"Look! Real Indians!" (continued)
Indians have figured prominently in the history of
the Yellowstone. Indirectly, they were the cause of its discovery, and
more directly they were responsible for its isolation for almost half a
century after the discovery of the geysers, the hot springs, and the
canyon and lake. Travelers and explorers hesitated to make the trip to
Yellowstone for fear of annihilation by hostile Indians. For two
generations the territory that is now the park was visited only by
intrepid trappers.
There were four great tribes of Indians living about
the Yellowstone territory. They did not live in what is now the
Yellowstone, for fear of incurring the wrath of the "Evil Spirit" who
was supposed to reside among the geysers and the hot springs, and also
because the country was inaccessible and there was better hunting in the
valleys below the park region. The Indian name for the Yellowstone was
"Burning Mountains," and it is easy to understand their superstitions.
Only when they were pursued and sought refuge to save their lives would
parties of Indians come into the Burning Mountains. There are still
relics of their tepees along the road from Roosevelt Camp to Mammoth and
in the Gallatin section of the park. These tepees were but temporary
affairs hidden in the forests and erected no doubt for the purpose of
hiding their smoke from their enemies. Yellowstone was somewhat of a
battle ground for the four tribes who lived around it, the Crows, the
Blackfeet, the Bannocks, and the Shoshones.
The Crows, or Absaroka as they called themselves,
lived in the region between the Yellowstone and the Big Horn rivers and
in the Big Horn Valley and mountains of that name, east of what is now
Yellowstone National Park. They were great nomads and marauders. When
the white settlers first came into the Montana area, the Crows stole
many horses and such other property as they could carry off under the
cover of night. They were expert horsemen and it was almost impossible
to catch them, especially if they took refuge behind the Absaroka Range
in what is now Yellowstone. Nevertheless, they were regarded as the
friends of the whites, and never went to war against the settlers. They
helped John Colter, the early explorer, and Crow scouts were guides for
Custer's army and were with him in 1876 when he and his troops were
massacred on the Little Big Horn by Sitting Bull and the Sioux.
The traditional enemies of the Crows were the Blackfeet,
the Indians of Glacier Park. Whenever roving bands of Crows and
Blackfeet met, a battle invariably ensued, in which the Blackfeet were
usually victorious. The Blackfeet were regarded as the enemies of the
whites, though they never went on the warpath as did the Sioux. The
Blackfeet, by "Pot-shooting" every white man they could find, probably
killed more settlers than any of the tribes that took to the warpath.
The relations of the Crows and the Blackfeet to the white men have been
traced back to a comparatively small incident in the life of John
Colter.
When the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned from the
Pacific Coast in 1806, passing within one hundred miles of Yellowstone
Park, Colter, one of the scouts, asked permission to stay in the
Rockies and accompany two other fur traders working up the Missouri
River. He had been away from civilization four years, yet he was ready
for more of the wilderness and hardship in order to explore virgin
country. In 1807, Colter, in the employ of a Spanish fur trader named
Manuel Lisa, pushed up the Yellowstone River, seeking to make friends
with the neighboring Indians for the fur trader. He fell in with a band
of Crows and accompanied them south on a hunting expedition. The Crows
met a band of Blackfeet and a battle followed. Colter quite naturally
fought on the side of his friends, the Crows, and this time, contrary to
the usual outcome of Crow-Blackfoot battles, the Crows were victorious.
This increased the enmity of the Blackfeet for the white men, but helped
establish friendly relations with the Crows. Years later the Crows
became the good friends of the white traders pushing into the
Yellowstone.
The third tribe of Indians was known as Shoshones.
This great nation lived south and southeast of the park. The Shoshone
tribes living on the border of Yellowstone were peaceful Indians. They
were known derisively by the Crows and Blackfeet as "fish-eaters" and
"root-diggers," because of the manner in which they garnered their food.
