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

by Andrew R. Graybill

  46 For more on Pratt, see David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1995), 36–55.

  47 Multiple dates are given for these photos; I have used those offered by Adams on the dust jacket of Education for Extinction. Torlino, who did not graduate from Carlisle, returned to his native Southwest and worked as a farmer. See Peter Iverson, Diné: A History of the Navajos (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2002), 83.

  48 For Clarke’s visits, see the Red Man (newspaper), vol. 10, no. 1 (Jan. and Feb. 1890); and Great Falls Leader Daily, 28 Aug. 1890.

  49 The Indian Helper, vol. 5, no. 19 (10 Jan. 1890).

  50 Fletcher led a remarkable life. In middle age she embarked on a career in the emerging field of ethnography and worked for years at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. She also served as president of both the Anthropological Society of Washington and the American Folklore Society. For more on Fletcher, see E. Jane Gay, With the Nez Perces: Alice Fletcher in the Field, 1889–92, ed. Frederick E. Hoxie and Joan T. Mark (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1981); Joan T. Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1988); and Nicole Tonkovich, The Allotment Plot: Alice C. Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, and Nez Perce Survivance (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2012).

  51 Quoted in Berlin Basil Chapman, The Otoes and Missourias: A Study of Indian Removal and the Legal Aftermath (Oklahoma City: Times Journal, 1965), 206.

  52 Letter from the Office of the Secretary, Department of the Interior, to Helen P. Clarke, 4 Oct. 1890, NARA, BIA, RG 75, letters received, box 667, file 30744.

  53 For more on Oklahoma’s oil industry, see Brian Frehner, Finding Oil: The Nature of Petroleum Geology, 1859–1920 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2011).

  54 The Otoe-Missourias were once separate peoples who banded together in the late eighteenth century. It should also be noted that there was a significant division within the tribe about the move to Oklahoma, though the two sides reconciled in the 1890s. For more on the group, see R. David Edmunds, The Otoe-Missouria People (Phoenix: Indian Tribal Series, 1976).

  55 For more on the Poncas, see David J. Wishart, An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1994). For the circumstances surrounding their removal, see Joe Starita, “I Am a Man”: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008).

  56 Report of irregular employees in the field, 1 June 1891, NARA, BIA, RG 75, letters received, box 738, file 20061; and Helen P. Clarke to D. W. Browning, 8 Aug. 1894, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 30638.

  57 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1892, 52nd Cong., 1st sess., 357.

  58 This was part of a speech made by Deroin when he and a tribal delegation visited Washington, D.C., in April 1895. Quoted in Chapman, The Otoes and Missourias, 214–15.

  59 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1892, p. 358.

  60 Letter from Arthur Tinker to secretary of the interior, 7 Nov. 1891, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 154, file 40239.

  61 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to T. J. Morgan, 7 Sept. 1891, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 154, file 40239.

  62 Quoted in Chapman, The Otoes and Missourias, 218.

  63 See Cathleen D. Cahill, Federal Fathers and Mothers: The United States Indian Service, 1869–1933 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press); Lisa E. Emmerich, “‘Right in the Midst of My Own People’: Native American Women and the Field Matron Program,” American Indian Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 201–16; and Jane Simonsen, Making Home Work: Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American West, 1860–1919 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2006). Among the Nez Perces, Fletcher may have “aroused more awe than hostility.” See Marks, A Stranger in Her Native Land, 176–77.

  64 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to commissioner of Indian affairs, 12 Dec. 1893, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 46539.

  65 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to T. J. Morgan, 7 Dec. 1891, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 154, file 44211.

  66 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to W. F. Sanders, 29 Jan. 1892, MTHS, Wilbur Fisk Sanders Papers, MC 53, box 2.

  67 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to D. M. Browning, 8 Aug. 1894, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 30638 (emphasis in the original).

  68 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to General Palmer, 10 April 1897, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 22923.

  69 Mason Florence, Marisa Gierlich, and Andrew Dean Nystrom, Rocky Mountains (Melbourne: Lonely Planet Publications, 2001), 547.

  70 John C. Ewers, The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 290–94. See also James Willard Schultz, The Starving Blackfeet Indians (Los Angeles: National Association to Help the Indian, 1921).

