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The beginning – Bud’s story

September 28, 2020 by NPM


Vern E. ‘Bud’ Cheff, Sr. (1915 – 2011) and friend and mentor Eneas Conko (1874-1954).


BUD’S STORY
Bud Cheff Jr.’s ancestors first came to what is now Montana in the early-1800’s from Ontario, Canada.  His French and Iroquois grandparents settled on the Flathead Reservation in 1907, and became good friends with the tribal families that were their neighbors. Bud’s dad went on hunting and gathering trips in the Montana wilderness with these family bands from the time he was a small child.  He learned the old ways, and spoke Pend’ Oreille fluently.  Bud Jr. was born in his grandparent’s log house at the foot of the Missions Mountains in 1936.  Growing up on the family ranch and traveling on those same old Indian hunting trails was an ideal childhood for Bud.  As he put it, “I grew up with a foot in both cultures.”  He spent many happy hours listening to the elders telling stories, and worked hard to memorize them as a child.  In later years he recorded some of them.

When he was 9 years old, Bud and his sister Ola found a war club in a cave near Glacier National Park and he became interested in collecting artifacts as well as stories.  Later, a fire burned his childhood home, destroying the war club, and other treasures.  These experiences led him to realize the importance of preserving the history and personal stories of Flathead Reservation.

When most people are beginning to contemplate retirement, Bud instead fulfilled his lifelong dream and built Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana with the help of his wife Laurel.  His father, Bud Sr., and many other friends and family contributed time, effort, donations and snippets of history.

Join Bud as he shares stories and historical accounts of the Mission Valley, and keeps us up-to-date on what is happening with the wildlife on the ranch!

 

THE MAKINGS OF A HISTORY PACK RAT

In the summer of 1946 I was almost ten years old.  Our family was traveling from Ronan, Montana to the new town of Martin City. The town was named for my great, great aunt Vina, and uncle Joseph G. Martin, as the town was built on part of their homestead land.  As we were traveling through the Bad Rock Canyon we had a flat tire on the folk’s 1936 Chevrolet car.  To change the tire Dad had to jack the car up, take the wheel off, then take the tire off the wheel, and take the tube out, and patch it. Then put it all back together, and pump it up with a hand pump.  Then put the wheel back on the car, let the car down, and take the jack out.  This was a lengthy process, and while he was doing this my sister Ola and I climbed up on the mountain cliffs above the road.  Ola was three years older than me, but we were best pals.  We found a cave-like rock crevice and we climbed into it.  Ola spotted an object sticking out of a big pack rat nest in the back of the cave.   Through the years I have found many amazing things in pack rat nests.  We got on our hands and knees as the ceiling was low in the back. We dug the object out, and were surprised and excited when we realized it was an Indian war club.  It was bone dry in the back of the cave, which was probably why our find was still in good shape after all the years.  Finding the war club sent our imaginations racing as we had heard the Elders telling of the battles that took place in this canyon in the old days between the Blackfoot and the Flathead Indians.   We could almost hear the fight, war cries echoing from the canyon in our minds.  We were really excited as we hurried back to the car.  Dad was waiting on us, but forgot that he was unhappy with us when he saw what we had.  Finding the war club in that old pack rat nest triggered my life long quest for old artifacts, and the stories they tell.  I guess I’ve got a bit of pack rat in me.

Bud Jr.

For those that are not familiar with pack rats, they are grey in color with soft fur, and a furred tail.  They are a little bigger than a pine squirrel with a cute face, large ears, and big eyes.  They are a night animal, and are vicious little devils.  They make a nest out of sticks, grass, leaves, moss, or most any thing they can find.  Some times their nest will be as big or bigger than an old-fashioned wash tub.  They will carry anything that catches their eye and hide it in their nest.  They are especially fond of bright or shiny objects.  As a boy I used to find a lot of lost things in their nests.

