Tent of Many Voices: 08180604

IIT that's been on the road since 2003 we've traveled the whole length of the Lou and Clark Trail and now we're on route back to St Louis today we have a this is our last program of the day we have uh newly printed beautiful schedules for you you can pick those up at the front desk of our exhibit tent or in the back at the easel board there that has a a series of events of today and tomorrow and Sunday and um so you can plan what kind of programs you want to see and come back to we have Craig Falcon who's from the black feet nation and he's going to be talking to you about wolf calf and the L and Clark in the black feet so let's give him a nice round of applause today and with saying that I'm going to hand it over to Craig hello everyone can you hear me hear me back there all right my name is Craig Falcon I'm the Great great grandson great great great grandson of wolf calf uh at the time when um it's kind of hard for me to talk about this because it is a sensitive subject due to the fact that um you know we we got we got into it with Lewis and Clark and so some of the things I may say might be a little bit um hard because of uh things that happened to our people since Lewis and Clark came came about through our country um but just bear with me I'll do the best I can U first of all I'd like to thank dick back there for helping me out getting things set up getting me getting me arranged here and helping me with my travel plans and my um my stay here I Al like to thank my fiance here I know she didn't want me to say anything but we're going to get married next year at the Sundance I told her when I introduced her to do a twirl but she there ain't a spotlight here so I can't put it on her but anyhow uh this story was told to me by my grandfather George night gun around 1976 while we were uh in the in the area that is the original battle site and reason I say original battle site is because um in in our tradition in our stories that were handed down through to our people uh the battle site with Lewis and Clark is in a totally different area it's it's probably uh 5 miles south of where it's documented today and I I find that somewhat funny because uh I drive I've been driving by there all my life and it always reminds me of me and my grandfather when we were out um we were getting teepee pegs and he started talking about uh he wasn't talking about lwis and Clark at first he was talking about uh a horse medicine bundle that his father had that is now in the smithonian now he was telling me the origin of that horse medicine bundle uh and how it came about and where that horse medicine bundle originated was from Wolf CF himself there's a book that's smithonian printed um it's called the black foot and the horse culture and in that book you'll see detailed information about the the the dreams and the visions that he had that brought that bundle about and how it was transferred down from family member to family member until it's till its present time in 1950 when um my great-grandfather passed away Wallace night gun uh he passed away in 1950 that horse bundle somehow disappeared and for years we searched for that bundle and it ended up in the smithonian Institute so we're working on getting that back in back to our tribe and to our family it's a very big big part of our our uh spirituality back home it's a very powerful bundle is powerful like the Thunder bundle the beaver bundle if any of you are familiar with those types of uh uh spiritual things in each each tribe they are um somewhat they're con they're all connected to the Sundance the Sundance is a renewal ceremony that we have each year in a in a summertime June through August we just finished a Sundance up in uh Brocket Alberta uh which was our last one of the year there's different societies that that come to these Su dances and what it is is the 4 day SA sacrifice to renew Mother Earth renew um the two leggings the four leggings the winged in the hoofed and the fur barriers and all the other beings all the good holy beings that that walk this Earth that's just the but the reason this is so hard for me to talk about is because when you look at our land mass this is what it used to be our our four bands of the black feet stretched out all the way up into Canada zatan um down to the Yellowstone and almost down to ID uh Southern Idaho But as time progressed uh treaty shortened our our home base and shortened to the point where this is our home base now up north is our relatives in in Brocket standoff glean um Sia that are in Canada there's one band of black feet is in the United States and three in the in in Canada well I guess I'll tell you the story now it's it's really hard for me because of all the different things that happened to our people and my grandfather's a really good educator a good teacher about teaching us the changing of our world into today's world and I was very fortunate to have such a educated Elder constantly taking me to ceremony constantly taking me out and teaching me things about our people well anyhow when we were down it's called a river called Birch Creek where the original uh the true battle site is we talked about the bundle and we talked about the different um rules and things like that of acquiring that bundle but