The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West

by Andrew R. Graybill

  17 George Bird Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People (1892; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2003), 203–4; Clark Wissler, “Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 5, pt. 1 (New York: Published by Order of the Trustees, 1910), 20–52.

  18 For the best description of Plains Indian dependence upon the buffalo, see Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).

  19 L. James Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art: Pictographs of the Reservation Period, 1880–1920 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 7.

  20 Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 227–28. The anthropologist Shepard Krech III offers a more skeptical view of native efficiency in using all parts of slaughtered buffalo in The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: Norton, 1999), 123–49.

  21 The informant was Saukamappee, a Cree Indian who had lived among the Blackfeet since he was a boy. He told this story to the Welsh fur trader and cartographer David Thompson, who as an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company spent the winter of 1786–87 in a Piegan camp at the base of the Rockies. J. B. Tyrrell, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative of His Explorations in Western America, 1784–1812 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1916), 334. For more on Thompson’s fascinating and tragic life, see D’Arcy Jenish, Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2003). For translation, see Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 214.

  22 N. Scott Momaday quoted in The West, DVD, directed by Stephen Ives (Arlington, Va.: PBS Home Video, 1996).

  23 John C. Ewers, The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture, with Comparative Material from Other Western Tribes (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955), 20. Ewers’s book remains the classic account of the transition to equestrianism by Plains Indian societies.

  24 Thompson’s informant Saukamappee was one of the armed warriors. See Tyrrell, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative, 330–34; John C. Ewers, Indian Life on the Upper Missouri (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 35.

  25 For a discussion of such trends considered throughout the Plains, see Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” Journal of American History 90, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 833–62.

  26 Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 194.

  27 Ewers, The Blackfeet, 37. Ewers based his estimate on figures provided by Alexander Henry, who—like Thompson—was a fur trader stationed among the Blackfeet in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

  28 Tyrrell, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative, 346.

  29 Stephen S. Witte and Marsha V. Gallagher, eds., The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 1:421–26.

  30 George Catlin, Illustration of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1857), 1:30–34.

  31 Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 143–44.

  32 See Mari Sandoz, The Beaver Men: Spearheads of Empire (1964; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2009), 3–21, 313–14.

  33 David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream: The European Founding of North America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008); Carolyn Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2006); and Eric Jay Dolin, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America (New York: Norton, 2010), 13–23.

  34 The “HBC point blanket,” as it was known, was introduced in 1780 and became popular with native peoples because its white background offered terrific winter camouflage. See “Our History: The HBC Point Blanket,” http://www.hbc heritage.ca/hbcheritage/history/blanket/history (accessed 15 Feb. 2012).

  35 This is Ewers’s interpretation. See The Blackfeet, 19.

  36 “Henday, Anthony,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www .biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=35522 (accessed 14 Feb. 2012).

  37 Theodore Binnema argues—rightfully—that sweeping characterizations about differing Blackfeet attitudes toward British, Canadian, and American trappers and traders obscure more complex reasons for the Indians’ alternating friendliness and hostility to white newcomers. Still, the historical record clearly supports the generalization that the Blackfeet expressed particular antagonism toward Americans. See Binnema’s article “Allegiances and Interests: Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) Trade, Diplomacy, and Warfare, 1806–1831,” Western Historical Quarterly 37, no. 3 (Autumn 2006): 327–49.

  38 For the Canadian fur trade, see two classics: Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1930); and Arthur J. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660–1870 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1974). For the American system, see David J. Wishart, The Fur Trade of the American West, 1807–1840: A Geographical Synthesis (1979; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1992).

  39 Burton Harris, John Colter: His Years in the Rockies (1952; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1993). See also John C. Jackson, “Revisiting the Colter Legend,” Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal 3 (Jan. 2009): 1–19.

  40 Moulton, ed., The Lewis and Clark Journals, 352–53, 365–66; Harris, John Colter, 35–58.

  41 For full biographies, see Richard Edward Oglesby, Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur Trade (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1963); and M. O. Skarsten, George Drouillard: Hunter and Interpreter for Lewis and Clark & Fur Trader, 1807–1810 (1964; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2005).

  42 There are numerous accounts of “Colter’s run.” The one above is based on the version that his biographer considers the most enduring: John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811 (1819; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1986), 44–47. For other versions, see Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans (1846; St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1916), 57–64; and Washington Irving, Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprize beyond the Rocky Mountains (1836; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1976), 101–4. Jon T. Coleman offers an intriguing rereading of the episode in Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation (New York: Hill & Wang, 2012), 75–80.

  43 For classic histories of the American fur trade, see Hiram Martin Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, 3 vols. (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1902); Paul C. Phillips, The Fur Trade, 2 vols. (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1961); and David Lavender, The Fist in the Wilderness (1964; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1998).