Filed Under: Articles, Stories from Bud

A Big Cave by Bud, Jr

September 19, 2020 by Ninepipes Updates

  A BIG CAVE

As a boy my folks gave me a special birthday gift each year, starting at age six, and each year after.  My birthday was Sept 8, and that was when Dad began his fall hunting trips.   I got to help him trail the horses over the Mission Range, to our corrals at Holland Lake, and then go with him on the first hunting party into the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  I thought I was in heaven on those ten-day hunting trips.  Looking back now, it probably wasn’t the best thing for my schooling, missing the first and second week of school each year.

In 1943, I was 7 years old and a happy little boy.  I thought I was pretty big as Dad had me lead a couple of the pack horses the 28 miles to our camp on Bartlett Creek.  In those days our camp was not as fancy as it is nowadays.  Dad did the cooking as well as the guiding and packing.  Most of the hunters would pitch in and help with gathering wood and other chores.   I was probably some help to Dad, but was more likely a pain in the rear.  I usually went with Dad as he guided the hunters, but some days he had me stay in camp by myself.  I enjoyed the days by myself.  I would go down to the river and try to catch the big whitefish, and bull trout laying in the deep holes.   I would practice on my water reed elk bugle, play my mouth harp, and slice myself a piece of cheese off the big round cheese block Dad always brought in for lunches.  The block would last all fall, and cheese was a real treat to me.

One day I was with Dad and a hunter who had not gotten his elk yet.  Dad had bugled in a big old grey-back six-point bull.  It was really close to us but the hunter could not see it.  Dad was trying to help the hunter spot it.   I could see it plainly and whispered to Dad, “I can see it!  Can I shoot it?”  I think this encouraged the hunter to get himself pulled together, as he finally shot.  Hunting with a mussel loader, he crippled it, and it went on up the mountain.  The hunter took his horse and went back to camp while I went with Dad, following the elk.  The elk went to the timberline, following a game trail and then turned up the canyon but angled downhill a little, which meant he was tiring, and it was hard for him to climb.  His trail went by an opening in a cliff.  We stopped and looked in.  The opening was big, not a little hole like most cave openings.  We went in a little way and I was in awe.  Just a few weeks earlier Mom & Dad had taken my sister Ola, little brother Kenny an me to Missoula to see the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey circus.  There were lions, tigers, and fifty elephants in the show. I loved the high wire trapeze acts, but was most impressed with the elephants.  There was a parade from the railroad down main street with all those elephants, with men and women riding some of them.  Standing in the cave that day, those elephants must have still been on my mind.  I told Dad, “This room is so big you could put all fifty of the circus elephants in here!”  We did not have time to explore the cave as Dad had to keep after the elk, which we finally got after a long chase.  I always planned to go back and find that cave but never had the chance.  I asked Dad in later years if he had ever gone back in it, and he said he had not.  I think of it and wish I had gone back and found it.  I would like to see if it looks now like it did to a seven-year-old boy in 1943.

There are many caves in the valley and throughout the Bob Marshall like the one pictured, Turtle Cave.   I often wonder what role this and other caves played in the early days.

 

Filed Under: Articles, Stories from Bud

The Lesson of Sweetgrass

September 3, 2020 by giftshop@ninepipesmuseum.org

SweetgrassYears ago, a Blackfoot woman from the Fort Macleod area in Alberta used to bring sweetgrass braids down to the museum every year, and my folks would purchase them from her, and keep them on hand for tribal customers who requested them.  The last year she came, she gave Bud a package of seeds she had gathered.  He dug a little spot behind my mom’s garden and planted the seeds.  It took quite a while to grow the sweetgrass from seed, but eventually he had a little patch going, and periodically he would carefully harvest it, blade by blade, meticulously sifting through the other grasses and weeds that gradually established themselves in the little patch.  Following the Blackfoot woman’s instructions, he dried and braided it, and then kept the braids mostly to give out to tribal friends.