when we talk when we talked about after we talked about that bundle he told me a story about wolf CF and when wolf CF was a young boy he said he was with eight other boys that were ages 13 to 15 they're horse herders making sure the horses were all staying close to camp and things like that these boys one day were riding and they came up Came Upon these they called them Trappers during those days because we always had a lot of French fur Trappers coming down things like that Hudson Bay Company and uh when they ran into these Trappers let me back up a second one of the most important things during this time see this isn't documented in our history very well because it wasn't a significant part of our history these are just like any other people passing through we didn't know that 200 years later we'd be standing here knowing that leis and Clark became famous and uh routed a passage to the to the West Side so it wasn't something that was documented really good in our history but as the story goes and the journal also relates to this in some in in a way they camped with lwis and Clark that night that morning like any young men of that that era 13 to 15 year olds first thing on their mind is okay let's case out what these guys have they got guns they got horses if we can acquire these Guns and Horses then it's going to give us great honor and respect and maybe we'll be invited out to do more things with the older men like war parties horse raids things like that so they camped that night Lou leou and Clark shared their tobacco shared some gifts exchanged stories and whatnot communicated about you know different aspects of our country and how they can get through our country early that morning around I'd say 3 or 4 um just like the journal States uh these young boys started to take the horses take the guns from um Lewis and his group and started to make off with them but as young boys you know they're not experienced at at these things of of war or stealing so soon as uh lsam woke up it was just a giant Skirmish and you can imagine any anybody that has a 13 to 15y Old when they know that they're in trouble or they know they got caught at something they're all going to scatter and so they scattered in all different directions um my great great great grand grandfather scattered with horses um others scattered in different directions some were right still in Camp uh engaging in with some hand toand with uh Lewis and his group but uh things turned ugly after that um in our interpretation of this story uh one of the young men was stabbed in the back while trying to flee and the other was on horseback and he was shot in the back riding away but lived lived for a while until he got back to Camp um after that the other boys got back to camp and they started to tell the men what happened but by the time they reached the battle site Lewis and his group had already gone now history and the journals you know they they say a lot of things about it was a a war party of black feet um that's that's really hard for me to believe and then when I go by the the historic signs along the highway I was just recently there at the the other battle site that's documented by the state and it shows um a young man in a skirmish and he's getting stabbed but it's not a young man it's a very muscular Warrior and that's one thing that's really disturbing to me is because they always portray that um the Lewis fought a a war party now you got to think about this realistically if it was a war party of black feet eight against four we are very well known for our battle skills and um I don't think Lewis's party would have even survived if there was really a a war party these are young children 13 to 18 if I had my son here he's he's a six one 13-year-old you could see that it's just a skinny skinny kid and those of you that have teenagers know what I mean when you're dealing with uh teenagers they're they're not grown Warriors they're not grown men so I I I love my country to death but you know sometimes the history of how United States and our and our people interacted is just isn't written right and some uh in the last presentation I heard people talking about um we don't want to rewrite history but I feel strongly that history was Rewritten when they wrote those journals because they didn't write it correctly and to further prove that fact you got to look at it this way Not only was there eight against four but after that happened Lewis and his group of men rode the entire day and night to get out of country now they apparently knew that they did something very wrong that uh that they did I don't want to say the use harsh words like murder but you know that that's realistic that's that's the realistic word for it um but they had no choice these boys were definitely going to steal their weapons and steal their horses for to to gain honor in our tribe after after that you know this is this is really tough for me to talk about because this um this Lewis and Clark Journey really was the beginning of the end for our people and I'm talking about all Northern Plains tribes you know if if it all it dates all the way back to the uh the purchase of the Louisiana Louisiana Purchase okay I don't think leou and Clark came to tribes and said you know you know we come to