higher levels to national needs and you were likely to participate in that subordination.  When that pressure was off, the subordination was as well.  

In that gap, moreover, an interesting duality of the concepts of liberty developed.  First it developed with the embrace of the libertine in the 1960s but by the 1980s it was a conservative sort of libertarian concept that developed and they both exist in society simultaneously now and are often strongly welded together.  In many ways the left and right strongly unite and feed each other in this context.

So it'll be interesting so see where are now.

We're clearly an era of titanic political strife.  It an earlier era conservatives would have simply shut people who questioned taking a vaccine during a pandemic down, and liberals would have lectured them.  But in our current populist era this isn't the dynamic we're seeing.  The population needs to reach an immunity level of around 80% in order for COVID 19 to disappear.  We are somewhere around 10% of the overall population in that status, albeit temporarily as the immunity apparently wears off, right now.  That requires 70% of the population to be vaccinated.

Will it occur?  Probably not.

Nobody can criticize, or should even really inquire behind, individual health decisions, at least up to the point where they impact society as a whole.  Even while saying that, however, I'm baffled by how society approaches this over all topic.  People think nothing of having teenage girls vaccinated for HPV because they get the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and simply assume that people "can't not do it" will resist here. That's a massive societal assumption that is known to be false.  Indeed, mass vaccination for STDs was something that was only done on prostitutes in European societies before recently.  And people who vaccinate cattle and horses every year and are zealous about it will be abstaining in some cases.  Some who vaccinate Rover and Mittens and don't think twice will think twice here.

Beyond that, people have a gigantic acceptance of medications that actually don't medicate, but will in some instances avoid inoculation here out of fear over the vaccine.  Birth Control pharmaceuticals, for example, are enormously accepted society wide but are unimaginably dangerous as chemicals, being associated with severe health consequences and even psychological ones, and yet they're as routine as candy in our society, and this is but one example.  "Alternative medicines" of all sorts are sold as near pharmaceuticals when they haven't been vetted by the FDA at all.  Things like CBD Oil are now sold as cure alls and widely accepted as such even though they at best probably have no real impact on humans or at worst have negative ones.

And then theirs simply chemicals we know will impact health but which we ignore.  Alcohol and tobacco are well known for their risks and yet are widely consumed and accepted.  Marijuana, which has not been regulated for purity and impact at the Federal level as its listed as an illegal product, undoubtedly has risks of which we're unaware, but we're not worrying about it.

The point is not to tell people what they should to. This website tracks long-term trends as part of what it does.  And this is an interesting one. There really hasn't been a strong societal reaction to a scientific matter in the public sphere since the 1920s.  There was in that decade.  Our current decade is starting to look a bit like the 1920s in some ways, including the debate on scientific matters as social issues.  That's been developing since the 1980s, but this is the first time it's really been so evident as the event we're enduring is so dramatic.

On this site recently there's an item on Sacagawea.  If you read it all the way through, you'll note that in spite of the romantic wishful thinking of Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, the young woman, still in her 20s, died of "putrid fever", a bad way to go.  But people went that way all the time.  It was routine.  

Modern medicine made a death like that into a tragedy rather than a normality.  That actually gave us the luxury to debate something like whether or not individuals take vaccines.  The rarity of it also has put our relationship as a species to killer diseases out of context and few of us, and only the oldest of us, have a frame of reference to go from.  We're getting one now, but to what extent it comes into focus during a crisis, or after it, is an open question, particularly in an age as polarized as our own.

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.

December 4, 1920. The Holiday Season.

 

The weekly and monthly magazines hit the stands this Saturday, December 4, 1920 with Christmas themes.

Well, most of them anyway.

On the same day, Federal agents and moonshiners fought the first gun battle in Prohibition.  And Argentina became the first nation to withdraw from the League of Nations, upset in regard to its early distinctions between belligerents and non belligerents in the Great War.

The predecessor to the NFL played its first game in New York City, at the Polo Grounds.

The Polo Grounds are called that, of course, as they played polo there.  In another riding sport, fox hunting, a hunt gathered on this day in Washington D. C.

Some people, however were photographed at their occupations on the same Saturday, including. . . 

Lewis Ludlow, a Congressional page, and . . . 

the Vice President's chauffeur.

Today In Wyoming's History: A New Sidebar: Wyoming Myths

Today In Wyoming's History: A New Sidebar: Wyoming Myths: 

A New Sidebar: Wyoming Myths

In the next couple of days we're going to premier a new sidebar series on this site, that being Wyoming Myths. The focus of the series is probably obvious.