When I started working at the museum, the general public had started to learn about sweetgrass, and commercial demand for it rose. Folks liked to buy it to gift friends and family back home as a souvenir that seemed authentic and special, and they were intrigued with the sacred qualities that First Peoples on this continent attributed to it. They were surprised to learn that sweetgrass is native to both North America and Northern Eurasia, and its Latin name Hierochloe odorata, means respectively, “holy grass” and “fragrant.” In the past, churches in northern Europe spread this “holy grass” in front of church doors on saints’ days, and it was also used to flavor teas, perfumes, candy, and tobacco. It is still used today to flavor certain vodkas.

The museum purchased sweetgrass from Canadian Native American vendors who harvested wild sweetgrass in the traditional manner when they came through our area, but still we could not keep it in stock.  I began to learn that with the growing commercial demand, overharvesting of sweetgrass was having a negative impact on the wild plants, and Canada was considering restricting commercial harvest.  I found wholesale growers in the US that were starting to grow and sell sweetgrass, but they also could not keep up with the demand, and the cost was very high.  Concerned about sustainability, I suggested to my folks that we start a new patch of sweetgrass for the museum, this time in special beds that would make it easier to keep the grass weed free, maximize growth and make harvesting easier.  I started with six plugs of sweetgrass in a large planter, and grew it on for a season.  By end of summer the whole container was full of tall sweetgrass.  I laid down landscape fabric and created a long, narrow bed that would be easy to work in, and divided the sweetgrass I had grown in the pot into small plugs, and planted them in the bed, which I had prepared with organic mulch and a combination of organic fertilizer and bat guano, plus a little fish bone meal.  While the first bed grew, I made another bed next to the first bed, with the goal of having three beds, so I could rotate crops and renew soil with green manure and organic mulch.  The first bed grew and filled out quickly, and we were able to harvest a good crop off of it the first year, and plant new plugs in the second bed for the next spring.  The grass is beautiful in its own right, lovely to watch as it moves in the wind, and it is a joy to harvest the fragrant blades when they are mature.

Dad and I set up a production line of braiding posts along the porch with binder twine wrapped around the post and a slip noose on the end.  We cut the grass by hand in small batches, and cured it to a certain point in the sun, which can be tricky, too long and the grass crumbles when you try to braid it, and if it is too wet, it may spoil.  We had to check it frequently, because humidity, the time of day, and heat all affect the curing time.  Once it was cured to a certain point, we divided the grass into small bundles which we hung on the slip nooses and braided and tied off with yarn.  Then we finished drying the braids indoors out of the sun so they would keep their color and fragrance.  It was labor intensive, meditative work, and I enjoyed the companionship of my father as we worked.  My braids were (and still are,) large and sloppy, but dad’s braids were precise, evenly braided, with few loose ends sticking out.  No matter how carefully I tried to work, my braids just weren’t as pretty!

It is still an ongoing lesson for me to slow down enough to work methodically and precisely, and my braids are a bit tidier, but they still vary in size and aren’t so pretty.  I am so busy at the museum now that I have to do most of the sweetgrass work on weekends.  Mom keeps the beds watered for me, and dad continues to harvest the sweetgrass into his beautiful braids, even with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis in his hands.

Sometimes looking at the eye-catching rows of sweetgrass moving in a lovely embrace with the breezes that flow through the garden, I feel a little sad that it’s so contained in its bed.  I imagine the sweetgrass hills and wild grasses waving and swirling in the wind, their own sea of fragrance and diversity, and thank this wonderful plant for the tiny rectangle of beauty I am caretaker of, for its desire to burst free of confinement, and for sharing its essence with us.  Perhaps a braid of sweetgrass may remind each of us to slow down and grow our awareness and gratitude for our surroundings, and the inner workings of simply being.

 

Interested in Sweetgrass and the indigenous use of other plants?  Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi Nation member, scientist and professor is an uplifting, rich book for the contemporary reader.

