1 00:00:07,626 --> 00:00:12,209 (lighthearted guitar and string music) 2 00:00:51,480 --> 00:00:53,490 [Narrator] There are, I think undeniably 3 00:00:53,490 --> 00:00:56,640 new winds sweeping across America. 4 00:00:56,640 --> 00:01:01,430 They are, indeed, gusty and changeable, but they are new, 5 00:01:01,430 --> 00:01:04,940 and they will alter what happens in Montana. 6 00:01:04,940 --> 00:01:07,380 And whether for better or worse, 7 00:01:07,380 --> 00:01:12,030 does depend on Montanans and how they, or you, 8 00:01:12,030 --> 00:01:14,006 read those winds. 9 00:01:14,006 --> 00:01:18,589 (lighthearted guitar and string music) 10 00:01:40,240 --> 00:01:41,870 [Narrator] Although hundreds of treaties were made 11 00:01:41,870 --> 00:01:44,060 between the Indians and the United States, 12 00:01:44,060 --> 00:01:46,940 none ever recognized the Indian perspective. 13 00:01:46,940 --> 00:01:49,790 The Native American saw the land as God's land. 14 00:01:49,790 --> 00:01:52,530 It was to be used by man, but never owned. 15 00:01:52,530 --> 00:01:54,660 White westward expansion eventually 16 00:01:54,660 --> 00:01:56,490 destroyed the Indian way of life, 17 00:01:56,490 --> 00:01:58,040 and many of their people. 18 00:01:58,040 --> 00:02:00,330 Even sympathetic whites failed to appreciate 19 00:02:00,330 --> 00:02:03,270 Native American values, as Dr. Toole illustrates 20 00:02:03,270 --> 00:02:06,360 in his interpretation of Montana's missionary efforts 21 00:02:06,360 --> 00:02:07,903 and the Flathead Apostasy. 22 00:02:12,050 --> 00:02:16,643 The Indian, as you have already observed, was a nomad. 23 00:02:18,420 --> 00:02:23,420 None of the 370 treaties that we made with the Indians, 24 00:02:24,620 --> 00:02:28,190 370 treates which now reside in the National Archives, 25 00:02:28,190 --> 00:02:30,710 ever recognized for one moment 26 00:02:30,710 --> 00:02:34,243 that the Indian was fundamentally a nomadic person. 27 00:02:35,570 --> 00:02:37,950 Federal authority over the Indians 28 00:02:37,950 --> 00:02:42,060 was divided between the War Department, on the one hand, 29 00:02:42,060 --> 00:02:45,200 and the Department of Interior, on the other hand. 30 00:02:45,200 --> 00:02:48,320 Both pursuing vacillating and often, 31 00:02:48,320 --> 00:02:50,823 completely contradictory, policies. 32 00:02:52,146 --> 00:02:54,960 The Indian had absolutely no concept 33 00:02:54,960 --> 00:02:57,653 of the private ownership of property. 34 00:02:58,980 --> 00:03:02,750 To him, all land was communally owned, 35 00:03:02,750 --> 00:03:04,463 to be used by everyone. 36 00:03:05,600 --> 00:03:09,030 But this concept yielded to a even deeper concept, 37 00:03:09,030 --> 00:03:10,423 which was religious. 38 00:03:11,370 --> 00:03:14,080 You say, "well, but the Indian was polytheistic." 39 00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:15,240 Be careful about that. 40 00:03:15,240 --> 00:03:19,033 He was in some ways, he was not in others. 41 00:03:19,033 --> 00:03:23,440 But the land was God's and, or the Great Spirit's, 42 00:03:23,440 --> 00:03:26,333 and it had been loaned to man only, 43 00:03:27,190 --> 00:03:31,320 not for him to own, but for him to use. 44 00:03:31,320 --> 00:03:32,730 And that being the case, 45 00:03:32,730 --> 00:03:35,480 this land should be treated with great care. 46 00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:37,890 It was on loan from God. 47 00:03:37,890 --> 00:03:39,870 You did not own it. 48 00:03:39,870 --> 00:03:44,240 None of the treaties that we made, 370 of them, 49 00:03:44,240 --> 00:03:49,140 ever recognized this spiritual aspect of the land 50 00:03:49,140 --> 00:03:50,593 upon which the Indian lived. 51 00:03:51,620 --> 00:03:55,053 Private ownership: that's what the treaties were based on. 52 00:03:55,890 --> 00:04:00,450 And saying to the Indians, "you will, by God, 53 00:04:00,450 --> 00:04:03,267 become a property owner, or else." 54 00:04:05,050 --> 00:04:08,053 The Indian had a very loose tribal structure. 55 00:04:09,286 --> 00:04:12,730 Some of the chiefs were traditional, 56 00:04:12,730 --> 00:04:15,646 or hereditary chiefs, some were elected, 57 00:04:15,646 --> 00:04:20,140 but in no event, did a chief have the power 58 00:04:20,140 --> 00:04:24,470 over his tribe that a general had over an army. 59 00:04:24,470 --> 00:04:26,910 Yet, every single one of these treaties 60 00:04:26,910 --> 00:04:29,340 was based on the fact that the chief 61 00:04:29,340 --> 00:04:33,419 had precisely that power. 62 00:04:33,419 --> 00:04:36,870 Now all of these treaties, 370 of them, 63 00:04:36,870 --> 00:04:39,450 had to be ratified by the US Senate, 64 00:04:39,450 --> 00:04:41,950 which the Indians never understood at all. 65 00:04:41,950 --> 00:04:44,758 They would query, "what's the matter? 66 00:04:44,758 --> 00:04:47,820 You sign this treaty, we sign this treaty. 