check out the land that we bought even though it was our land you I think if they would have did that I think they would have been they would have had more skirmishes with more tribes but uh they came through as explorers and the tribes accept them as explorers and uh greeted them that way some of the things that uh my grandfather my grandfather told me was that our people were always a warlike people very strong very spiritual and this rattle here is a crazy dog rattle crazy dog Society these are the like the Marine Corps of our tribe these are the the ones that are always Upfront for battle I am also a crazy dog Society member and also a horn Society member um both are very spiritual societies today but in the same sense we still guard our people in a in a in a traditional way like we have our traditional court now that all the crazy dogs sit as a as the judge and jury of that court and it's not a court of losing or winning it's the court of mediation or you work out your problems and things like um this is my grandfather and my grandmother and one of the things I always like to show is these are the holy tepes that we had these three here belong to Wolf CAF and his medicine his horse medicine bundle you'll see the elk teepee crater's teepee and the other one in the back is the otter teepee and the reason I like to show this pictur a lot is because it always shows my mother when she was a child she always she's always embarrassed about that but that was pretty much the story that was handed down from my grandfather to me and to my brothers and sisters um it it's not a very uh glamorous story because the his history is written differently but I thank the dick and his people for allowing me to come up here and tell the truth about what really happened and this NE the next two years we have our our cultural team we're going to be um surveying the original site and marking that as original battle site is there any questions yes ma'am hang on one second and I'll bring the microphone over to you Bobby after the uh boys died one died immediately and one died later um were they laid to rest at that site and or they were they taken home cuz like our people they used to bury them right where they fell no they were taken home for proper burial Craig when we saw you last month you spoke about who really was stealing what after that event um and Lewis I believe in his journal listed some things he he took with him when he skatt out of there do you want to talk about that a little bit oh yes um as you'll see in Louis's Journal he they talked about the condition of their horses their horses were pretty much ran down they they were they were lame and I think the the whole uh raid by these by these teenagers really went a ride because Lewis turned out he came out with better horses the horses that these young boys had were very healthy and very fast and they had a lot of endurance and those are the horses that they used to get away that night that day and night so if they were to used their own horses they probably wouldn't have got as far and they may they may have got gotten caught and and you know this brings me to another I uh thing I just thought about was in the journal it also states that uh Lewis's party came in there and it was it was raining every day it was raining every day and they couldn't use their equipment properly to find out where they were they didn't have a GPS satellite tracking system like we do today so that that's why that spot is marked where it is today and it it's it's it's close but 5 miles is quite a distance we have a lot of rivers that run through that area and meet and they they just happen to be a little bit off when they when the Boy Scouts uh surveyed at 40 years ago you have aular Indian name before black feet from around here so I don't know if everybody knows how you got your name black feet we're the South Pagan and there is stories about how we got the name black feet and uh it's a pretty good story um when we used to do raids on other tribes are in most tribes were far away like the crows and the cins and uh the flatheads we didn't want to always be looking over our shoulders coming back so we'd get so far away from their camps and we'd start huge grass fires our forest fires so our our moxin were always black all the time from you know coming back from Battle so we can come back in a slow peaceful way heal up from our wounds check out our new prizes of horses and women and things like that and um that's how we got the name black feet my um my name Falcon that's my father's name his last name is Ron Falcon he's a grant my mother's a blackbeat she's a night gun my indan name is Sabina Maka named after my great-grandfather Wallace night gun was a was a holy man uh the traditional name for our Indian people is I'm scapy ban uh real people yes let me come around with a microphone so you can be heard by everybody did you have at that time Warrior societies and were these boys too young to be in a warrior Society or not yet uh qualified yeah they they were too young they were part of the dove Society the dove Society um are the chick Society is for is for young boys and young girls growing up and then they Advance into these larger societies uh say for instance the crazy dog Society back then you you'd