Monday, January 22, 2007

One hot summer day at Hill 57

When traveling in rattle snake country it’s a good
idea to walk in single file with the heaviest person
out front. Snakes are very sensitive to earthly
vibrations and knowing something is near allows them
to slither away or rattle a warning. Our guide and
leader is a big teenage girl who alternately complains
and giggles about her role in introducing us to the
old man. It’s a short walk up the hillside to his
shack and she must have done her job well because no
snakes are sighted, no rattles heard.
The old man is sitting in the shade, his home too hot
to sit long. We greet him and shake his hand. He tells
us, “Just this morning a big ol’ diamondback was
curled up right where you standing.” He adds it’s too
hot for the snakes just now and we’d likely find them
in a hole under the house or curled up in the shade of
a sage brush somewhere if that’s what we came looking
for. Our caution around rattlers betrays us. Were
strangers in this country yet we are close to the
people living here. His hefty teenage granddaughter
makes us tea and we tell him we’ve come from Canada
looking for some relatives of ours.
During the 1870’s the plains Indians including the
Metis gathered in the Judith Basin of central Montana
to hunt the last of the great buffalo herds. One
historian put it well when he wrote, “Like fish in a
dwindling pond the last of the free roaming plains
Indians came together in large numbers to hunt the
last of the buffalo.” It was the sunset effect, a
brief brightening before the darkness fell.
Following the collapse of the buffalo not all Indians
went to reservation life. The landless people
continued to wander, eking out an existence as best
they could. Cree and Metis refugees from Canada
crossed into Montana and some families did not return.
Chief Stone Child’s Chippewa Band were away hunting
when the government agents took a census of the Turtle
Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. They were not
included. Their share of the reservation was lost and
Stone Child’s people were set adrift without land nor
welcome.
I read accounts of the landless peoples sufferings.
One band of Cree wintered on a diet of poisoned coyote
carcasses found in a coulee. They camped by garbage
dumps. One especially hard winter Stone Child’s people
were camped at the Helena dump destitute and starving
in the freezing cold. Some of the citizens of Helena
came to their aid bringing food and blankets. Stone
Child cried. He said the God of all people would bless
the people of Helena for their kind act. Then there
was the Havre newspaper editorial attacking the Cree
Indians as a public nuisance stating the Crees could
“feast on barb wire and thrive on the diet.”
The Little Shell Band of landless Indians have lived
for over a century in a coulee just north of Great
Falls Montana. A “Heinz 57” sauce advertising sign
made in the 1940’s gave the community its name. They
are Metis, Cree and Chippewa (Saulteaux) people. They
are the last people without rights or reservation.
Among them are Cree and Metis relatives from
Saskatchewan.
The old man talked about his people living by Lizard
Lake near Battleford. Their camp was broken up by the
RCMP and the people then moved south to be with their
Montana relatives. Hill 57 is poverty. The people
wear old tattered cloths. They look sick. Some have
running sores and their shacks are firetraps. The
stories I have learned about a troubled time live on
in this destitute place. I leave with mixed feelings.
I feel angry that such poverty could exist in the
richest country in the world. I feel a deep kinship
with these brethren under another flag. I tell a
relative I feel sorry for these people. She snaps at
me, “Do not feel sorry for these people! These are the
ones who refused to give up the land and for that
alone they deserve to be respected!”





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