 

 

References:

Kimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed editions, 2013

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierochloe_odorata

Hope, Tom, & Gray, Alan, Grasses of the British Isles: BSBI Handbook No. 13, Botanical Society of the British Isles, 2009, p 311. ISBN 978-0-901158-42-0.

“BSBI List 2007”. Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. Archived from the original (xls) on 2015-01-25. Retrieved 2014-10-17.

Krasińska, M.; Krasińska, Z. (2013). “Food and Use of the Environment”. European Bison. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 157–179. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-36555-3_14. ISBN 978-3-642-36554-6.

Sweetgrass Growing information. Redwood City Seed Company. http://www.ecoseeds.com/sweetgrass.html

“Mosquito-repelling chemicals identified in traditional sweetgrass”.

Hierochloe odorata (L.) P. Beauv., USDA PLANTS

“NativeTech: Native American Uses for Sweetgrass”. www.nativetech.org. Retrieved 2019-02-27

Filed Under: Articles, Stories from Bud

LOCAL MUSEUM COMPLETES COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT THROUGH A FEDERAL HUMANITIES GRANT

June 30, 2020 by NPM

Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana completes collection preservation assessment activities funded through a grant award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Charlo, MT – The Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana was recently awarded a “Preservation Assistance for Small Institutions” grant in the amount of $5,775 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This grant spanned an 18-month period and allowed the museum to contract with Pat Roath of Specialty Museum Services out of Kalispell, to conduct a general preservation assessment of the institution’s 2000+ objects and cultural items.

“The assessment and completed facility and infrastructure updates are far reaching and have been a catalyst for enhanced preservation techniques and expanded local dialogue related to the cultures, items and history represented in the collection.” Dr. Suzanne Shope, Project Director and Collections Manager at Ninepipes Museum.

The assessment addressed short and long-term needs of objects and cultural items in the museum’s care and includes a 5-year conservation preventive plan. The grant also funded much needed storage and monitoring materials and culminated with a training and open house to share findings with board and staff, local museums and tribal members. The assessment serves as a comprehensive guide for future museum activities. Three additional grants were awarded by other sources to support the preliminary recommendations.

Jordan Bush, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, intern at the museum and a SKC Tribal Historic Preservation student comments, “The work of proper interpretation, communication with CSKT Cultural Committees, and the educational portion and how it pertains to the public within the museum impacted my knowledge the most and was the part I was passionate about as an intern. These steps within the museum highlighted the bridge between my knowledge from Tribal Historic Preservation studies and the knowledge and experience I have gained interning for the museum.”

Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana is located on the Flathead Indian Reservation just 10 minutes south of Ronan and only 45 minutes north of Missoula on Hwy 93.  It was founded in 1997 by Laurel and Bud Cheff, Jr. who had a strong desire to preserve the culture and history of early Montana and the Salish, Flathead and Pend d’Oreille tribes, though the museum cares for Native objects from across the Nation.  Bud was born and raised in the valley and shares Native and other cultural items and objects collected over a lifetime.  Many other residents and people around the nation have donated items over the last 20 years to make the museum a national treasure.

Jo Cheff, Executive Director of Ninepipes Museum stated at the onset, “We’re very excited, this is one important step needed to ensure good stewardship of our collections….”

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965 and is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.  Grants typically go to cultural institutions such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television and radio stations, as well as to individual scholars.  The Endowment awards grants to top-rated proposals examined by a panel of independent, external reviewers and is highly competitive.  Applicants undergo four levels of review before a grant is officially supported.

“We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Pat Roath and representatives from the Selis Qlispe Cultural Committee and the Kootenai Cultural Committee in order to fulfill our mission and move toward a safe, secure museum and a more accurate reflection of history. We are one step closer to ensuring these cultural items will be enjoyed by future generations.” Shope commented. Ninepipes Museum is one of 3 Montana institutions recently announced in December to receive an NEH grant. The Collection Needs Assessment report is available on our website https://ninepipesmuseum.org/news/neh-collections-needs-assessment/

The museum and gift shop will open July 2, 2020 with limited days and hours and will follow Montana State, CSKT, Lake County, and CDC COVID-19 guidelines.