gain that uh entry into the society by going into war going into horse raids things of Bravery uh nowadays we induct members into the crazy dog Society based on um their service in the armed forces Marines Air Force Navy um army things like that you mentioned that Lewis and his party rode all day and all night back to the Missouri and that and that some black feet went back to the Skirmish site in the black feet oral history does it say that they also pursued the party past the Skirmish site back to the Missouri River in other words did they did did you folks ancestors pursue Lewis like he thought you were doing they were they pursued but due to the he Heavy Rain I mean it was raining for days before he arrived there and all the way after so tracking them was very hard and the ground that they're running on is you know like the clay it's really hard they followed them probably a good 20 or 30 miles and then uh well thought they were following them they were probably making circles and looking for sign things like that but they couldn't pick up the black feeder those days are Nom nomadic tribes right to that area or did you have permanent uh campgrounds well I'll show you one of our our main areas that we like the most we followed the Buffalo like most PLS tribes okay okay here we go today we're located here but our Central Area was usually right around in here up in the Canada there we go this was our main area this was our main area due to food supply this area is rich in Buffalo elk deer you name it um the Rocky Mountains they didn't have too too much uh too much game in there when it came to Buffalo and when you have a tribe of 30 30,000 plus you know you're going to need a lot of Buffalo to feed that many people so that was our main area these areas that bordered us we protected them as as our traditional hunting grounds um if any of you know black feed history we're probably one of the most uh notorious and hated tribes in our area because uh we kept people out and we were very U very vicious when we did we did keep people out and uh we we love to fight we love to travel and we love to fight fight and take over other people's possessions like horses and and women how many black feet are there today well due to small pox uh we got cut down from 30,000 down to 6,000 in just about a four or five year period today we're at 14,000 and we still have the four major bands did they live did they live in tepees all winter up there yes made out of Buffalo hide yeah the wind is is somewhat really strong up there so I imagine a buffalo High Tepe had to be pegged down pretty good were the fur uh was the fur on the Buffalo left on your your winter encampment uh Tepe hide structures or was it also taken off no it was it was taken off it was tanned you said there was 30,000 we all together or they spread out over that entire area in different we're spread out over this entire area um like I said we followed the Buffalo and we watched our borders but every year when we'd have ceremonies like the Sund dance that's like our most important ceremony of the year we would all come together can you elaborate on the Sundance ceremony as is done today uh I'm not supposed to but I can I can talk about it a little bit like I said it's a 4-day ceremony uh most men that go in there say if I went in there today and I had sick family or um or or something I needed to um fix in myself mentally I'd go into Sundance and and vow that I I need this help and Creator would um see my sacrifice and help me fix that and there's in the Sundance you'll find a lot of spiritual leaders a lot of these bundles that I talked about where there'll be healing ceremonies throughout the Sunday healing ceremonies fixing fixing anything and everything the horse medicine bundle that I talked about earlier was one of the most powerful and feared bundles of our tribe and it's still feared today because a lot of our spiritual people say that that bundle itself is so powerful that our spiritual leaders today do not want to to deal with it because uh because of its power um my mother and my aunts have witnessed the last opening of that bundle in 1949 and you know they've witnessed some really spectacular healings one of which uh was a man that was that was shot in the side and he spent uh three nights at the ceremony at the horse dance ceremony and he walked out of there without even a scar so that tells you the the power of bundle now you know better you talked about the black feat protecting their borders and their boundaries so uh well fearlessly right now the American Canadian border runs right through your your territory how do you as a people work how do you work with that and how do you keep relationships going what kind of interaction is there between the different groups now good question well the way we interact with the uh United States and the Canadian government it's it's a heated issue right now because we have a lot of spiritual things and uh that we want to pass through that border without being um dissected so to say because a lot of our anytime we go to Canada we're carrying eagle feathers or bundles um those things are not supposed to be opened by unless you have the rights to open them and when I mean rights when you you when you receive anything that is