  71 Author interview with Darrell Robes Kipp, Oct. 2006.

  72 Evidence of her presence at the negotiations is confirmed by a brief newspaper item: “Miss Helen P. Clark ex-county school superintendent of Lewis and Clarke [sic] county and at present special allotting agent of Indian lands, arrived in this city [Great Falls] this morning and leaves tonight for Helena. She has been in the northwest and was present at the Piegan Indian treaty.” Great Falls Leader Daily, 16 Oct. 1895.

  73 See Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), 71–100.

  74 Author interview with Darrell Robes Kipp, Oct. 2006. Kipp, like many Piegans, is withering on the subject of Grinnell, insisting that he helped strong-arm the Blackfeet into surrendering the land because of his own interest in seeing the area set aside as a national park.

  75 For the Indians’ petition, see Chapman, The Otoes and Missourias, 215–16. For Clarke’s instructions, see letter from acting secretary of the interior to commissioner of Indian affairs, 13 Nov. 1897, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 48098.

  76 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to Thomas H. Carter, 10 April 1897, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 22923 (emphasis in the original).

  77 Petition to secretary of the interior, 22 Dec. 1897, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 914.

  78 Transcript of council of Ponca Indians with Thomas P. Smith, 18 July 1898, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 34993.

  79 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to James U. Sanders, 19 April 1899, MTHS, JUS, MC 66, box 1, folder 4.

  80 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to William A. Jones, NARA, BIA, RG 75, special case file 147, box 155, file 18247.

  81 Chapman, The Otoes and Missourias, 218–19.

  82 Joseph H. Cash and Gerald W. Wolff, The Ponca People (Phoenix: Indian Tribal Series, 1975), 61–68. This total, of course, does not include the lands owned by individuals.

  83 The tribe managed to persuade the federal government to let them keep their surplus lands after the allotment process was complete. In 1906 Congress passed the Burke Act, which provided for the early termination of the trust period in any instance in which the secretary of the interior believed an individual Indian was capable of managing his property. Edmunds, The Otoe-Missouria People, 77–80.

  84 Quoted in Gerald A. Diettert, Grinnell’s Glacier: George Bird Grinnell and the Founding of Glacier National Park (Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1992), 33.

  85 For a recent and detailed narrative of Grinnell’s efforts, see Andrew C. Harper, “Conceiving Nature: The Creation of Montana’s Glacier National Park,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 60, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 3–24.

  86 An account of Hill’s promotional efforts in Glacier is in Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 59–92.

  87 Transcript of eulog
y for Helen Clarke given by Father Halligan, 7 March 1923, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 4.

  88 Montanian & Chronicle, 27 June 1902 (clipping found in MTHS, HPCVF); Monterey New Era, 26 Sept. 1903.

  89 Montana Daily Record, 26 Sept. 1903.

  90 The most complete account of Monteath’s misadventures can be found in Michael F. Foley, “An Historical Analysis of the Administration of the Blackfeet Reservation by the United States, 1855–1950s” (Indian Claims Commission, Docket Number 279-D: 1974), 272–347. See also Thomas R. Wessel, “Historical Report on the Blackfeet Reservation in Northern Montana” (Indian Claims Commission, Docket Number 279-D: 1975), 94–141.

  91 Great Falls Tribune Daily, 21 Oct. 1903.

  92 Letter from James H. Monteath to William A. Jones, 20 Oct. 1903, NARA, BIA, RG 75, letters received, box 2397, file 70531.

  93 For Monteath’s quarrel with Horace, see NARA, BIA, RG 75, letters received, box 2363, file 56641. Horace unsuccessfully sued Monteath for $5,000, claiming “intent to injure and humiliate.” For Monteath’s opposition to Clarke, see letter from T. O. Power to commissioner of interior, 12 March 1904, ibid., box 2479, file 18191.

  94 Petition from Reservation Blackfeet to commissioner of Indian affairs, 22 Oct. 1907, NARA, BIA, RG 75, central classified files (cited hereafter as CCF), 1907–39, PI-163, E-121, Blackfeet, box 44, file 85710-1907-162; letter from commissioner of Indian affairs to Big Rabbit Woman et al., 31 Oct. 1907, ibid. Anticipating the Piegans’ disappointment, the commissioner wrote a private note to Roblin urging him to find some related work for Clarke, perhaps in taking family histories. There is no evidence she was ever thus employed on the Blackfeet Reservation. Letter from commissioner of Indian affairs to Charles E. Roblin, 16 Nov. 1907, ibid.