Please call (406) 644-3435 (or email info@ninepipesmuseum.org) for questions.  For more information, go to:  www.ninepipesmuseum.org

 

 

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Charlo, Montana, Ninepipes Museum

Allard’s Stage Stop

June 18, 2020 by NPM

Filed Under: Business Member, Sponsors

Mountain Bluebird Trails

June 18, 2020 by NPM

IT’S A BLUE BIRD DAY!

We now have a Western Bluebird to add to our exhibit in the diorama room!  We sincerely thank Dale Becker with CSKT Wildlife Management Program for donating the bird, and Pat Jamieson and Mountain Blue Bird Trails for donating funds to have it mounted.  Check out Mountain Bluebird Trails on Facebook or their website, www.mountainbluebirdtrails.com to learn more about their mission!

Filed Under: Sponsors

NEH Collections Needs Assessment

June 18, 2020 by NPM

PDF DownloadREPORT INTRODUCTION AND PROJECT SUMMARY

The application:

This NEH small museum assessment project promised to look at the current situation of all museum objects in the care of the Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana (herein NMEM or simply “the Museum”), both on display and in storage, and to provide recommendations in three areas:
1) Short-term recommendations for items in critical need of conservation and improvements to storage and display;
2) Long-term recommendations for improvements to storage and display areas, including environmental control and monitoring, security, smoke mitigation, ritual care, pest management and disaster planning;
3) Evaluation of policy and practices relating to collection management and security, and plans for long-term loan acquisition.
These recommendations were to be assessed in three site visits, and prioritized into a report that essentially comprises a long-range preventive conservation plan.
Finally, the application promised visits with board and staff, tribal members and representatives, and with members of the local museum and preservation community, to explain the project and promote sharing interests and resources in the preservation of local material culture.

This report

During the site visits and in communications with NMEM staff, the consultant attempted to look at all aspects of museum practice and operations. This reflects the view of the consultant that the collections are the source and focus of any museum, and therefore drive everything a museum is and does. A museum’s operations revolve around its mission, and its mission is grounded firmly in the collection that created the need for both the museum and its mission.

The consultant’s comments regarding governance, community outreach, and education/interpretation are made from a collections preservation point of view, keeping in mind:

• Exhibits need to present well-researched information in a way that is clear and appealing to the public.
• Objects must be exhibited, stored and used in ways that protect their physical integrity and contribute to their long-term preservation.
• Objects must be kept and exhibited in a way that is respectful of the culture or person from which the object came, and of the spiritual qualities embodied in the object itself.
• Each museum must write and enact policy and methods that meet professional standards, but also that meet the needs of its operations within its community.

Site visits and results

The recommendations in this report stem directly from the site visits, conducted in the spring of 2019. Three site visits were initially planned but only two were necessary, along with communication by telephone and email, to gather needed information. During the site visits, the consultant met individually with each staff member involved with the collections, as well as the board president, the founder, and Salish/Kalispel (Pend O’reille) and Kootenai cultural representatives.

This report does not include descriptions of the final workshops and informational meetings with staff, tribal members and other museums that culminated the project, though it does contain their recommendations. The consultant intends that those meetings will open or widen doors to positive relationships between NMEM and other area stakeholders. Museums are community spaces, and positive community relationships are critical to the longevity of any museum. Small, geographically close museums with similar missions can share resources and information to the benefit of all collaborators and their stakeholders.

Read the full report here:

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Ninepipes Museum

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This is one of the most exquisite displays of Euro/Indian cultural meeting I’ve seen. Beautifully organized and displayed — Connie, Gig Harbor, WA

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