  44 James, Three Years among the Indians, 80.

  45 Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995), s.v. “South Street Seaport.”

  46 Chittenden, The American Fur Trade, 1:163–65, quote p. 165. For more on Astor, see James P. Ronda, Astoria and Empire (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990).

  47 Dolin, Fur, Fortune, and Empire, 189–222.

  48 Gitlin, The Bourgeois Frontier, 68.

  49 Smoothing this merger was the 1823 marriage of Astor’s second-in-command, Ramsay Crooks, to Bernard Pratte’s daughter Emilie, who was sixteen years younger than her husband. See Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families, 59.

  50 Erwin N. Thompson, Fort Union Trading Post: Fur Trade Empire on the Upper Missouri (Williston, N.D.: Fort Union Association, 2003), 3–4. Like many historians of the U.S. fur trade, Thompson notes that while the AFC contained multiple subdivisions, “as far as the general public and the opposition traders were concerned, the whole organization was known as the American Fur Company.” See p. 4.

  51 For a complete description of the fort as well as some of the archaeological work involved in its reconstruction, see William J. Hunt Jr., “‘At the Yellowstone … to Build a Fort’: Fort Union Trading Post, 1828–1833,” in Fort Union Fur Trade Symposium Proceedings: September 13–15, 1990 (Williston, N.
D.: Friends of Fort Union Trading Post, 1994), 7–23. There is disagreement in regard to the founding date of Fort Union; some scholars insist that 1829 is the correct year. I have sided with Hunt, one of the leading archaeological experts on the history of the site. For a fascinating account of the controversy attending the fort’s partial reconstruction in the years 1985–91, see Paul L. Hedren, “Field Notes: Why We Reconstructed Fort Union,” Western Historical Quarterly 23, no. 3 (Aug. 1992): 349–54.

  52 Catlin, Illustration of the Manners, 1:21. For the best history of the post, see Barton H. Barbour, Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2001). For more on Catlin, see John Hausdoerffer, Catlin’s Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2009).

  53 Unfortunately, no information on the date or artist can be found at the Missouri History Museum, which holds the print. However, it seems probable that the work was executed in the early 1830s, given that McKenzie looks to be in his early thirties (he was born in 1801) and left Fort Union for Europe in 1834.

  54 For statistics, see Barbour, Fort Union, 36–37.

  55 For two similar but not identical accounts, see Annie Heloise Abel, ed., Chardon’s Journal at Fort Clark, 1834–1839 (1932; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997), 401–4; and James H. Bradley, “Journal of James H. Bradley,” Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana (Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 3:201–3. See also Ewers, The Blackfeet, 56–57.

  56 James H. Bradley, “Bradley Manuscript, Book II,” Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana (Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 8:140–41.

  57 James H. Bradley, “Bradley Manuscript, Book F,” Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana (Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 8:244–50, quote p. 246.

  58 Bradley, “Bradley Manuscript, Book II,” 156.

  59 Witte and Gallagher, eds., The North American Journals, 2:362–65.

  60 Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske, 1892), 127.

  61 See “Mormon History, Nov. 7, 1833,” http://mormon-church-history. blogspot.com/2009/08/mormon-history-nov-7-1833.html (accessed 17 Feb. 2012).

  62 Donald W. Olson and Laurie E. Jasinski, “Abe Lincoln and the Leonids,” Sky & Telescope 98, no. 5 (November 1999): 34–35.

  63 Bradley, “Bradley Manuscript, Book II,” 134. Lesley Wischmann describes the same event in Frontier Diplomats: Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-Siksina’ among the Blackfeet (2000; Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 57.

  64 Lewis, The Effects of White Contact, 36.

  65 Clement Augustus Lounsberry, Early History of North Dakota: Essential Outlines of American History (Washington, D.C.: Liberty Press, 1919), 144.

  66 Catlin, Illustration of the Manners, 1:20.

  67 William E. Lass, A History of Steamboating on the Upper Missouri River (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1962), 13. See also Lass, Navigating the Missouri: Steamboating on Nature’s Highway, 1819–1935 (Norman, Okla.: Arthur H. Clark, 2008); and Michael M. Casler, Steamboats of the Fort Union Fur Trade: An Illustrated Listing of Steamboats on the Upper Missouri River, 1831– 1867 (Williston, N.D.: Fort Union Association, 1999).

  68 See Hugh Dempsey, Firewater: The Impact of the Whisky Trade on the Blackfoot Nation (Calgary: Fifth House, 2002), 7–25.

  69 For more on the consumption of alcohol in the early American republic, see Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978); W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979); and Ian R. Tyrrell, Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800–1860 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979).