  95 Undated and untitled document [1909?], MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 3. Allottees on the Blackfeet Reservation were entitled to 280 acres for grazing and 40 acres for farming.

  96 For a description of the hotel, see New York Times, 23 July 1989.

  97 Shaffer, See America First, 77–78, quote on p. 77.

  98 For more on this transitional period, see Paul C. Rosier, Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912–1954 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001), 13–53.

  99 Great Falls Tribune, 15 May 1932.

  100 Letter from J. H. Sherburne to Old Settlers’ editor, 20 Sept. 1937, Univ. of Montana Library (cited hereafter as UM), K. Ross Toole Archives (cited hereafter as KRTA), Sherburne Family Papers (cited hereafter as SFP), box 1, folder 14.

  101 Schultz, The Starving Blackfeet Indians.

  102 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to J. H. Sherburne, 1 Dec. 1910, UM, KRTA, SFP, box 10, folder 3.

  103 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to J. H. Sherburne, 11 Jan. 1916, UM, KRTA, SFP, box 33, folder 24.

  104 Letter from Helen P. Clarke to commissioner of Indian affairs, 4 Oct. 1913, NARA, BIA, RG 75, CCF, 1907–39, PI-163, E-121, Blackfeet, box 132, file 12004-1913-312.

  105 Letter from C. F. Hanke to S. B. Hege, 16 Jan. 1914, NARA, BIA, RG 75, CCF, 1907–39, PI-163, E-121, Blackfeet, box 132, file 12004-1913-312.

  106 Letter from Helen P. Clarke, application for a patent in fee, 2 Dec. 1913, NARA, BIA, RG 75, CCF, 1907–39, PI-163, E-121, Blackfeet, box 132, file 12004-1913-312; letter from Helen P. Clarke to commissioner of Indian affairs, 4 Oct. 1913, NARA, ibid.

  107 Letter from [unknown] to Helen P. Clarke, 31 May 1922, UM, KRTA, SFP, box 40, folder 7; letter from J. L. Sherburne to Helen P. Clarke, 7 Feb. 1919, ibid., box 38, folder 6.

  108 Letter from Mary O’Neill to Helen P. Clarke, 28 May 1910, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 2.

  109 Helen Fitzgerald Sanders, The White Quiver (New York: Duffield, 1913).

  110 Great Falls Tribune, 15 May 1932; Warren L. Hanna, Stars over Montana: Men Who Made Glacier National Park History (West Glacier, Mont.: Glacier Natural History Association, 1988), 184.

  111 Transcript of eulogy for Helen Clarke given by Father Halligan, 7 March 1923, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 4.

  112 Undated reminiscence by Bessie C. Wells, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 1.

  113 James Willard Schultz, Signposts of Adventure: Glacier National Park as the Indians Know It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 155.

  114 Glacier National Park History: http://www.glacierparkinformation.com/his tory (accessed 7 Oct. 2010).

  Chapter 5: The Man Who Talks Not

  1 The quote is attributed to the western artist J. K. Ralston. See Loren Pinski, “John L. Clarke, ‘The Man Who Talks Not,’ Blackfeet Woodcarver”: http:// johnclarke.lppcarver.com/clarkearticle.pdf (accessed 11 Jan. 2011).

  2 For a history of the panel’s travels, see author correspondence with Kirby Lambert, 4 Jan. 2011.

  3 Woody Kipp offers a vivid description of such prejudice in his memoir, Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2004).

  4 Information on the disease from a nineteenth-century perspective can be found in William Osler and Thomas McCrae, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892; New York: D. Appleton, 1921), 337–48.

  5 Joyce Clarke Turvey, “Clarke History,” in Trails and Tales of the Highwoods, ed. Highwood Woman’s Club (Highwood, Mont.: Highwood Woman’s Club, 1988), 84. Contrary to Turvey’s assertion, Ned did not perish from scarlet fever before the family’s move to Midvale in 1889.

  6 Osler and McCrae, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, 343.

  7 Letter from Helene Dawson Edkins to K. Ross Toole, 10 Oct. 1952, Overholser Historical Research Center, Fort Benton, Mont. My thanks to Ken Robison for help in locating this document. The piano is now on display at the Fort Benton Museum.