67 00:04:47,820 --> 00:04:49,976 Who else has to sign it?" 68 00:04:49,976 --> 00:04:52,690 Well, the United States Senate has to sign it. 69 00:04:52,690 --> 00:04:54,860 They never understood that. 70 00:04:54,860 --> 00:04:57,820 When the treaties were taken to the Senate, 71 00:04:57,820 --> 00:05:00,330 sometimes they did not pass, 72 00:05:00,330 --> 00:05:02,220 but the Indians weren't told that. 73 00:05:02,220 --> 00:05:04,850 Sometimes they were amended. 74 00:05:04,850 --> 00:05:07,290 Often, they were amended, in which event, 75 00:05:07,290 --> 00:05:10,390 another negotiating team came back into the field, 76 00:05:10,390 --> 00:05:12,160 only to find that they were dealing 77 00:05:12,160 --> 00:05:14,099 with a totally different tribal structure 78 00:05:14,099 --> 00:05:16,220 than the structure of the people 79 00:05:16,220 --> 00:05:17,870 that had signed the first treaty. 80 00:05:18,732 --> 00:05:22,770 But there were factors beyond these obvious ones 81 00:05:22,770 --> 00:05:25,603 that contributed to the extent of the tragedy. 82 00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:31,920 1866, a military district for Montana was created 83 00:05:33,370 --> 00:05:36,957 with Fort Shaw, which is over by Great Falls, 84 00:05:36,957 --> 00:05:39,040 as regimental headquarters. 85 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:42,430 And General P.H. Sheridan of Civil War fame 86 00:05:42,430 --> 00:05:45,830 became commander of the Division of the Missouri, 87 00:05:45,830 --> 00:05:48,070 which included Montana. 88 00:05:48,070 --> 00:05:51,150 And General Sherman, of whom you've also heard, 89 00:05:51,150 --> 00:05:52,513 was general of the army. 90 00:05:53,890 --> 00:05:57,460 Now there had been precipitous demobilization 91 00:05:57,460 --> 00:05:59,480 after the Civil War. 92 00:05:59,480 --> 00:06:03,147 So the army is very, very thinly spread 93 00:06:03,147 --> 00:06:07,820 and both Sherman and Sheridan understand 94 00:06:07,820 --> 00:06:11,520 they can't patrol the whole of the Great Plains, 95 00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:14,840 let alone the Northern Great Plains with the army. 96 00:06:14,840 --> 00:06:17,190 There aren't enough men, period. 97 00:06:17,190 --> 00:06:18,840 So they decided that they would 98 00:06:18,840 --> 00:06:21,550 try to channel white immigrants into 99 00:06:21,550 --> 00:06:23,930 two or three specific routes. 100 00:06:23,930 --> 00:06:26,950 And then, they would guard only those routes. 101 00:06:26,950 --> 00:06:29,040 And then, they would negotiate with the Indians, 102 00:06:29,040 --> 00:06:31,820 promising the Indians the whites are merely 103 00:06:31,820 --> 00:06:35,545 crossing your territory, they're headed for the West Coast, 104 00:06:35,545 --> 00:06:38,750 they won't bother you, so don't you bother them. 105 00:06:38,750 --> 00:06:43,610 And we, the army, will see that they stay in these routes. 106 00:06:43,610 --> 00:06:45,790 Well, of course, they did not. 107 00:06:45,790 --> 00:06:49,890 And they especially did not after the discovery of gold. 108 00:06:49,890 --> 00:06:53,850 We begin to get a tremendous proliferation of routes: 109 00:06:53,850 --> 00:06:55,450 everybody, every wagon train 110 00:06:55,450 --> 00:06:57,828 going wherever it damn well pleased, 111 00:06:57,828 --> 00:06:59,870 prospectors all over the place, 112 00:06:59,870 --> 00:07:01,770 including the Black Hills. 113 00:07:01,770 --> 00:07:05,150 So the plan of the army goes completely awry. 114 00:07:05,150 --> 00:07:07,044 I think not the army's fault. 115 00:07:07,044 --> 00:07:12,044 Moreover, the abolitionists do not now have the black cause 116 00:07:14,730 --> 00:07:19,530 so that they turn with vehemence, and vigor, and zeal 117 00:07:19,530 --> 00:07:22,030 to the cause of the red man: 118 00:07:22,030 --> 00:07:25,246 the Native American, the noble savage. 119 00:07:25,246 --> 00:07:26,718 They didn't know anything about him, 120 00:07:26,718 --> 00:07:28,690 they didn't know anything about the land, 121 00:07:28,690 --> 00:07:31,650 but nevertheless, do-gooders are always with us 122 00:07:31,650 --> 00:07:33,150 who don't know how to do good. 123 00:07:34,678 --> 00:07:39,678 There are increasing clashes now between Indians and whites 124 00:07:40,580 --> 00:07:43,660 which bodes very ill for the future. 125 00:07:43,660 --> 00:07:46,840 Where did we go basically wrong? 126 00:07:46,840 --> 00:07:49,550 Not necessarily in intentions, 127 00:07:49,550 --> 00:07:51,670 because if you read the documents of the day, 128 00:07:51,670 --> 00:07:54,747 the newspapers of the day, the novels of the day, 129 00:07:54,747 --> 00:07:58,040 good intentions, especially from humanitarians 130 00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:00,814 and ex-abolitionists, were all over the place. 131 00:08:00,814 --> 00:08:02,630 The problem is, of course, 132 00:08:02,630 --> 00:08:05,330 that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, 133 00:08:05,330 --> 00:08:07,250 if you don't know what you're doing. 