Gros Ventre Stories.
December 30 1934
Great Falls Tribune
Indian Smallpox Story
This is Dan Sleeping Bear’s story of the smallpox epidemic, which 70 years ago nearly destroyed Indian tribes of northeastern Montana. Sleeping Bear was a boy of 9 at the time, and the suffering of his people left an indelible mark on his memory. In those days the Gros Ventre were a powerful people. They were known among neighboring tribes as the Water Fall people because many, many years before they has migrated from the far north, where a mighty river fell many feet over a ledge of rock and the sound of the falling water was as the sound of a wind in a great forest. The Gros Ventre referred to themselves as White Earth people because in the Little Rockies is a deposit of a peculiar white substance the women used to clean buckskin garments.
For generations before the white man came, these Indians claimed the streams and mountains of what was to become north central Montana, including the Bear’s Paw mountains, the Little Rockies, called by them the Fur Caps; the Sweet Grass Hills, and the buffalo hunting territory adjacent to and north of the Milk river to its mouth.
Twelve strong clans made up the nation. Each was ruled by a chief who was a member of the council. Over the council, the tribal chief presided. He was chosen, if possible, from the hereditary line, although should there be no descendent or none worthy of the honor, a warrior of outstanding wisdom and bravery was selected. Only this chief wore the headdress of eagle feathers.
So large were the Gros Ventre camps that the crier rode through the village on horseback with his news, announcements and proclamations, and one man might not known another of his nation except for the sign of his clan.
But the white man had come and corruption was among the people. It was an easy matter for the people of this nation to fall victim to the ever-increasing number of white men forever forging westward. Up the Missouri River they came and across the prairies with their bull teams and great creaking wagons. The Gros Ventre were a cheerful, peace loving race, fond of the good things of life. Early French explorers called them Gros Ventre, or Big Bellies, not because they were fat, but because they enjoyed good food and acquired and insatiable appetite for whisky and sweets.
The Gros Ventre were warriors too. For hundreds of years they had defended their territory. The oldest warrior could recall tales has father told of attempts of the Sioux to invade the mountain hunting grounds, how the Assiniboines slipped into the buffalo feeding grounds on Milk River and the raids of the Piegans, Blackfeet and the Nez Perce after Gros Ventre horses.
This was of the past. The medicine men knew that the white man had come to stay and repeated the legend, handed down for no one knew how many generations, that a time would come when a mighty people with fair hair and white skin would destroy the red man. Coming from the east, the old tale said, these strangers would take the Indian’s land, kill their buffalo and force them to adopt new ways of living. The writings of the spirit men, which could be read by only those greatly favored, also told of these things.
But, in 1855, when the government in Washington made a treaty with the Blackfeet, Piegans, Bloods, Nez Perce and Gros Ventre and set aside a vast territory in the center of what had become Montana to be jointly owned hunting ground, councilmen of the five tribes represented signed their marks to the paper. This, they believed would guarantee their people a country forever theirs. Wise old men and women, who watched the white man since first he came among them, shook their heads and mumbled the warning of the old legend.
This huge hunting ground was to become the property of the five tribes if they agreed to fight no more among themselves but to form the so-called Blackfeet nation. This was agreed to by the Indians.
With the ink on the treaty barely dry, boatloads of white men entered the Indian territory. Disregarding the agreement, they settled along the rivers and established trading posts, where a bale of furs would bring whisky, bright beads and blankets. Armed soldiers patrolled the country.
Indians greatly outnumbered the white men, and here and there a party of young men who traded for whisky might get into trouble, might even go as far as to kill a white man or burn a trading post. White soldiers would hunt them down and shoot them without mercy. A felling of insecurity prevented the white men from taking as much as they, in their greed, desired, while a growing fear that the government tricked them spread among the Indians. The white man took without asking and dealt ruthlessly with the rightful owners of the buffaloes, the deer and the fur bearing creatures.
Discovery of gold brought a rush of white men and women to this hunting ground. The Indians did not understand its value, but they could understand their treaty meant nothing to these newcomers. Hunting parties harried and killed the buffalo herds, on which the Indians depended for food, clothing and shelter. White soldiers kept them in constant uneasiness, and councilmen had difficulty curbing indignation of young men.
White men knew, says Sleeping Bead, that once Indians were aroused to fighting pitch they were not safe. Made proficient by years of strategic fighting and now armed with the white man’s weapon, the Indians could make short work of the scattered settlements of white men. True there were soldiers, but as compared with the Indian’s methods of warfare, they were slow and clumsy. Only the good nature or the deterioration of the red man’s social structure by contact with civilization allowed the white man to gain his foothold.
Then, in the crafty brain of the white man, who had many medicines at his command, a plan was formed which would rid this country of Indians and leave it for the ever growing tide of westward moving settlers.