It's not like it'll be an exhaustive series with vast numbers of entries.  By and large, Wyoming's history has been pretty accurately recorded and portrayed.  But every state's story includes some myths, some simply frequently repeated, and some that are in fact cherished.

Indeed, it's just one such myth that causes this series to come about.  It's a myth that I've known about for a long time and its simply not true.  But it is a beloved one in certain quarters.  I've avoided writing on it as deflating a beloved myth can provoke ire, particularly one like we're going to start off with, but things that aren't true, aren't true.  And preserving a falsehood doesn't do anyone any good.

One thing on this, which I'll note right from the onset, this thread won't be "revisionist".  I'll occasionally take positions on some things, although not so much on this blog, which are "revisionist" in nature, but only where they are in need of revision based upon the facts of a matter.  Indeed, one likely teed up "myth" we'll address is a revisionist myth seeking to "correct" an earlier history which, at least based upon what we currently know about the matter, was likely correct.

Indeed, that would tend to be true about the first myth we'll deal with here as well, which was the product of an early 20th Century revision.

The first entry is almost ready to go.  We hope you'll enjoy the series, or at least read it, and of course should you choose to defend the myth, well you certain are welcome and encouraged to comment on it.  And if you are relieved, surprised, or whatever when a post comes up, well please feel free to note that as well.

December 1, 1920 Álvaro Obregón becomes President of Mexico.

In what some regard as the end of the Mexican Revolution, although that can be debated, Álvaro Obregón  was sworn in as the elected head of Mexico's republic.  He was the first head of state to cleanly take that position since at least Modero, if not well before Modero.

He can also, therefore, be regarded as the start of the long rule of the PRI which would dominate Mexico's politics for decades.

His term in office was marked by massive education reform and mild land reform.  He normalized Mexico's relationship with the United States which gained him American recognition but also sparked a failed rebellion.  He was somewhat anti clerical, inheriting that position from the existing Carranza era constitution, but not as much as his successor would be.

The USS California was in dry dock in San Francisco.  Commissioned in 1915, she was one of the ships sunk, and then raised, at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  She'd serve as an active warship until 1947.

Pope Benedict XV issued his encyclical On Children of Central Europe - Annus Iam Plenus, which stated:

Encyclical of Pope Benedict XV, promulgated on December 1, 1920

Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.

A whole year has now passed since We (when the war was but a thing of yesterday) called upon all to turn their hearts in pity towards the children of Central Europe, who were so severely afflicted by hunger and want that they were wasting away with disease and were face to face with death. And, indeed, a wonderous joy it is to Us that Our appeal has not fallen vainly to the ground - an appeal which was actuated by that charity which enfolds in its kindly embrace all men, without distinction of race or nation, whosoever bear within them the image of God. The happy issue of our supplication, Venerable Brethren, is especially well known to you who assisted Us zealously in so salutary an enterprise. For in truth, a generous supply of money has been collected from the peoples of every land. There has been, as it were, a noble competition in liberality, with the result that the common father of so many, innocent children has been able to look to their necessities and dissipate their sorrows. Nor do we cease to proclaim the kindly providence of God, Whom it has pleased to use Us as a channel whereby the manifold blessings of Christian charity might flow to His abandoned little ones. In this matter We cannot desist from offering a public tribute of praise to the society entitled the "Save the Children Fund," which has exerted all possible care and diligence in the collection of money, clothing, and food. But, indeed, the general scarcity and the high cost of living, which the war has brought in its train, are of such a complex and varied character that the assistance We have rendered has perhaps neither succeeded in reaching those parts of Europe where necessity pressed hard, nor, where help was given, has it always been adequate to the actual need. To this must be added the fact that in the course of the year following the Encyclical Letter which We addressed to you, Venerable Brethren, on this very topic, there has been no appreciable improvement in the lot of most of those areas where it is evident that the people, and especially the young, find life growing yet harder and harder owing to the shortage of the necessaries of life. Nay, in some parts, war has flamed out anew and calamities of every kind, to the serious loss of those very elements that it is necessary to reestablish; in other parts where the civil State has been overthrown and where most frightful and disgraceful massacres have been perpetrated, it has come about that numberless families have been reduced to penury; that wives have been bereft of their husbands, and children of their parents; there are many districts, too, where it is so difficult to make provision for the food supply that as a consequence the population is afflicted by almost the same hardships which pressed upon it in the hideous days of the war.