134 00:08:07,250 --> 00:08:09,350 And they didn't know what they were doing. 135 00:08:10,404 --> 00:08:15,404 At the very root of the tragedy, however, is the buffalo, 136 00:08:16,101 --> 00:08:19,433 because he was, to the Indian, everything. 137 00:08:20,459 --> 00:08:23,220 He was an economic necessity, 138 00:08:23,220 --> 00:08:27,870 he was a religious necessity, he was everything. 139 00:08:27,870 --> 00:08:29,660 So no matter what else we had done, 140 00:08:29,660 --> 00:08:33,140 so long as we were going to kill those buffalo, 141 00:08:33,140 --> 00:08:35,750 and we were going to kill those buffalo, 142 00:08:35,750 --> 00:08:37,233 the Indian was doomed. 143 00:08:39,130 --> 00:08:42,930 We ended the freedom of the Indian people 144 00:08:42,930 --> 00:08:45,043 by destroying the buffalo, number one, 145 00:08:45,990 --> 00:08:48,903 by contaminating them, number two, with smallpox. 146 00:08:50,051 --> 00:08:53,010 We had been familiar and had developed resistance 147 00:08:53,010 --> 00:08:55,730 to smallpox over thousands of years. 148 00:08:55,730 --> 00:08:58,790 They had never encountered smallpox. 149 00:08:58,790 --> 00:09:03,450 To give you an example of how devastating smallpox was, 150 00:09:03,450 --> 00:09:08,450 between 1835 and 1837, half of the Blackfeet people 151 00:09:09,780 --> 00:09:11,613 died of smallpox. 152 00:09:11,613 --> 00:09:12,460 One half. 153 00:09:12,460 --> 00:09:15,690 One of the most formidable tribes in the West. 154 00:09:15,690 --> 00:09:19,043 But now, debilitated to an extraordinary degree. 155 00:09:19,890 --> 00:09:24,890 So, the end of the buffalo, smallpox, and last, whiskey. 156 00:09:25,860 --> 00:09:28,120 We had been boozing it up, again, 157 00:09:28,120 --> 00:09:30,265 for thousands and thousands of years, 158 00:09:30,265 --> 00:09:34,800 the Indians had not, had never encountered alcohol, 159 00:09:34,800 --> 00:09:39,800 had no resistance to it, and, indeed, succumbed to it. 160 00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:42,910 Missionaries, to the Indian people, 161 00:09:42,910 --> 00:09:44,473 I now want to speak about. 162 00:09:45,420 --> 00:09:47,550 And I was to speak very seriously about, 163 00:09:47,550 --> 00:09:50,750 because the missionaries did damage, damage, damage, 164 00:09:50,750 --> 00:09:54,160 to an already grossly damaged people. 165 00:09:54,160 --> 00:09:57,020 You will recall that I said the Iroquois Indians 166 00:09:57,020 --> 00:10:00,870 came out here to train our Indians, 167 00:10:00,870 --> 00:10:02,490 notice the possessive, 168 00:10:02,490 --> 00:10:06,370 how to trap, and they failed. 169 00:10:06,370 --> 00:10:10,060 But the Iroquois were Catholic, more or less, 170 00:10:10,060 --> 00:10:12,810 and as they sat around in the teepees of the Nez Perce, 171 00:10:12,810 --> 00:10:14,870 and the Shoshones, and the Flatheads, 172 00:10:14,870 --> 00:10:17,080 they talked about the Black Robes, 173 00:10:17,080 --> 00:10:19,710 and their big medicine, and their power, 174 00:10:19,710 --> 00:10:22,864 and the wonder of this new God. 175 00:10:22,864 --> 00:10:27,040 So impressed were the Flatheads, 176 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:29,290 and the Nez Perce in particular, 177 00:10:29,290 --> 00:10:32,720 that they sent four separate institutions 178 00:10:32,720 --> 00:10:36,380 over Sioux country: very, very dangerous country. 179 00:10:36,380 --> 00:10:38,963 To St. Louis, to get the Black Robes. 180 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:44,453 These expeditions occurred in 1831, 1835, 181 00:10:46,638 --> 00:10:51,638 1837, and 1839, four of them to get the Black Robes. 182 00:10:53,730 --> 00:10:57,170 Three of these groups did indeed reach St. Louis. 183 00:10:57,170 --> 00:11:01,686 All of the third group, 1837, were killed by the Sioux 184 00:11:01,686 --> 00:11:03,433 midway in their journey. 185 00:11:04,790 --> 00:11:06,210 In the expedition of 1839, 186 00:11:07,124 --> 00:11:10,120 which finally brought some results, 187 00:11:10,120 --> 00:11:13,440 was young Ignace La Mouse, was his name. 188 00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:17,090 He was an Iroquois, he wasn't a Flathead or a Nez Perce. 189 00:11:17,090 --> 00:11:20,270 And it was this last expedition 190 00:11:20,270 --> 00:11:23,060 that brought to the Bitterroot Valley 191 00:11:23,060 --> 00:11:25,970 a Jesuit priest and others, 192 00:11:25,970 --> 00:11:30,970 Pierre-Jean De Smet to Stevensville, 193 00:11:31,140 --> 00:11:33,360 just up the Bitterroot Valley here, 194 00:11:33,360 --> 00:11:36,030 to establish St. Mary's Mission 195 00:11:36,030 --> 00:11:39,373 on the 24th of September, 1841. 196 00:11:41,470 --> 00:11:42,960 I don't want to disappoint any of you 197 00:11:42,960 --> 00:11:44,240 from the Bitterroot Valley, 198 00:11:44,240 --> 00:11:45,690 but that is not the mission 199 00:11:45,690 --> 00:11:49,067 that you now visit in Stevensville at all. 200 00:11:49,067 --> 00:11:52,660 The mission was much closer to the Bitterroot River. 