The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West (45 page)

35
    Clark C. Spence,
Territorial Politics and Government in Montana, 1864–89
(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1975), 201. Women did not win the vote in Montana until 1914.

36
    
Fort Benton River Press Weekly,
20 September 1882. My thanks to Ken Robison for directing me to this information.

37
    See, e.g., the
Seventh Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Territory of Montana, for the Year 1885
(Helena: Fisk Brothers, 1886), 59.

38
    Clarke’s salary fluctuated between $750 and $1,000 throughout her time in office.

39
    For vote totals, see
Helena Weekly Herald,
13 Nov. 1884. For his part, Rails-back did not go gently, insisting two days after the election that—contrary to reports—he would not concede until his defeat was assured. See
Helena Weekly Independent,
6 Nov. 1884.

40
    Undated newspaper clipping, MTHS, HPCVF.

41
    For more on Aspasia and her controversial relationship with Pericles, see Donald Kagan,
Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 181–84; and Anthony J. Podlecki,
Perikles and His Circle
(New York: Routledge, 1998), 109–17.

42
    
Monterey New Era
, 1 Jan. 1902. Why this story (which was written by a Helena correspondent) appeared in a California newspaper is unclear.

43
    For more on Dawes, see Frederick E. Hoxie,
A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920
(1984; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001), 28–39. Brooks’s uncle was a senator from South Carolina whom Sumner had ridiculed mercilessly in a stinging condemnation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

44
    U.S. Congress,
The Annual Message of the President
, House Document 1, 57th Cong., 1st sess. (1901), xlvii.

45
    Stuart Banner,
How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005), 257.

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 eulogy 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.