of Early Montana History
Part 1 Family Stories
Cross Cultural Perspectives on Growing up on the Flathead Reservation
Part 2
Cross Cultural Perspectives on Growing up on the Flathead Reservation
Part 3
Cross Cultural Perspectives on Growing up on the Flathead Reservation
When we think of Native American tribes and their history we often conjure up images of great Chiefs, donning their elaborately beaded clothing and headdresses. But do we ever think about why we no longer see them today?
Chief Koostatah Big Knife (1856-1942), Chief of the Ksanka (Kootenai) tribe belonging to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe of the Flathead Reservation in Montana, was the last formally recognized Chief for his tribe, along with Chief Martin Charlo (1856-1941), of the Selis (Salish) and Chief Mose Michell (1885-1944), of the Qlispe (Pend d’Oreille) tribes. When Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the Flathead Reservation was the first to reorganize under a tribal council and sovereign government, thus dissolving formal Chieftainship. Chief Koostatah remained on the tribal council until his death in 1942. Baptiste Mathias replaced him informally in order to continue on the ceremonial traditions of the Kootenai people. He passed away in 1966, sadly ending a great era of Native American Chiefdom in the United States.
Click here to see photos of Chief Koostatah’s moccassins on display at the Museum, along with many other photos of moccasins in our online catalog.
Running along side and behind the Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana is the Montana Nature Trail dedicated to Adelle Rogers Cheff (1917-1999). Her surviving direct descendants and extended family recently gathered at the trail head to share stories and pay homage to Adelle.
L-R: Buck Cheff, Roxy Cheff Sanders, Bud Cheff Jr., Mick Cheff Sr & Hap Cheff Sr.
Photo Credit: Jo Cheff
CHRISTMAS WITH OLD BOB
As a boy in Martin City in the late ‘40’s I came to know an old hermit that lived back in the trees near our house, which was the last house on our road. We called the hermit “Old Bob.” He was a husky, barrel-chested man, and a loner. He had no house, just a board lean-to, open on the front. A big log he had hewn flat on top served as a bench and bed. He slept on that hard log with just an old army blanket under him, and one to cover up with.
Bob had a flat-topped stove that he used for cooking and heat. He would cut dead trees about 12 inches in diameter into lengths about 12 feet long. Bob would carry these logs on his shoulders, up the river bank to his camp, then saw them into blocks with his crosscut saw. Most men couldn’t have picked these logs up!
Old Bob lived here the year around, even when the temperature dropped to 40 below. His camp was not cluttered, but could have been fixed up a lot better. He didn’t seem to want to make it more comfortable for himself. Bob’s main diet was pine squirrel, sometimes grouse or venison. He had a medium sized dog, black and long haired, that was well behaved. He was probably a spaniel and shepherd cross. The dog never barked except when he had a grouse or squirrel treed for Bob to shoot, or when a bear would come into camp, which was quite often. Bob’s only gun was a single shot .22 rifle.
He was well educated, but would not talk of his past. The kids liked him, and he seemed to enjoy them more than the grown-ups. I sometimes went by his camp on my way hunting or fishing, and we talked quite often. He liked to talk about politics, and knew what was going on in the world.
Bob sometimes dug ditches for water and sewer lines by hand, for Mr. Joe Weedning, a developer, who had bought a lot of land from my Aunt Vina Martin. Joe had a limp and walked with a cane, and Old Bob called him “Limping Jesus.” The ditches had to be below the frost line, 4 or 5 feet deep. Bob’s ditches were perfectly straight, and the sides vertical and all the same width. He was a perfectionist in his work, but not at his camp.
My Uncle Herman and Aunt Bernida Byrd were always trying to give him things from their store, but Old Bob would not take handouts. On real cold nights, Dad would sometimes check on him. On some cold mornings Mom would have Kenny and me go check on him. Mom always had us kids take a big plate of our dinner to him on holidays, as he would not come and eat with us. On Christmas, we would take him a little gift of something, sometimes gloves or wool socks. He did not like taking the gift, but he would, mostly, I think, so he wouldn’t hurt our feelings. I remember my sister Ola, Kenny and I going over to his camp one Christmas day. We had some gifts and a wreath we had made for him. It was a beautiful day; the snow was over two feet deep and his camp looked so cozy and cheery in the snow. Ola said, “It’s just like going to the stable in Bethlehem to see Jesus.” I think God was smiling on Old Bob and us kids that Christmas Day.
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.
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.
Years 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