201 00:11:52,660 --> 00:11:56,610 There was a priest along, his name was Nicolas Point, 202 00:11:56,610 --> 00:12:00,030 who drew meticulous maps as to where the mission was. 203 00:12:00,030 --> 00:12:04,370 It was a big outfit and there was a chapel there, 204 00:12:04,370 --> 00:12:07,200 or church there capable of seating 500 people, 205 00:12:07,200 --> 00:12:09,270 there was a blacksmith's shop, 206 00:12:09,270 --> 00:12:12,210 there were cabins all over the place, 207 00:12:12,210 --> 00:12:16,410 there was a stockade around it, a big stockade. 208 00:12:16,410 --> 00:12:19,560 One might ask where that mission is today, 209 00:12:19,560 --> 00:12:23,848 well, a few years ago, the Department of Anthropology 210 00:12:23,848 --> 00:12:26,660 and the Department of History decided to find it. 211 00:12:26,660 --> 00:12:29,910 We had all the measurements from the Bitterroot River 212 00:12:29,910 --> 00:12:32,090 marked off in hectares, 213 00:12:32,090 --> 00:12:35,150 the Belgian counterpart of our acres. 214 00:12:35,150 --> 00:12:38,150 We also had sketches of Father Nicolas Point, 215 00:12:38,150 --> 00:12:40,440 outlining the Bitterroot Mountains. 216 00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:42,940 So there should be no trouble at all 217 00:12:42,940 --> 00:12:46,820 in triangulating with all of this information, 218 00:12:46,820 --> 00:12:49,460 to dig down and find the ruins of the original 219 00:12:49,460 --> 00:12:52,490 1841 St. Mary's Mission. 220 00:12:52,490 --> 00:12:55,730 So every Saturday, we went out and dug, 221 00:12:55,730 --> 00:12:56,873 but we never found it. 222 00:12:58,170 --> 00:13:01,030 Either one of two things happened and I have my preference, 223 00:13:01,030 --> 00:13:03,563 since I was one of those who was digging. 224 00:13:05,120 --> 00:13:08,180 Either the whole thing was flooded away 225 00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:11,172 when the Bitterroot went through one of its periodic floods, 226 00:13:11,172 --> 00:13:12,900 or something else. 227 00:13:12,900 --> 00:13:14,758 I don't buy the flood theory because, as we were digging, 228 00:13:14,758 --> 00:13:19,758 we got down to hard pan, which was 3,000 years old. 229 00:13:20,050 --> 00:13:23,180 My own theory is that we were working on Saturday, 230 00:13:23,180 --> 00:13:25,080 but it's a rather large area, 231 00:13:25,080 --> 00:13:28,039 and that every noon, we would go into Stevensville 232 00:13:28,039 --> 00:13:30,223 and drink beer for lunch. 233 00:13:31,610 --> 00:13:33,850 And I don't think we went back in the afternoon 234 00:13:33,850 --> 00:13:36,253 and dug with sufficient enthusiasm. 235 00:13:37,928 --> 00:13:42,928 This man is a remarkable man, an enormously courageous man, 236 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:46,210 usually wandering around with a single pack horse 237 00:13:46,210 --> 00:13:47,980 in the Rocky Mountains. 238 00:13:47,980 --> 00:13:49,610 Wandering around, among other places, 239 00:13:49,610 --> 00:13:53,700 in Blackfoot territory, which you didn't do, but he did. 240 00:13:53,700 --> 00:13:57,050 He was peripatetic, he was antsy, 241 00:13:57,050 --> 00:14:00,960 he couldn't stay in one place, he was constantly moving. 242 00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:04,580 And once the mission construction 243 00:14:04,580 --> 00:14:07,040 was started in September 1841, 244 00:14:07,990 --> 00:14:10,860 not a good time to be wandering around in the mountains, 245 00:14:10,860 --> 00:14:12,770 he takes a pack horse and goes over 246 00:14:12,770 --> 00:14:16,236 to Fort Vancouver to get seed to bring back 247 00:14:16,236 --> 00:14:18,713 for the Flatheads to plant. 248 00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:22,246 On his way back, he gets to thinking. 249 00:14:22,246 --> 00:14:25,054 He had been there for a couple of weeks, 250 00:14:25,054 --> 00:14:26,503 here at Stevensville, 251 00:14:27,890 --> 00:14:31,040 he gets to worrying about whether or not 252 00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:32,990 the baptisms and the other things 253 00:14:32,990 --> 00:14:34,893 he had engaged in had taken. 254 00:14:35,900 --> 00:14:38,049 And he worries all the way back. 255 00:14:38,049 --> 00:14:40,960 But when he gets back, he feels much better, 256 00:14:40,960 --> 00:14:45,957 and after about a week here, he wrote as follows, 257 00:14:45,957 --> 00:14:49,090 "they [the Flatheads] are scrupulously honest 258 00:14:49,090 --> 00:14:52,200 in buying and selling, they have never been accused 259 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:54,650 of having committed a theft," 260 00:14:54,650 --> 00:14:57,386 and please listen carefully to this sentence, ladies, 261 00:14:57,386 --> 00:15:02,386 "slander is unknown to them, even among the women, 262 00:15:02,431 --> 00:15:05,883 lying is hateful to them beyond anything else, 263 00:15:07,190 --> 00:15:09,600 they fear, they say, to offend God, 264 00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:11,910 and that is why they have only one heart, 265 00:15:11,910 --> 00:15:14,360 and they abhor a forked tongue. 