spiritual or holy it isn't like you go to the store and buy it it's something that you earned over years and years of teaching like for instance some men can have a have a holy pipe and they could get that pipe at their first Vision Quest you know their first fasting but then there's some men that pray just as hard and live a good life they might go a whole entire lifetime before they get a pipe this incident with Lewis and Clark I understand it happened on the way over to the ocean back oh on the way back okay question in the back over here uh is it true that the black feet were never defeated by the US government yes that's that's very true in one sense we were never defeated in battle but how we were defeated was with small pox that was uh that was our Holocaust germ warfare wiped us complet completely out and after that that's when um our land base our land base started to shrink and it shrunk and it shrunk until we're at our our present location which lies on the Eastern front of the Rockies and the southern portion of Canadian border which is about I think it's 2.5 million Acres what of that the original what percent of that I'd say that's about three or 4% of the original um there's a lot of traditional sites that you'll see that are being documented throughout Montana now where you'll see uh like belly of the shields if any of you have heard of Valley of the shields a lot of black feet artifacts were found there a lot of black feet uh remains were found there as a burial site that's all the way down along the Yellowstone River um Buffalo jumps throughout Montana date back to to black feet through artifacts being found things like that are there any other questions for Craig these are all good questions by the way the way you said that uh that the horse bundle is in the Smithsonian Institute uh what do you feel the chances of of your people getting it back someday very very strongly I've been working on uh repatriating that bundle probably for the last 12 years um I probably would have received it by now but uh I don't feel that I have the rights or the the knowledge to handle something that sacred so until I learn everything I need to learn about that um you'll have to stay there will you be the keeper of that bundle if when it comes back yes did the black feet tribe have weapons in that time uh repeating rifles or single shot rifles or did they prefer bows and arrows and could you compare the effectiveness of uh a blackf foot shooting a bow and arrow to uh us Cavalry men shooting a single shot rifle uh the comparison is they they did just have bows and arrows muskets matter of fact one of the things that I'm I'm trying to track down my grandfather George nun um had this musket hanging on the wall for years and I wanted to get a hold of that so we can carbon dated find out when when he when where that that musket came from because my um my mother and my aunts believed that it came from this Skirmish and he gave that uh he gave that to his friend Peter redhorn and Peter redhorn and my grandfather have since passed but I'm trying to get a hold of his family to find out exactly what happened to that rifle and the comparison I guess that depends on you know the person that's fighting you know if if if you're a good warrior I think you can out you can out maneuver somebody with a single shot repeat uh single shot rifle you know if yeah I only have one shot and they they could shoot a bow like you're shooting a repeating rifle and the bows were 70 to 80 lbs in in you know if any of you are bow Hunters a 70 to 80 PB pull is is pretty good good question right there in the front row right does your tradition talk about the does your tra tradition talk about the kidnapping of sakar Jo and what happened to her after that no no we don't we we were just talking about that on the way here and I just had to laugh I say well if they would have brought saak J in our country and if there was a war party that ran into Lewis and his group Lewis and them would have all been dead at Birch Creek and saaka JIA would have been married into our tribe and she would had some black Fe descendants is is there any story that talks about the um the start of the bad feelings between The Crow and the black feet you know I don't know if I want to talk about that because my fiance she's Crow I might be sleeping out in the van tonight you know I I think it was more of a territorial issue um if you look at if you look at these Maps our territory runs down to the Yellowstone okay that was part of our traditional hunting area so I imagine anytime we're down in that area and they up in that area we're at each other's throats along with the flatheads on this side the Cino sees on that side and the creas coming from the top I mean there's a lot of documented history of all the battles that we had with different tribes surrounding us so what started the battles it was probably because we stole all their women and all their horses at least they're best looking women and their best horses and when I tell the story of how I met her her I stole her she didn't steal me I captured her and that and you know one one of the things that is most important and I see it coming more about and more about when I was a a a young boy tradition spirituality and things like that