They dug their roots, dried them, and ground them into flour, from which
they made a pastry known as "sour dough." The Shoshones liked fish, a
food which the Crows and the Blackfeet despised and would eat only when
facing starvation. A branch of the Shoshones called Tukuarika, but
dubbed "sheep-eaters" by the whites, actually dwelt in Yellowstone Park
in the northern, eastern, and southern parts. They were a timid people,
small in stature and lacking in brains and initiative. They were often
seen in the park in the early days.
A fourth nation of Indians, who probably saw more of
the park than any others in the early days, were the Bannocks. These
lived to the west of the park in what is now Idaho. These Bannocks were
a peaceful tribe who crossed the Yellowstone every summer to get to the
buffalo country. They feared this crossing and preferred to keep out of
the domain of the Evil Spirit, but their fear of the Blackfeet and the
Crows was even greater. Consequently the Bannocks braved the
Yellowstone each summer to avoid fights and to get their supply of dried
buffalo meat.
Another Indian episode that figures prominently in
Yellowstone annals is the memorable flight of Chief Joseph and his Nez
Perce Indians across the park in 1877. The Nez Perces, so named by the
early French traders because this tribe pierced their noses and wore
nose rings, lived in western Idaho and eastern Oregon, well outside the
Yellowstone territory. They were discovered by the Lewis and Clark
Expedition and made friends with the white man at once. Missionaries and
traders and trappers lived among them, converting the Nez Perces to
Christianity. One of these converts was Chief Joseph, an Indian of
remarkable ability, integrity, and intelligence. He eventually became
chief of the tribe.
The Nez Perces, by a series of treaties, ceded the
white settlers important tracts of farming land within their hunting
grounds. Much of this was done on the advice of Chief Joseph, contrary
to the wishes of other and older counselors of the tribe, who viewed
with great alarm the encroachment on the Nez Perce lands. Finally in
1877, when a gold rush caused miners to settle in the heart of the Nez
Perce lands regardless of treaty rights, the young braves of the tribe
revolted and several white men were slain. The fighting was against the
counsel of Chief Joseph who urged patience and peace; but once the white
men were killed he realized that the government would demand vengeance
upon his tribe. This was the beginning of one of the most memorable
Indian wars in American history.
Chief Joseph decided that the only chance for his
tribe was flight to Canada. Accordingly, encumbered by women, children,
and the tribe's belongings, he led the Nez Perces out of the Wallowa
Valley in eastern Oregon, across Idaho, into the fastnesses of
Yellowstone, across the park, and almost across Montana, fighting all
the way, until within thirty miles of his goal most of the Indians were
trapped and captured. At the start, Chief Joseph was harassed by
soldiers from the west. He fought them off, outwitted parties sent to
block his path, outgeneraled troops sent to meet him in Yellowstone and
Montana, and in spite of his great handicaps and lack of supplies, held
his band together. While in the Yellowstone, the Nez Perces encountered
two separate parties of tourists, exchanged their tired horses for the
fresh ones of the visitors, confiscated part of the supplies, and pushed
on, with women and children, always eluding the troops. In this
remarkable hegira, Chief Joseph led the Nez Perces over half a dozen
mountain ranges, through passes that were considered impassable, all the
time in strange country, until he reached northern Montana, the old
buffalo hunting grounds of the Nez Perces.
Chief Joseph and his exhausted tribesmen were
surrounded by two troops of militia on Snake Creek in the Bear Paw
Mountains, within sight almost of freedom. General Miles, whose
admiration had been stirred by Chief Joseph's gallant flight, persuaded
the Nez Perces to surrender on condition that they would be returned to
their old home. General Miles' agreement, made in good faith, was
ignored by the government, which treated the Nez Perces as criminals and
sent most of them to Leavenworth Prison and later to Indian Territory,
where many died; but in 1885 Chief Joseph and the remnant of his tribe
were removed to a reservation in Washington. Here the old warrior lived
for twenty years, aiding and counseling his people. Once he made the
long trip to Washington, D. C., to visit President Roosevelt and General
Miles. Chief Joseph's story is a part of that of the Yellowstone, though
his people never lived in the park other than during the brief period
when they sought refuge there. When the old Indian died in 1904, there
passed away perhaps the most remarkable man his race produced, in modern
years at least.