266 00:15:14,360 --> 00:15:17,780 Quarrels and fits of rage are severely punished. 267 00:15:17,780 --> 00:15:20,760 They are always polite, always jovial of humor, 268 00:15:20,760 --> 00:15:23,650 very hospitable, and helpful to one another 269 00:15:23,650 --> 00:15:24,787 in their duties." 270 00:15:25,750 --> 00:15:28,027 About a week later, he wrote again, 271 00:15:28,027 --> 00:15:30,470 "I was not able to discover among these people 272 00:15:30,470 --> 00:15:34,850 the slightest blameworthy act, unless it was their gambling, 273 00:15:34,850 --> 00:15:39,530 in which they often venture everything they possess." 274 00:15:39,530 --> 00:15:42,070 But after about a month and a half, 275 00:15:42,070 --> 00:15:45,400 he begins to evince considerable doubt and shock 276 00:15:45,400 --> 00:15:49,970 about the habits of the Flatheads. 277 00:15:49,970 --> 00:15:53,050 His first concern is that they are polygamists, 278 00:15:53,050 --> 00:15:54,673 and this, of course, is a sin. 279 00:15:55,990 --> 00:15:59,440 He was also deeply disturbed because a girl-child 280 00:15:59,440 --> 00:16:01,893 was worth no more than a horse. 281 00:16:03,500 --> 00:16:06,120 And he was concerned because 282 00:16:06,120 --> 00:16:08,360 it was a custom among the Flatheads, 283 00:16:08,360 --> 00:16:11,263 when a miscreant violated one of their laws, 284 00:16:11,263 --> 00:16:13,550 to have a public whipping. 285 00:16:13,550 --> 00:16:16,020 This was done with rawhide cords, 286 00:16:16,020 --> 00:16:19,300 it was not particularly bloody, 287 00:16:19,300 --> 00:16:23,430 but it was a symbol of the power of the tribal council. 288 00:16:23,430 --> 00:16:25,790 After all, it was very humiliating 289 00:16:25,790 --> 00:16:29,260 to be out here with everybody, the whole damn village, 290 00:16:29,260 --> 00:16:31,693 and all the people watching you get whipped. 291 00:16:32,700 --> 00:16:36,200 Well, this was bad business as far as De Smet was concerned. 292 00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:38,403 He forbade all whipping. 293 00:16:39,570 --> 00:16:43,630 He also forbade them to treat the enemies 294 00:16:43,630 --> 00:16:45,690 in the way they were accustomed. 295 00:16:45,690 --> 00:16:49,471 They tortured their enemies, the Indian people did that. 296 00:16:49,471 --> 00:16:50,793 That was now forbidden. 297 00:16:52,090 --> 00:16:54,370 And he set them to farming. 298 00:16:54,370 --> 00:16:57,040 They'd been hunters for 3,000-some years, 299 00:16:57,040 --> 00:16:59,463 but now they are going to farm. 300 00:17:00,667 --> 00:17:05,460 He continued with his conversion. 301 00:17:05,460 --> 00:17:07,477 The Indians religiously attended mass. 302 00:17:07,477 --> 00:17:11,043 The chapel was a big one, it could seat 500 people. 303 00:17:12,150 --> 00:17:15,931 They learned the Lord's prayer, in English, 304 00:17:15,931 --> 00:17:19,370 the Hail Mary, the Credo, the Ten Commandments, 305 00:17:19,370 --> 00:17:22,680 the Acts of Faith, Hope, Charity, and Contrition, 306 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:24,750 and all was proceeding well. 307 00:17:24,750 --> 00:17:28,480 Marriages were sanctified in the church 308 00:17:29,880 --> 00:17:34,880 and they insisted on agricultural pursuits 309 00:17:34,900 --> 00:17:37,700 and tried desperately to stop the Flatheads 310 00:17:37,700 --> 00:17:40,472 going out on the annual buffalo hunt. 311 00:17:40,472 --> 00:17:44,106 Now, all was well between 1841, 312 00:17:44,106 --> 00:17:48,248 the founding of the mission, and 1846. 313 00:17:48,248 --> 00:17:53,248 In 1850, the mission was abandoned completely, 314 00:17:55,600 --> 00:18:00,600 and this split between the Jesuits and the Flatheads 315 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:03,373 is known as the Flathead Apostasy. 316 00:18:07,060 --> 00:18:09,910 It begins in 1846, and there are all kinds 317 00:18:09,910 --> 00:18:13,090 of explanations for it that you may read. 318 00:18:13,090 --> 00:18:16,373 I have my own, which I am going to give you. 319 00:18:17,650 --> 00:18:21,600 When the Indians returned in 1846 from their summer hunt, 320 00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:24,948 which they weren't supposed to go on, but they did, 321 00:18:24,948 --> 00:18:27,360 they had changed completely, 322 00:18:27,360 --> 00:18:29,670 their whole attitude had changed. 323 00:18:29,670 --> 00:18:34,084 Father Rivalli, who was one of the priests at the mission, 324 00:18:34,084 --> 00:18:35,637 put it this way, 325 00:18:35,637 --> 00:18:38,100 "we were not a little astonished. 