2. Wherefore once again, inspired by the consciousness of that universal fatherhood which it is Our office to sustain, and with the words of the Divine Master on our lips - "I have compassion on the multitude . . . for they have nothing to eat" - now, when the anniversary day of the birth of Christ draws nigh a second time We call loudly upon Christian peoples to give us the means whereby we may offer some relief to the sick and suffering children, of whatsoever nationality they may be. Yes, We call on all who have hearts of kindness and pity to make a generous offering, but in particular we turn to the young children who dwell in the more prosperous cities of the world, to those who can with comparative ease stretch out a helping hand to their poor little brothers in Christ. Is not the birthday of Christ Jesus, in an especial manner the feast of the young? See then how the desolate children of those scattered districts strain suppliant hands to those other happier children, and seem to point to the cradle where the Divine Infant cries in helplessness! Yet is not that Infant the common brother of them all, He Who "being rich became poor," Who from that manger, as from the throne of heavenly wisdom, silently teaches us not only the value of brotherly love but also how men from their tenderest years onward must detach themselves from the longing for the goods of this world and share them with the poor, who in their very poverty are so much nearer to Christ? Surely the children of the richer parts of Europe will have it in their power to nourish and clothe those little ones of their own age who languish in want, and especially should this be so at the approaching season of the Nativity of Our Lord, which parents are wont to render still happier for their children by little gifts and presents. And shall we think that these last are endowed with such a spirit as to be unwilling to contribute even a part of their own little savings, whereby they might strengthen the weakness of children who are in want? Oh, what a deep consolation, what joys they will secure for themselves, if happily they become the means whereby those little brothers of theirs, who are deprived of all help and all pleasure, should spend the approaching Christmas time just a little more comfortably, just a little more happily. For even as the Infant Jesus on the night of His birth blessed with a most sweet smile the shepherds who came to Him with gifts to lighten the burden of His poverty, and even as He brightened their souls with the supreme gift of faith, so He will reward with his blessing and heavenly graces those children who, fired with love for him, shall soften the misery and the sorrow of their little brothers. Nay, there is nothing else more acceptable to the Infant Jesus that thou could do or offer at this season. And so we earnestly exhort all Christian parents, to whom, the Heavenly father had committed the grave charge of training up their offspring to the practice of charity and the other virtues, to use this happy opportunity of exciting and cultivating in the minds of their children sentiments of humanity and holy compassion. And in this matter it pleases Us to set before you an example worthy of all imitation; for we remember that last year many children of the Roman nobility made their offerings to Us personally, offerings which, at the suggestion of their parents, they had collected amongst themselves not without some sacrifice of their individual pleasures.

3. We have said that this work of charity and kindness would be most pleasing to the Infant Jesus. And, indeed, why does the name Bethlehem mean one and the same thing as "House of Bread," unless it be that there Christ was to be born into the light of day, Christ, Who, solicitous for our weakness, gave Himself as food to nourish our souls, and Who in the words "Give us this day our daily bread" taught us to beg ardently every day of the Father for nourishment of soul and body? Oh how Our heart would expand if We were certain that throughout the Christmas festivities there would be no home destitute of consolation and joy, that there would be no child whose sorrow should wring the dear heart of its mother, and that there would be no mother who should look upon her little ones with weeping eyes."

4. And so, Venerable Brethren, We entrust Our project to you, even as We did a year ago, that you may bring it into effect, especially those of you who dwell in districts which enjoy a happier fortune and a more tranquil state of affairs.

5. And inasmuch as those words of Christ Our Lord should take deep possession of your souls, "He that shall receive one such little child in My name, receiveth Me," We beg that you leave no measure untried whereby the liberality and generosity of the faithful over whom you are set may correspond to the urgency of the present need. Accordingly it is Our wish that you forthwith announce throughout the whole of your several dioceses that a collection of alms is to be made on the twenty-eighth day of this month, the feast of the Holy Innocents, or if you prefer, on the Sunday immediately preceding, for the support of the children made needy by the way and that you particularly recommend this collection to the children in your diocese; further, that with all diligence in your power you see that the money thus collected is sent either to Us or to the "Save the Children Fund," which We have before mentioned.

6. For Ourselves, in order that, after exhorting the faithful by Our words, We may stir their generosity by Our example, We have set apart one hundred thousand Italian lire for this most sacred work of charity. Meanwhile, Venerable Brethren, to you and to all your Clergy and people, we lovingly impart the apostolic benediction, a pledge of heavenly reward and a token of Our own paternal good will.

Given at Rome at St. Peter's on the first day of the month of December in the year nineteen hundred and twenty, the seventh of Our Pontificate.

Unreality.

What is wrong with our civilization can be said with one word — unreality. We are in no danger either from the vices or the virtues of vikings; we are in danger of forgetting all facts, good and bad, in a haze of high-minded phraseology.

G. K. Chesterton