Just as the Blackfeet are a part of Glacier National
Park, the Crows are coming to be associated with Yellowstone Park. In
1925 a group of Crows were allowed to come to Yellowstone Park and help
round up the big buffalo herd. They wore their ancient hunting costumes
and rode bareback as they chased the buffaloes over the hills of the
Lamar River country. Crowds of Sagebrushers went out each day to see the
Indians bring down the buffaloes from the mountains. One day a buffalo
was killed accidentally and was given to the Indians. One old Indian
remembered how to prepare it for drying, and all through the night the
Indians worked on that buffalo, cutting the meat into small pieces and
pounding it into thin sheets which they hung on a line to dry. The next
day it looked from a distance as if the Indians had put out a big
washing, as the buffalo meat occupied many long lines strung between the
trees. The Indians would not eat the meat in the park. They said they
were going to take it back to the reservation with the hide and head and
there have a big dance.
(From the Stanford University Press
edition)
The national park pageants, most of which were
developed by the late Garnet Holme, former pageant master of the
National Park Service, preserve much of our Indian lore. Tenaya,
a pageant of Yosemite named after he Indian chief who ruled Yosmite
Valley when the white men came, pictures the wresting of the famous
valley from the Indians. Ursa of the Redwoods enacts the legends
of the giant redwoords in Sequoia National Park. Casa Grande
pictures the ceremonies by which the desert Indians of Arizona and New
Mexico sent their prayers to the rain gods. In all of these out-of-door
drams, Mr. Holme has delved into history and attempted to preserve the
legends and the true stories of the Indians as nearly as can be done.
Another fine pageant is The Masque of the Absaroka, presented by
the people of Bozeman, Montana, preserving legends of the Crows. The
National Park Service has encouraged these pageants as a means of
reviving the picturesque and interesting Indian ceremonies, one of the
first features of Indian life to disappear when the native adopts the
white man's mode of living.
The region that is now Rocky Mountain Park was a
favorite hunting ground of Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians. They visited
this country at all times of the year, but the higher elevations only in
the summer and fall. Indian names were bestowed on many features of the
park territory, and translations of them were used a long time ago by
the whites, but unfortunately nearly all have vanished now. Battles were
fought in what is now park territory, according to evidence revealed by
rock piles and other apparently human interference with natural
conditions that cannot be traced to white settlers. The Rocky Mountain
Park region, especially the Estes Park open country, must have been a
paradise for Indian hunting at certain times of the year, and one can
imagine today great villages of tepees amid the red and yellow aspen
leaves of autumn when the deer and elk come down from the higher areas
with the first storms.
West of the Rockies, doubtless, Shoshones, Utes, and
other tribes of Wyoming and Utah perhaps came to hunt in what is now the
Grand Lake region of Rocky Mountain Park and perhaps in these remote
regions there were conflicts between the parties whose year-around
territories were on opposite sides of the continental divide.
The Indians of the Zion Park country were Piutes, a
tribe that ranged over much of Utah, nearly all of Nevada, and into
eastern California, beyond the Sierra. There were Piutes in Owens Valley
in the Sierra Nevada, and in the 'sixties they were so fierce and
warlike that the United States had to send in troops to quell them. Fort
Independence was built as a base for these troops. Today these Indians
can be seen in short side trips from Yosemite Park.
The Piutes were troublesome to the early emigrants,
first to the Mormons, then to the California gold seekers. A string of
early Mormon forts was built in Utah as a protection from these
redskins. One of these forts is at Pipe Spring in northern Arizona, and
is now in a national monument, protected by the National Park Service.
This fort, however, was used mostly for the protection of early settlers
from marauding bands of Navajoes from the Southeast.
One of the worst massacres recorded in American
history was the Mountain Meadows Massacre in southern Utah, perpetrated
by Piutes and the renegade whites who led them. This occurred not far
from Zion Park on the road to California. An entire emigrant train was
overtaken by these Indians and their white leaders, and most of the
members of the pioneer party were slain.