326 00:18:38,100 --> 00:18:40,670 They took up their old time barbar's yells, 327 00:18:40,670 --> 00:18:44,370 which we had not heard since we first came among them. 328 00:18:44,370 --> 00:18:46,310 They drew off with their lodges, 329 00:18:46,310 --> 00:18:50,020 they sold us grudgingly a little dry meat. 330 00:18:50,020 --> 00:18:52,980 They had given themselves up to their old war dances 331 00:18:52,980 --> 00:18:55,290 and to savage obscenity and 332 00:18:55,290 --> 00:18:58,520 to shameless excesses of the flesh. 333 00:18:58,520 --> 00:19:02,490 We know that we are not to blame for such a change. 334 00:19:02,490 --> 00:19:04,640 And we bewilded the more when we saw 335 00:19:04,640 --> 00:19:08,227 that they kept on constantly getting worse." 336 00:19:09,380 --> 00:19:14,070 Now, from 1846 to 1850 there were a few little incidents 337 00:19:14,070 --> 00:19:15,800 from things improved a bit, 338 00:19:15,800 --> 00:19:20,800 but by 1850, things were so bad that the Jesuits pulled out, 339 00:19:20,990 --> 00:19:25,470 they sold the mission, which became Fort Owens, 340 00:19:25,470 --> 00:19:30,023 to Major John Owen, a trader who established a trading post. 341 00:19:31,180 --> 00:19:32,530 What happened? 342 00:19:32,530 --> 00:19:34,160 What had happened? 343 00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:39,160 Well, the Fathers blamed it, as they put it, 344 00:19:39,810 --> 00:19:42,980 on rascals, wolfers, and treppers, 345 00:19:42,980 --> 00:19:45,370 who poisoned the minds of the Salish 346 00:19:45,370 --> 00:19:47,113 against their benefactors. 347 00:19:48,580 --> 00:19:49,920 While it's perfectly true 348 00:19:49,920 --> 00:19:52,670 that up here in the Flathead Valley, 349 00:19:52,670 --> 00:19:55,909 was a Hudson's Bay post, Fort Connah 350 00:19:55,909 --> 00:20:00,909 and that this was the factor of that post 351 00:20:01,170 --> 00:20:03,660 was Angus McDonald. 352 00:20:03,660 --> 00:20:05,410 It was true that Angus McDonald 353 00:20:05,410 --> 00:20:07,480 did not like the missionaries, 354 00:20:07,480 --> 00:20:10,250 it was true that McDonald knocked them 355 00:20:10,250 --> 00:20:13,380 on every chance he got. 356 00:20:13,380 --> 00:20:16,193 McDonald himself was more Indian that white. 357 00:20:17,370 --> 00:20:19,600 It was also true that the Hudson's Bay Company 358 00:20:19,600 --> 00:20:21,321 did not like missionaries because 359 00:20:21,321 --> 00:20:23,943 they though it would interfere with the fur trade, 360 00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:27,840 but I don't think that's the explanation at all 361 00:20:27,840 --> 00:20:29,923 for the Flathead Apostasy. 362 00:20:31,010 --> 00:20:33,890 And you can take this from my interpretation. 363 00:20:33,890 --> 00:20:38,117 And for what it's worth, I think that, number one, 364 00:20:38,117 --> 00:20:40,500 while the Jesuits asked the Indians 365 00:20:40,500 --> 00:20:44,340 to study Catholicism or Christianity, 366 00:20:44,340 --> 00:20:48,403 they themselves made no study whatsoever of Indian religion. 367 00:20:49,250 --> 00:20:52,873 And I think that they confused form with substance. 368 00:20:54,350 --> 00:20:58,040 The Indians' religion varied, of course, 369 00:20:58,040 --> 00:21:00,610 greatly from tribe to tribe. 370 00:21:00,610 --> 00:21:04,270 But Indian religion had this in common among all the tribes: 371 00:21:04,270 --> 00:21:06,440 it was eclectic. 372 00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:08,860 That is to say, however elaborate it was, 373 00:21:08,860 --> 00:21:10,440 and it was very elaborate and, 374 00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:12,786 in some cases, very sophisticated, 375 00:21:12,786 --> 00:21:15,210 they saw nothing wrong whatsoever 376 00:21:15,210 --> 00:21:17,750 with adopting some other tribe's god 377 00:21:17,750 --> 00:21:19,793 or some other tribe's spirits. 378 00:21:20,630 --> 00:21:23,543 If it seemed to work, take it in, use it. 379 00:21:23,543 --> 00:21:26,140 That didn't trouble them in the least. 380 00:21:26,140 --> 00:21:27,670 And this, I think, is essentially 381 00:21:27,670 --> 00:21:29,820 what they did with Christianity, 382 00:21:29,820 --> 00:21:32,110 or in this case, Catholicism. 383 00:21:32,110 --> 00:21:36,400 It was big medicine, it was powerful, why not take it? 384 00:21:36,400 --> 00:21:37,470 They did. 385 00:21:37,470 --> 00:21:40,030 I don't think the Jesuits ever knew that, 386 00:21:40,030 --> 00:21:41,273 every understood that. 387 00:21:42,740 --> 00:21:47,740 Now, De Smet, in 1846 does a startling thing. 388 00:21:48,840 --> 00:21:50,607 He's headed back down the river 389 00:21:50,607 --> 00:21:53,530 to raise money to establish other missions 390 00:21:53,530 --> 00:21:55,240 in the Rocky Mountains. 391 00:21:55,240 --> 00:21:58,630 Before he left, he gathered his charges together 392 00:21:58,630 --> 00:22:00,668 and made a goodbye speech. 