What's in a Name

The Indian wars began centuries before white men arrived in Montana. Assiniboine, Cree, Blackfeet, Crow, Shoshone—all separate nations competing for their chunk of the plains, including control of sacred sites and the migrating herds of buffalo, much like a smaller version of the Middle East. Some tribes formed alliances for mutual benefit. Others were engaged in long-standing, brutal conflict.

In the late 1700's and early 1800's, what is now northcentral Montana was divvied up primarily between two tribes. The Assiniboine controlled the area roughly bordered by the current Interstate 15, north of the Missouri River, into southern Alberta and clear out to North Dakota. The Blackfeet ruled the east slope of the Rockies, from west of present day Calgary all the way south to the headwaters of the Missouri in southern Montana.

The Blackfeet were sworn enemies of the Assiniboine because, as one historian stated, the Blackfeet were sworn enemies of everybody, but also because they butted up against each other constantly, following the buffalo herds across the plains. They couldn’t even agree on how to do business. As white fur traders infiltrated the area in the early 1800’s, the Blackfeet traded exclusively with the Hudson Bay Company of Canada, while the Assiniboine practically owned Fort Union.

In 1847, Fort Benton was established in central Montana as the farthest west trading post on the Missouri River. Sometime in the next few years, a band of Blackfeet was attacked near the fort by what we assume was an Assiniboine war party, although that far south Cree were also a possibility. All of the Blackfeet were slain with the lone exception of a terrified little girl named Under Fox Woman.

She was rescued and taken to Fort Benton where she was adopted by the Pambruns. She remained with them until she married Adolphus Joseph Dubray, otherwise known as Tin Cup Joe because he started out in Butte, selling hardware to the miners.

Under Fox Woman gave birth to a child in 1865, a boy named Aleck. The exact date and circumstances of her death are not known, but Joe moved to Sasketchewan with his son, remarried, and had a daughter in 1868, so we can assume Under Fox Woman died within a year or two of her son’s birth. Joe and his second wife would go on to have fourteen more children.

Yeah, I said fourteen.

In the late 1800’s Joe learned the United States government was allotting parcels of land on the Blackfeet reservation to tribal members. He sent his son Aleck back to Fort Benton to find Mrs. Pambrun, who testified that he was indeed the child of a Blackfeet Indian. The land allotment he received was east of the Rocky Mountains, along the north fork of the Milk River just south of where it crossed the border into Canada.

Aleck's son and namesake would later be allotted a chunk of property north and east of his father's. We still call this portion of our deeded property the ‘Aleck Dubray’.

Yes, there was a point to this whole story.

Last week, my aunt invited us to bring our son to a naming ceremony, where he would receive his Indian name. These names are traditionally passed down through families. The last person in my family tree whose Blackfeet name is known to us is Under Fox Woman, so we chose as a name for our son White Fox, or Iks-Sin-Oh-Pah, to honor my great-great grandmother.

There's a lot in a name.

Much as I would like to brag that I know my family history back to front, it would be a lie. I stole it all from my cousin Rhonda Michael. She kicks butt on this stuff. 

The Expedition

I am not a huge history buff, but it’s impossible to live in the upper plains or the northwest and not know about Lewis and Clark. There are Lewis and Clark caverns and Lewis and Clark festivals. I drive from our ranch to Browning on Meriwether Road, named after Meriwether Lewis. Just south of here is the Marias River, named after William Clark’s niece, and we cross the Rocky Mountains through Marias Pass to get to the Clark’s Fork River. (Yes, it’s supposed to be Mariah’s. No, history maniacs, we are not spending a few hundred grand to put apostrophes on all the signs.)

Point being, the Lewis and Clark expedition was a big deal. But since some of the people who read this blog are foreigners from places like Australia and Ireland and Alabama and New York City, I thought I should start with a brief history lesson.

After the US did some bartering with France and acquired a small acreage known as the Louisiana Purchase, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were hired by Thomas Jefferson to map it. They were also trying to find an all water route to ship stuff across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. They headed up the Mississippi River from St. Louis in 1804 with a crew of eleven men.

Along the way, they picked up a Frenchman named Toussaint Charbonneau and his Indian wife, Sacajawea. Her job was to act as interpreter between the explorers and the various Indian tribes. She had been kidnapped from the Shoshone, who lived near the mountains in what is now southern Montana. They supposedly knew the best way to get across the continental divide.

Basically, Sacajawea was the only one in the whole expedition who had a clue where they were going.

She did her job well. They made it clear to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific coast. Then they came back. In all, the trip took two years and they lost only one member of the expedition…to a burst appendix. Not bad, considering your guide is a teenaged girl packing a newborn baby.

On the whole trip, there was only one small skirmish with the indigenous tribes. Lewis got into a scrap with the Blackfeet, at a place he later named Camp Disappointment, which is about 30 miles from my house as the eagle flies. I like to tell people my ancestors were the only ones smart enough to figure out an infestation of white men wasn't going to turn out well for them.

It's also possible they were just cranky.

A few years back, several members of my family were visiting Two Medicine Lake. Two Medicine River flows east out of the lake. A mile or so downstream, it drops over Running Eagle Falls.

Sometimes.

The river bed is a jumble of rock left behind by the huge sheets of ice that formed Glacier National Park. When the river is high with snowmelt, it flows over the top of the falls. Later in the summer, as the water level drops, the river sinks into the porous rock and shoots out of a tunnel in the middle of the falls, like so:

Someone told my mother you could hike from the lake to the falls and see where the river disappeared. On the map, it looked simple. No more than a mile, maybe a mile and a half.

“Let’s go,” my mother said, and set off, leading the way.

September in Glacier National Park can be fickle. And dangerous. The grizzlies are power-feeding their way toward hibernation. Snow squalls can pop up without warning. No one on the impromptu expedition had any survival gear. Or even a water bottle. But heck, it was only a mile to falls and there is a parking lot just beyond where one member of the party would be waiting with the car. They’d barely get out of sight of the Two Medicine campground and they’d be there.

They hiked. And hiked some more. The sky clouded over. The wind turned cold. They stumbled along the river bank over rocks and logs and what looked suspiciously like fresh bear poop.

“Maybe we should go back,” someone suggested.

“No, no,” my mom said. “It has to be around this next bend.”

They hiked around that bend. And the next. And the next. It started to snow. Some of the piles of bear poop were still steaming.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t go back?” someone asked.

“Not now,” my mother said. “We’re almost there.”

The snow was coming down in earnest, blanketing the rocks and making the footing treacherous. Huddled in their light jackets, icy hands stuffed in their pockets, they straggled along single file, heads bowed, faces grim.

From somewhere near the back of the line, a voice piped up. “You know, Lewis and Clark weren't so tough. They were just following a hard-headed Indian woman.”