I'm gonna climb up on my Paint . . . You know, maybe I can find a picture of him
. Willy. Oh gosh, makes me feel a little teary . . .
Anyway, I'd like to say a thing or 2 about Native Americans. Any contemporaries who live closer to that life right now should feel free to just jump in and say something.
They lived in all the best places! Don't you believe for a moment that they were off in some miserable hinterland, with no water, no nothing! Oh, they were there - when they wanted to be and when there was
something, and some reason for them to be there. The Native American ended up in the most difficult places to live because of the decisions of the European Americans or the desire of the Indians to get the heck away from the "Settlers!" Usually, it was a combination of the 2 reasons.
Of course, the classic example is the Trail of Tears, but let's not go there. I don't know a whole lot about that ethnic cleansing (don't even care for that term but it is more polite than some others). Let me just use examples from right around here. I'll stretch my imagination just a little but not too much.
The Spokanes & Coeur d'Alenes were here. The Coeur d'Alenes mostly tried Peace. They found some whites, Catholic missionaries, and said, "Please help us with what we see coming at us!" I think they got some help but the Mining Industry still showed up and trashed their land real, real good."
The Spokanes made the mistake of allowing a few renegade Yakima and Palouse to live close to them. These "renegades" would be called "terrorists" these days but either term is probably more for convenience than an honest description. See, if a government was an enemy of their enemy, these people would be called "freedom fighters." I don't know, maybe they were written up in the British newspapers as freedom fighters.
Be that as it may, these people who were willing to cause the US military some serious trouble were not related to the Spokanes but I think they kind of inspired them. The result of this resistance -- no negotiation for a reservation. By Presidential decision, the Spokanes were pushed downriver to cold, hilly, lightly-forested country at the mouth of the river. Probably couldn't figure how to push them right into the water until the big dams were built and that flooded what little level land was there.
The Spokanes were given the name of their chief Spokane, it wasn't the name of the people themselves. Spokane's son was Spokane Garry. Spokane Garry said, "I'm not leaving. You can't push all of us onto that one piece of land. I won't fight but I'm not leaving." There were some others that didn't move downriver but it was mostly his family that stayed right with him, at Spokane Falls. The whites built a city almost right on top of him! They just divided up the land, by their own rules, and started building streets & laying bricks. Many of the Spokanes moved east to live with the Coeur d'Alenes. It didn't make the Coeur d'Alenes too happy because they didn't have a lot to share but, the Spokanes were related.
Spokane Garry's daughter said, "Well, I'll see if I can play their little game." She applied for a homestead. Hah!
One day she arrived home to her land to find a couple of tough characters had "jumped her claim." The lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court where it was decided that she couldn't file for a homestead, she was an Indian! The toughs had already sold their "claim" to a fine city father. He had the unlikely (or, likely) name of Mr. Lewis Clark.
We still "celebrate" a couple of Mr. Clark's landmark buildings around here. One is the Clark Mansion on Hayden Lake. Another is the "American Legion Building" in Spokane. These ironic names just really trouble me.
Mr. Clark was the guy who paid the lawyers in that homestead "rights" case. He later fell on some hard times - living a little too lavishly, is my guess. At his winter vacation home, a hotel in southern California, he took his wife to the train station one morning for a visit to her family. The old fellow then just disappeared. You see, the creditors were closing in on him. There were rumors, espoused by family, that he had gone off to South America to make a second fortune! Hogwash! I know what happened to the little coward. He went off into the California desert about 125 years ago and shot himself.
Steve
dang, that chamomile tea didn't have the effect i was hoping for!