393 00:22:00,668 --> 00:22:03,860 And, in an incidental sort of way, 394 00:22:03,860 --> 00:22:06,740 he then said he thought he would stop in 395 00:22:06,740 --> 00:22:09,850 and establish a mission among the Blackfeet. 396 00:22:09,850 --> 00:22:14,850 Now, the Salish, or the Flatheads, and the Blackfeet 397 00:22:14,990 --> 00:22:17,090 were ancient, ancient, enemies. 398 00:22:17,090 --> 00:22:19,172 The Blackfeet were constantly raiding 399 00:22:19,172 --> 00:22:23,200 as far as Hell Gate, right here, 400 00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:27,800 and killing the Flatheads, who were very pacific people. 401 00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:29,203 They were mortal enemies. 402 00:22:30,070 --> 00:22:33,840 For De Smet now to suggest that he was going to take 403 00:22:33,840 --> 00:22:36,630 the same big medicine, the protective medicine 404 00:22:36,630 --> 00:22:38,930 which the Flatheads now had, 405 00:22:38,930 --> 00:22:41,730 and give it to their mortal enemies the Blackfeet, 406 00:22:41,730 --> 00:22:45,423 must have been terribly, terribly disturbing to them. 407 00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:48,753 Polygamy. 408 00:22:50,010 --> 00:22:52,920 Polygamy was an economic necessity. 409 00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:55,940 Wherever, I think, in the history of mankind 410 00:22:55,940 --> 00:22:59,220 you find a very large excess of women, 411 00:22:59,220 --> 00:23:01,900 you're also going to encounter polygamy. 412 00:23:01,900 --> 00:23:04,120 It's not a sexual thing, it's an economic thing. 413 00:23:04,120 --> 00:23:06,860 What do you do with a widow? 414 00:23:06,860 --> 00:23:08,410 You put her out on a snow pile 415 00:23:08,410 --> 00:23:09,962 and let her freeze to death? 416 00:23:09,962 --> 00:23:11,640 Who feeds her? 417 00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:13,432 How does she make it? 418 00:23:13,432 --> 00:23:16,630 Well, the practical solution is perfectly clear: 419 00:23:16,630 --> 00:23:19,303 you attach her to a family, that's all. 420 00:23:19,303 --> 00:23:21,267 Now, they couldn't do that. 421 00:23:21,267 --> 00:23:24,800 And this was deeply, I think, troubling to them. 422 00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:29,150 And what do you do about this whipping business? 423 00:23:29,150 --> 00:23:32,140 The symbolic power of the tribal council 424 00:23:32,140 --> 00:23:33,310 is now essentially gone. 425 00:23:33,310 --> 00:23:35,364 That's the only power they had; it was symbolic. 426 00:23:35,364 --> 00:23:37,200 Now it's gone. 427 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:39,120 Their own people are getting obstreperous, 428 00:23:39,120 --> 00:23:41,610 the tribal council can't control them. 429 00:23:41,610 --> 00:23:44,325 But those whippings are forbidden. 430 00:23:44,325 --> 00:23:47,240 And they didn't like farming. 431 00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:49,827 They were ancient hunters, now they were told, 432 00:23:49,827 --> 00:23:53,710 "you will plow, you will seed, you will sow, you will reap." 433 00:23:53,710 --> 00:23:55,073 And they didn't like it. 434 00:23:55,980 --> 00:23:58,420 If you add all of those things up together, 435 00:23:58,420 --> 00:24:02,560 but particularly the straw that broke the camel's back, 436 00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:06,440 which was the proposal of De Smet 437 00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:10,320 that he establish a mission among the Blackfeet, 438 00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:12,710 it's my contention that you have the causes 439 00:24:12,710 --> 00:24:14,907 for the Flathead Apostasy. 440 00:24:17,550 --> 00:24:20,120 A few years later, the mission was re-founded 441 00:24:21,490 --> 00:24:24,090 at St. Ignatius up the Flathead. 442 00:24:24,090 --> 00:24:29,090 Conversions proceeded, I suppose you could say, 443 00:24:30,310 --> 00:24:32,160 much more smoothly. 444 00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:34,790 But I think it was noting that the old religion 445 00:24:34,790 --> 00:24:37,766 still appeared on the reservation for years, 446 00:24:37,766 --> 00:24:39,900 that, in recent years of course, 447 00:24:39,900 --> 00:24:44,743 there has been a recrudescence of that native religion. 448 00:24:45,580 --> 00:24:46,850 There always has been, 449 00:24:46,850 --> 00:24:50,990 on the Flathead reservation, reversions, 450 00:24:50,990 --> 00:24:55,139 periodic reversions to ancient rituals and practices. 451 00:24:55,139 --> 00:24:58,010 And so one has to be very careful 452 00:24:58,010 --> 00:25:01,320 about saying that Indian religion is dead 453 00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:04,299 and all the Indian people are Christian. 