Salt Lake City was the haven of safety and peace, the
Zion of the early Mormon settlers. In southern Utah, the canyon of the
Mukuntuweap Creek, a branch of the Virgin River, was a place where the
Mormon pioneers of the southern part of the territory could hide from
the Indians in time of danger. They called this canyon Little Zion, and
today this canyon is the main feature of Zion National Park. In it and
in the Parunuweap Canyon near by are many indications of prehistoric
peoples. There were cliff dwellings in these canyons as well as other
structures on the cliffs and on the valley floors.
In the California national parks, one finds traces of
an entirely different type of Indian. The natives who live in the
foothills of the Sierra Nevada are known as Digger Indians. They are
rated low in the classifications of Indians. Life was simple for them.
In a balmy climate, they needed little shelter and they eked out a
living on nuts, roots, plants, and such small animals as they could
shoot, adding to this diet the delicacy of grasshoppers. They were of
the same general type of Indian as those whom the Franciscan padres
gathered in the California missions. Under the direction of the
missionaries, the California Indians were fair workers, but in their
natural state they developed no art other than basket making.
In Sequoia National Park, the Potwisha tribe of
Diggers lived and thrived. The dividing line between their territory
and that of the next tribe, the Watchumna, was at Lime Kiln Hill near
Lemon Cove. The earliest visitor to the region that is now Sequoia Park
was Hale D. Tharp, who came into that country in 1856. He told Judge
Fry, who was for years ranger and superintendent of the park, that when
he first entered the valley of the Kaweah River there were two thousand
Indians along the main river and its branches above Lemon Cove.
In Yosemite Valley, there lived an outstanding and
remarkable band of Indians, a branch of the Miwok tribe. They called
themselves the Yosemites, after the grizzly, a name chosen after a
battle in which one of their braves overcame a great bear. The Yosemites
found in the valley of Ahwahnee, "peaceful, grassy vale," as they called
Yosemite Valley, all that an Indian tribe could ask of its gods. It was
a good hunting ground. It was plentiful in acorns, from which the
Yosemites made a meal. It enjoyed a fine climate, and best of all it was
so secluded that the Indians were sure it would never be reached by the
white man.
Under the direction of an able chief, Tenaya, the
Yosemites developed into a warlike nation. They accepted into their
tribe the refugees from other California tribes, many of them wanted for
depredations on the white settlers below. In this manner Tenaya built up
the strength of his fighting force, and he also became responsible for
the acts of Indians whom he could not control. When the gold miners
began pushing up the Merced River until they were dangerously near the
stronghold of the Yosemites, some of Tenaya's braves went on the
warpath, killed miners, raided and burned stores and raised havoc until
the whites, in retaliation, sent various expeditions to punish the
Indians. On one such occasion Tenaya and his braves, with wives and
children, fled up over the mountains to the land of the Monos, a tribe
of Nevada Indians with whom the Yosemites traded acorn meal for pine
nuts and the obsidian with which they made arrowheads. The Monos were
related to the Piutes. From the desert tribes farther east they had
acquired horses and had learned to ride them skilfully. The Monos were
proud of their horses.
In the hour of need, the Monos gave the Yosemites
shelter and food. Tenaya accepted it gratefully. He stayed with the
Monos until the white men departed from his stronghold, then he led his
people back to Yosemite Valley. The Yosemites repaid the hospitality of
the Monos by stealing some of their horses. Not being riding Indians,
the Yosemites valued the horses only as food. When the angry Monos
overtook the Yosemites, the latter were gorging themselves on
horseflesh. In the battle which followed, they were no match for the
Monos, who practically wiped out the Yosemite tribe, including Tenaya
himself.
Lassen Volcanic National Park, in northern
California, is historic ground. One of the old emigrant trails runs
through the northern part of the park and is today one of the most
interesting features of the region. Northeastward are the lava beds
where the famous Modoc War took place in 1872 and 1873. This war was a
bitter one, and many settlers and soldiers as well as Indians were
killed. The Modocs still inhabit the Lassen country and are to be found
all the way up to Oregon, where their ancient contacts were made with
the Klamaths; but they rarely come into the park and the visitor to that
region should look for Indians in the more northerly valleys.