  8 Judy Clayton Cornell, “An Artist’s Vision,” Whitefish: The Magazine of Northwest Montana 6, no. 2 (Winter and Spring, 1993–94), 28; Dale A. Burk, New Interpretations (Stevensville, Mont.: Stoneydale Press, 1982), 165.

  9 Multiple sources state that Clarke attended the Fort Shaw Indian School, though his name appears nowhere in that institution’s register of pupils, available at the National Archives and Records Administration–Rocky Mountain Regional Archives, Denver, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fort Shaw Indian School, vol. 1, 1892–1908, entry 1358. My thanks to Renee Meade for assistance with this research.

  10 The institution was originally called the Connecticut Asylum (at Hartford) for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons. Robert L. Osgood, The History of Special Education: A Struggle for Equality in American Public Schools (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2008), 28–30.

  11 For information on the NDSD, see “North Dakota School for the Deaf History: Early Pioneers and the Banner,” available at http://www.nd.gov/ndsd (accessed 14 Jan. 2011).

  12 Robert M. Buchanan, Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and Factory, 1850–1950 (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet Univ. Press, 1999), 52–68. See also Susan Burch, Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to World War II (New York: New York Univ. Press, 2002).

  13 Osgood, The History of Special Education, 28–30. For more on the battle between manualists and oralists, see Douglas C. Baynton, Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996).

  14 For more on the relationship between the two sign languages, see Jeffrey E. Davis, Hand Talk: Sign Language among American Indian Nations (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010), 99–132.

  15 Lilia Bakken, North Dakota School for the Deaf Chronological History: The Early Years, 1890–1895 (Devil’s Lake, N.D.: North Dakota School for the Deaf, 2010), 46. My thanks to Dana Turvey for alerting me to this correspondence.

  16 Daily Missoulian, 24 March 1912, available at http://fortbenton.blogspot .com/2008/12/john-l-clarkes-first-oil-painting.html (accessed 20 Jan. 2011). Three letters from Hill to Clarke (dated 17 Oct. 1911 and 21 and 28 Feb. 1912) confirm the particulars of the story. All are available in Minnesota Historical Society, Louis W. Hill Papers, letterpress books, outgoing correspondence, 67.C.2.3. My thanks t
o Eileen McCormack for assistance in locating these items. For another version of this story, which does not identify Hill by name and suggests that Clarke’s carving (not painting) attracted notice, see “What Deaf Men Do: Indian Artist,” undated typescript, Gallaudet Univ. Library, Deaf Collections and Archives (cited hereafter as GUA), International Exhibition of Fine Applied Arts by Deaf Artists (cited hereafter as IEFAA), MSS 91, box 2, folder 10.

  17 Brochure from the Arts Club of Chicago, “Catalogue of our Exhibition of Sculpture in Wood by John L. Clarke (Cutapuis), 3 to 26 April, 1934,” GUA, IEFAA, MSS 91, box 2, folder 10.

  18 For more on this concept, see Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: Norton, 1999); and Michael E. Harkin and David Rich Lewis, eds., Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2007).

  19 Cornell, “An Artist’s Vision,” 28.

  20 The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 10 May 1985, after a strenuous effort to forestall its demolition. John Westenberg, “Montana Deaf and Dumb Asylum,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, Montana State Historic Preservation Office, Helena, Mont., 1980; Chere Jiusto, “Trustees for Those Who Come after Us,” Drumlummon Views 1, nos. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 2006): 177–83, available at http://www.drumlummon.org/images/PDF-Spr-Sum06/DV_1-2_Jiusto .pdf (accessed 24 Jan. 2011), quote p. 180. In 1937 the school moved to Great Falls, where it is still in operation today. Thanks to Kate Hampton for help with this information.

  21 Cornell, “An Artist’s Vision,” 28; notes on life of John L. Clarke [undated], GAU, IEFAA, MSS 91, box 2, folder 11.

  22 For more on the woodworking class (including photos) at Fort Shaw Indian School, see John C. Ewers, Plains Indian Sculpture: A Traditional Art from America’s Homeland (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986), 214–15.

  23 The facility closed in 1983, and has since become Deer Creek Intermediate School in the township of St. Francis, Wisc. For more on the history of St. John’s School, see Milwaukee Sentinel, 26 March 2006.