454 00:25:04,299 --> 00:25:06,473 I think you should be careful about that. 455 00:25:08,167 --> 00:25:09,160 Having now abused the Catholics, 456 00:25:09,160 --> 00:25:10,980 let me abuse the Protestants 457 00:25:10,980 --> 00:25:14,213 because they did not do as well, at all. 458 00:25:15,530 --> 00:25:20,067 In 1870, in his message to the Congress, 459 00:25:20,067 --> 00:25:25,067 President Grant set forth what he called his Peace Policy. 460 00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:30,560 Prior to 1870, what had happened on all these reservations 461 00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:32,180 was that there was an agent. 462 00:25:32,180 --> 00:25:33,630 He was appointed politically. 463 00:25:34,970 --> 00:25:37,310 And it was his responsibility to see that, 464 00:25:37,310 --> 00:25:40,260 as the goods and services promised 465 00:25:40,260 --> 00:25:42,560 in the various treaties were delivered, 466 00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:44,350 that they got to the Indian people. 467 00:25:44,350 --> 00:25:47,710 But they didn't, or a large portion of it did not. 468 00:25:47,710 --> 00:25:50,250 The agent, who was crooked, 469 00:25:50,250 --> 00:25:51,840 simply took a lot of this stuff, 470 00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:55,270 kept it, or sold it, and feathered his own nest. 471 00:25:55,270 --> 00:25:57,396 This had become a massive scandal 472 00:25:57,396 --> 00:26:01,420 in an administration that was marked by scandal anyway: 473 00:26:01,420 --> 00:26:02,773 the Grant administration. 474 00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:05,670 Grant himself was perfectly honest. 475 00:26:05,670 --> 00:26:07,220 He wasn't a very good president, 476 00:26:07,220 --> 00:26:08,950 but he was perfectly honest, and he thought 477 00:26:08,950 --> 00:26:10,960 he would solve this particular problem, 478 00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,001 which was a national scandal, 479 00:26:13,001 --> 00:26:16,942 by seeing that all agents, henceforth, 480 00:26:16,942 --> 00:26:21,942 should be chosen from men nominated by the religious groups. 481 00:26:22,890 --> 00:26:24,862 This was his Peace Policy. 482 00:26:24,862 --> 00:26:27,600 It didn't work. 483 00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:31,010 Except for the Flatheads, all the tribes in Montana 484 00:26:31,010 --> 00:26:34,510 were assigned, for instance, to the Methodist church. 485 00:26:34,510 --> 00:26:36,590 The call went out for missionaries, 486 00:26:36,590 --> 00:26:40,500 the call went out for agents from many sources. 487 00:26:40,500 --> 00:26:43,160 But 11 years later, the Blackfeet 488 00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:46,930 had no Methodists among them, the Fort Peck reservation, 489 00:26:46,930 --> 00:26:48,597 one fellow reported in 1880, 490 00:26:48,597 --> 00:26:50,630 "while the agency is under the control 491 00:26:50,630 --> 00:26:53,000 of the Methodist Episcopal church, 492 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:54,960 that organization has done nothing, 493 00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:57,410 and there is no agent here." 494 00:26:57,410 --> 00:27:00,000 And so it was on all the reservations. 495 00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:04,220 The church simply never met its obligations. 496 00:27:04,220 --> 00:27:07,400 So, Old Plenty Coups, for instance, 497 00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:11,643 the revered chief of the Crow, had this to say: 498 00:27:13,197 --> 00:27:16,670 "their wise ones said that we might have their religion, 499 00:27:16,670 --> 00:27:19,260 but when we tried to understand it, 500 00:27:19,260 --> 00:27:20,890 we found that there were too many 501 00:27:20,890 --> 00:27:24,653 kinds of religion among white men for us to understand. 502 00:27:25,550 --> 00:27:28,404 And that scarcely any two white men ever agreed 503 00:27:28,404 --> 00:27:31,770 on which was the right one to learn. 504 00:27:31,770 --> 00:27:34,702 This bothered us a good deal, until we saw 505 00:27:34,702 --> 00:27:37,660 that the white man did not take his religion 506 00:27:37,660 --> 00:27:40,890 any more seriously, than he took his laws, 507 00:27:40,890 --> 00:27:42,970 and that he kept both of them just behind him, 508 00:27:42,970 --> 00:27:46,640 like helpers to use when they might do him good 509 00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:49,360 in his dealings with strangers. 510 00:27:49,360 --> 00:27:51,150 These were not our ways. 511 00:27:51,150 --> 00:27:55,000 We kept laws we made and we lived our religion 512 00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,870 and not on just one day a week. 513 00:27:57,870 --> 00:28:00,530 We have never been able to understand the white man 514 00:28:00,530 --> 00:28:03,430 who fools nobody but himself." 515 00:28:03,430 --> 00:28:06,923 I think Plenty Coups was dead right. 516 00:28:08,580 --> 00:28:11,747 (upbeat string music)