  70 See Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995); and William E. Unrau, White Man’s Wicked Water: The Alcohol Trade and Prohibition in Indian Country, 1802– 1892 (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1996). From the earliest days of the United States, federal officials had tried to keep alcohol out of Indian country, as with the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790. See Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:98–102.

  71 Bradley, “Journal of James H. Bradley,” 221–26. See also Clyde D. Dollar, “The High Plains Smallpox Epidemic of 1837–38,” Western Historical Quarterly 8, no. 1 (Jan. 1977), 15–38; and Ewers, The Blackfeet, 65–66. For an account of the epidemic at Fort Union, see Charles Larpenteur, Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833–1872 (1898; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1989), 109–112. Perhaps the best single description of the event is Abel, ed., Chardon’s Journal at Fort Clark, 121–45. It is worth noting that there were other outbreaks of the disease on the nineteenth-century Plains, such as an epidemic among the Pawnees in 1831, but nothing as intense farther north until 1837. My thanks to David Wishart for pointing this out. Earlier epidemics had, of course, exacted their own grim toll, with devastating consequences for groups like the Arikaras and the Mandans. See, e.g., Elizabeth Fenn, Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People (New York: Hill & Wang, forthcoming). On the challenges of combating the disease in portions of the twentieth-century developing world, described by the architect of that strategy, see William H. Foege, House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2011).

  72 For Maximilian’s description of the battle, see Witte and Gallagher, eds., The North American Journals, 2:393–98.

  73 This, of course, is speculation. However, given that a huge Piegan camp of two hundred lodges (approximately 1,600 people) had visited just two weeks before and remained camped nearby at the time of the attack (many of its warriors joined the fight), it seems plausible that the girl and her family were in the vicinity of Fort McKenzie, either camped at the post itself or at the much bigger village.

  74 Two other dates—1823 and 1827—have been proposed as the year of Coth-co-co-na’s birth, but since her age is listed as forty-five on the 1870 federal census, 1825 seems the safest bet. See Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, Montana Territory, National Archives(microfilm), roll M593, p. 225. Though almost always identified as Under Bull, her father has also been listed as Big Snake or Owl Child. For the former see undated document, Montana Historical Society, Helen P. Clarke Papers, SC 1153, folder 3; for the latter see Roxanne DeMarce, ed., Blackfeet Heritage, 1907–1908 (Browning, Mont.: Blackfeet Heritage Program, 1980), 68.

  75 Clark Wissler, “The Social Life of the Blackfoot Indians,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 7, pt. 1 (New York: Published by Order of the Trustees, 1912), 16–18.

  76 Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 185.

  77 Wissler, “Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians,” 63–64; and Ewers, The Blackfeet, 109–10.

  78 J. N. B. Hewitt, ed., Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz (1937; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1970), 79. To be sure, white indignation about perceived gender inequality among the Indians was a major driver of liberal criticism in eastern Indian policy, too.

  79 Katherine M. Weist, “Beasts of Burden and Menial Slaves: Nineteenth-Century Observations of Northern Plains Indian Women,” in The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women, ed. Patricia Albers and Beatrice Medicine (Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1983), 29–52. See also David D. Smits, “The ‘Squaw Drudge’: A Prime Index of Savagism,” Ethnohistory 29, no. 4 (1982): 281–306.

  80 For Blackfeet marital customs, see Wissler, “The Social Life of the Blackfoot Indians,” 9–14; and Ewers, The Blackfeet, 98–101.

  81 For more on the Sun Dance, which was celebrated by many Plains Indian peoples, see Clark Wissler, “The Sun Dance of the Blackfoot Indians,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 16, pt. 3 (New York: P
ublished by Order of the Trustees, 1918).

  82 Witte and Gallagher, eds., The North American Journals, 2:432.

  83 Other factors, of course, drove intermarriage throughout the Western Hemisphere. For instance, the Spanish conquest of indigenous empires in the New World brought them inevitably into close and intimate proximity with Indian peoples. The far less numerous French, by contrast, depended upon such interracial relationships to expand the reach of their colonies and to cement critical military alliances with Indian groups, essential in checking the ambitions of other European powers. For the Spanish case, see, among others, J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492– 1830 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2006), and David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2007). On the French, see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991); and Alan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1997).

  84 Jennifer S. H. Brown and Theresa Schenck, “Métis, Mestizo, and Mixed-Blood,” in A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Philip Deloria and Neal Salisbury (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002), 329.

  85 William B. Parker, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Letters and Addresses (New York: A. Wessels, 1907), 190. For more on Jefferson’s views, see Reginald Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812 (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1967), 104–14; and Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).

  86 Quoted in Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: Norton, 2008), 343.

  87 Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Random House, 1998), 201.

  88 See Sidney Kaplan, “Historical Efforts to Encourage White-Indian Intermarriage in the United States and Canada,” International Social Science Review 65, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 126–32.