Crater Lake National Park is in the heart of the
country of the Klamath Indians. As one goes toward the south or east
entrances of this park, he passes through the Klamath Indian
reservation, which has many broad mountain meadows and splendid forests.
The Klamaths were trouble some when the whites first came into their
territory, and the government had to build Fort Klamath and station
troops there to keep the Indians quiet; but it was not long until they
came under the influence of missionaries and turned to peaceful
pursuits. Old Fort Klamath was a picturesque reminder of the early days
of Oregon, and stood near the road to Crater Lake Park until very
recently. Crater Lake Park figured prominently in the legends of the
Klamaths.
The Indians west of Rainier Park and in the Olympic
were Diggers resembling in many respects those of the tribes of the
California coast and interior valleys. They were the Nisqually, the
Puyallup, and the Cowlitz tribes, all short, flat-faced, unattractive
Indians who gave the white settlers very little trouble and did not
quarrel much among themselves. They speared fish, principally salmon,
dug clams in the sands of Puget Sound, and in summer gathered berries
and roots in the hills.
Quite different are the characteristics of the
Yakimas and Klickitats who lived beyond the park territory on the east.
They resembled the Plains Indians. They were tall, lithe, and had strong
features. They owned horses and were excellent riders. They were
hunters, and each year came to the great mountain to stalk the wild
goat, deer, bear, and the big elk which formerly roamed that country in
large bands.
Many of these tribes worshipped Mount Rainier, which
because of their religious veneration, the author John H. Williams has
called "The Mountain That Is God," in naming one of the best books that
has been written on the park in which it lies. The Indians viewed with
alarm the efforts of the white men to climb Mount Rainier. The records
of various parties which undertook to scale the mountain tell of the
difficulty of securing Indian guides. There is preserved in the records
of the Stevens party a sincere warning voiced by Sluiskin, the Indian
guide to the expedition, who refused to go beyond Paradise Valley. Said
he to his white friends:
"Listen to me, my good friends. I must talk to you.
Your plan to climb Takhoma (one of the Indian names for Mount Rainier)
is all foolishness. No one can do it and live. A mighty chief dwells
upon the summit in a lake of fire. He brooks no intruders. Many years
ago my grand father, the greatest and bravest chief of all the Yakima,
climbed nearly to the summit. There he caught sight of the fiery lake
and the infernal demon coming to destroy him and he fled down the
mountain, glad to escape with his life. Where he failed, no other Indian
ever dared make the attempt. At first the way is easy, the task seems
light. The broad snow fields, over which I have often hunted the
mountain goat, offer an inviting path. But above them you will have to
climb over steep rocks overhanging deep gorges, where a misstep would
hurl you far down, down to certain death. You must creep over steep snow
banks and cross deep crevasses where a mountain goat could hardly keep
his footing. You must climb along steep cliffs where rocks are
continually falling to crush you or knock you off into the bottomless
depths. And if you should escape these perils and reach the great snowy
dome, there a bitterly cold and furious tempest will sweep you off into
space like a withered leaf. But if by some miracle you should survive
all these perils, the mighty demon of Takhoma will surely kill you and
throw you into the fiery lake."
The impassioned warning of Sluiskin of the Yakima is
expressive of the Indian's reverence for the wonders that are now the
national parks. The Indian lived daily in the shadow, not only of the
mountains, the cliffs, and the waterfalls, but of death. He lived as a
wild thing lived, by the caprices of Nature. Life was to him fickle,
hazardous, difficult. Little wonder that he resisted, albeit futilely,
the invasions of the white pioneers into his hunting grounds. Natural it
was that he fled for a last refuge to the lands of his gods. No picture
of the national parks is complete without the story of the Indians that
lived in them. Elsewhere, the white men have changed the Indian and his
manner of life. In these few spots, where the devastation of
civilization is held in check, it is fitting that the red man, too,
should be found, still living as a child in the arms of Nature.
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