were really hidden because you get scrutinized for it um my grandfather used to tell me stories of when the mission first came and um how he was how his hair was cut how he was beaten for speaking his language because he didn't know English language and it took him three tries to run away from a missionary school and finally get into Canada the first time he made it as far as the M River and he was caught brought back to the barn beaten the second time he was caught not very far taken back beaten and then the third time he's still a horse and he rode all the way into Canada and stayed there and you know it it really affected him in in such a way that he did not allow my mother or my uncles to attend school my mother attended School up until the sixth grade that's how that's how much emotional damage that that caused on him that he didn't want his kids to get abused like did did I miss it could you speak a little bit more about your life today what you're doing with the tribe you know with your people and and so on um presently the court administrator for our black feet tribal court I administer a small Court uh staff of about 25 um we handle criminal and civil law and traditional law um other than that I've always been uh um Marine Corvette I am also a a traditionalist I was born and raised by my grandfather um one of the things that's most important is my grandfather took the time no matter where we lived see me and my my siblings we are all part of the relocation act so we were born throughout different parts of the country I was born in Redwood City California because you know my parents had to move and they were trying to retrain them to be modern citizens but my grandparents would take the time and travel wherever we were and grab my myself and my oldest brother and bring us all summer to ceremony until we moved back to Montana in the early 70s and then it was it just became a daily part of life you live now I live in East Glacier well not East Glacier Montana I live north of Browning about 4 miles uh one of the things that we still hold in our family is um our our our our our family home base where as you see my pictures of my great-grandfather we still live uh where he was buried where where he was born where my grandfather was born we still hold that land we still take care of that land we still have ceremonies at land my name is Craig Falcon yes my uh mother is VMA night gun my grandfather's George night gun and Claire night gun that's how my black feet side and on my uh Fort bellnap side my dad is Ron Senor okay cousin so you're buying dinner cousin since I'm a visitor really yeah are you g to have guts that's one of our uh traditional meals is tripe I love tripe tripe Berry soup uh have have any has anybody ever tried blood soup you tried blood soup fresh from the kill geez that's good does anybody know why we we have blood suit we we take that part of the animal after a kill and that animal animal becomes a part of us I have a funny story about uh hunting I'm always hunting I took these two therapists with me hunting I used to work in a mental health center and they were so anxious to hunt they said we want to hunt hunt with you you know your way the traditional way and I said okay well went and went to the um purification ceremony the sweat lodge and sweat the sweat all day and then next day you know we got up and we smudged and smudged our rifles and prayed and said I told him you know you guys got to you got to always have good thoughts you never can think bad when you're doing things like this so right off the bat I shot a buck nice little Buck cut him open and took the kidney out and I said it's it's traditional that you know either drink some blood or you eat part of this kidney so I cut it in three pieces sat there and popped a nice big piece in my mouth and blood was kind of dripping down really chewing like a big piece of bubble gum and acted like I swallowed it and I said okay you guys go ahead I had it in the back of my mouth anyhow they started chewing and she I could just see her face turning green pretty soon she was kind of wobbling and she closed her eyes and she swallowed it and her husband he was he was he must had a tougher stomach he chewed it up and swallowed it soon as I got done swallowing I spit mine out I I drank drink some blood soup though but I just had to do that to him to pull a joke on him I really feel bad about it because the entire day she threw up the entire day each time we tried to go to an ex draw to hunt she was leaning over throwing up finally we had to bring the truck to her and load her up and bring her home and she just she just couldn't handle the traditional way but she did a good job straight blood straight out of the animal when it's nice and hot let's thank Craig Falcon for coming in today give him a nice round of applause thank you very much thank you Craig it's a pleasure having you in the ten many voice that ends our schedule for today folks but there's a lot of stuff still going on site and down near the Fair um Powell ground in the tep Village if you haven't uh picked up a schedule yet we have new brand new colorful schedules in the back of the easel board there or at the front of our exhibit tent please take one and we'll see you here tomorrow morning thank