One day a white man visited a friendly village of Gros Ventre. In his hand he carried a package. He strode to the lodge of the chief and said: “I am bringing your people a present from the white man. Call all your men and your women to a great gathering after I have gone and unwrap this gift before them. Do not open it until they have all arrived and until I am a day’s journey from your lodges.”
The village crier rode through the camp, inviting everyone to a meeting at the chief’s lodge. Messengers were sent to find hunting parties and a pleasant excitement prevailed through the village. Preparations were made to receive the white man’s gift with ceremony and form. From all directions parties converged on the encampment.
The second day, when all gathered in or near the lodge of the chief, the package was brought forth and unwrapped by the councilmen. The outer covering was removed and then layer after layer of old cloth, skins and paper, but no gift appeared. Pieces of old blankets and ragged shirts were removed and, when the last dirty pieces were held in the hands of the chief and still no gift appeared, a great fear gripped the people. They said to one another: “We have been tricked. Something will happen which we cannot foretell and will not understand. It is a matter for our wise men to study and from which our medicine must protect us.”
So the most famous medicine men of the tribe were summoned to make their most powerful charms against the white man’s unknown magic. Men and women from all parts of the great village would beg to see some of the wrappings, handle them and ponder on the meaning of this gift. Puzzled and fearful, they passed the pieces of skins and cloth from one to another. But they could not grasp the significance of the strange gift.
Then, without warning, a terrible sickness struck the camp. A sickness so terrible, so deadly and so swift that almost at once the village was paralyzed. First a woman died and before her body could be prepared for burial, three more in her lodge were dead. Relatives and friends buried them and were stricken at the very task. Other families were taken ill in all parts of the village. Clan chiefs started their followers away from the encampment, hoping to escape the disease, but before they had loaded the travois many were sick unto death.
Those who did leave the village took the sickness with them, all who spoke with them or touched any of their belongings were afflicted. Lodges were moved from place to place in an effort to escape the disease. In the end, the dead and dying were left untended and unburied, as the frightened Indians fled from place to place. Hunting parties from other tribes investigated the abandoned lodges found emaciated skeletons and carried to their own people the sickness until it appeared among all tribes of what was to become North-Eastern Montana. Thousands died and those who recovered were spiritless, hopeless and on the verge of starvation. It seemed the strongest and finest of the young men and women died first. Through the winter the sickness raged and in the spring the prairies were strewn with bleaching bones. Coverings of abandoned lodges flapped dismally in the cold winds of March and over all the land lay the pall of death.
Remnants of the main Gros Ventre camp moved in the spring to near the present site of Fort Belknap Reservation. The people were emaciated, half starved, abandoned by the white man. Their desperation led them to commit an act for which they would have been ashamed a few months before.
Black Shield, a warrior of great repute, recovered from the smallpox. Weak and hopeless, his once handsome features scarred and his garments ragged and dirty, he called a few of his followers to his lodge and said: “This is a terrible way to die. Our people are doomed. Let us prepare for the warpath and go towards the Sweet Grass Hills. Perhaps we shall come across a war party and die honorably in battle.”
As they rode towards the Sweet Grass Hills, they saw a small party of Piegan women filling down into a steep coulee hunting berries, Black Shield said: “Let us challenge them in battle. This is not our way of fighting, but we have lost everything and nothing matters now. Perhaps their warriors will be near and will kill us for this thing we are about to do.”
With the women were several young boys. As the Gros Ventre rode them down, they killed two of the boys and three women. Three women begged pitifully for their lives and were taken captive. Among the warriors was Sleeping Bear’s grandfather. One of the captive women fell to him. But he said to her: “Go home to your people. Tell them the Gros Ventre did this and that I sent you back to inform them of it.”
The captive Piegan woman told the warriors their men had all gone hunting, leaving the women and children at home. The Gros Ventre warriors returned home after scalping the dead and taking their articles of adornment. When they returned to their village they were ashamed and dejected and spoke little of their encounter with the women.
Little did they know that their act was more monstrous than they had dreamed. For, when the Piegan men returned home and were informed of the attack, they went at once to the scene and brought their dead home for burial. A few days later their camp was stricken with the sickness, which spread through the Piegan people and killed many hundreds. The Gros Ventre, hearing of this, believed themselves accursed and deserted by their “man above.” The old legend of the conquering white race was retold and the old men and women foretold the destruction of the Indian if he did not abandon the ways of the strange new people and cling fast to the teachings of his forefathers.
Many of the Gros Ventre wished to leave their homes and go far away. To the south were the Arapahoes, distance cousins of theirs, and still farther south in Oklahoma came tales of a people speaking a language similar to the Montana Gros Ventre and said to have also come from the country of the Water Falls.
If the strange white man who brought the present to the chief’s lodge came as an emissary of evil from his people, his visit was a success. After the first great small pox epidemic, the Indian were never so much in the way. Their number reduced by half, they were no obstacle to seize of that territory set aside for the Indian by the government which soon forgot a treaty with a disappearing people.
Stories are courtesy of Morris "Davy" Belgard, Hays, Montana
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