Tent of Many Voices: M09080503TMB

gentlemen welcome to the tent of many voices this tent is part of a traveling exhibit that has been following the lwis and Clark Trail in about the same time frame as Lewis and Clark did 200 years ago while you're here please take time to see the rest of our exhibit we have our kid-size K booat we have a PLS Indian Tepee and you can see the tools that the Native Americans of the planes were using when Lewis and Clark came through we also have our exhibit tent next next door where you can go through with a written text or listen to a 35-minute audio tour this tent of many voices is the tent that we showcase all of the stories of the Lewis and Clark expedition now that being said this is a huge story it is a story of Lewis and Clark to be sure it is also a story of the young woman who went with them and carried her small child and it's also a story of the people that they met along the way they met many people from diverse backgrounds with different Lifestyles and different cultures and at this time it gives me great pleasure to introduce Rob CER who works here at Travelers Rest as the Native American program coordinator and at this time I'll turn it over to him thank you very much and welcome everyone this this beautiful afternoon I tell people that I'm one of the luckiest people in the world because I've got probably one of the best jobs that there is to coordinate programs with wonderful wonderful minds and to tell the the native story through the mouths and through the hearts of the native people it's it's just wonderful to to work with Elders on a daily basis and and have them tell their stories and tell their their life story of of what it was like to grow up here in the bitet what it was like to grow up on the Lo Trail what it was like to grow up here in the Northwest so I'm very very fortunate to have that that wonderful position that I get to work with these these wonderful people today I have a a a very special guest Mr Alan Pinkham he's from the npers tribe and he's going to give a little bit of the NES Pur perspective on Lewis and Clark please make him feel very welcome and thank you very much thank you thank you appreciate the introduction uh I am a NES purse uh we also call ourselves npu which means the people or the real people or human beings but you know we gave this the name that we're given that we are known so widely by happened to it's it's a French term nay per se but it's been corrupted to nesp Pur and it's not pronounced we don't say NES Pierce we say nesper because that's the way we learned it and uh that's our way of saying that n per se so and of course the English influence on this was why we come up with this termin ology but our real name is npu ninu but we also called ourselves Children of the coyote and also are known by the name snip snip those people that come out of the mountains so those are the terms that were known by way before Lucen Clark came here and some of the things that I would like like to discuss or let you know about is is the great deal of misunderstanding that occurred when Lewis and Clark came through here you know they had a certain way of looking at us and viewing and interpreting what we were saying and a lot of times those things were vastly misunderstood because they didn't know what we were talking about they attempted to you know we asked the question when we first seen Louis and Clark is the Earth the mother the son the father and then they got to talking about well we know about that we we uh know about The Godly things and and so they were telling us their impression of what creation was and we weren't a we were asking about do they understand the mother is the earth and the son the father because that's our spirituality but they didn't seem to understand that so L later later on we were inundated by missionaries and I'll get to this later but uh one of the things I want to point out here is this formation here I don't know whether my light works here yeah here here you know that you you recognize that that's the Big Dipper to us that's that's what we call this and there's a story that goes with this old coyote he was sitting down and looking up and he was looking at these formations and coyote comes along along and says what are you looking at he says oh I'm looking at two of them don't you see them this one and this one don't you see them and coyote says yes I see them what are they they are grizzly bears says old wolf so he kept saying uh old wolf kept saying well I sure wish I could go up there and see these two grizzly bears in the meantime old Wolf's four other Brothers came along and asked the same question what are you looking at say oh we're looking at the two grizzly bears up there don't you see them right here and then old wol he kept persisting I want to go up there and see these two grizzly bears so coyote says I'll show you how to go up there so coyote he makes five bundles of arrows in a bow and he shoots the first arrow and it stays up there and he shoots a second one it sticks to the first one and a third to the second and so forth until it comes all the way down to ground and then coyote says now you can go up there and see these two grizzly bears but the next oldest wolf brother says well I want to go up first with my next two youngest Brothers old wolfes agrees okay you go up there and look at the two grizzly bears so they go up the arway and they go up and they sit down here here and here that's the three next oldest brothers and then old old wolf says well I want to go up next but I'll take my little dog with me and my youngest brother so here's old wolf and there's his little dog and his and his youngest brother so this is why we call this h the two grizzly bears okay now what does this constellation rotate around the North Star okay so now because it lines up with the North Star you know where North is and as you hear this story as a child and you grow up and you look at formation then you know where North is and South is opposite of that and of course East and West is easy to figure out because the sun rises in the East sets in the west so now as a child you know how to recognize these directions and so coming through cway and Locka and over here by the muda corridor what do you need for directions the North Star right well there it is right there so now of course other people call it the big but we don't we call it so there's a difference here but yet it tells the same thing it tells the four directions and so as a young person you learn these stories and you know how to travel there's traveling stories among the nesters we didn't just stay in a locks saww and the cellway and the salmon and the Snake River drainages or the Columbia Plateau we came all across these mountains and we went as far east as the five Great Lakes routinely way before leou and Clark shows up we were probably traveling a greater amount of uh trips because we acquired the horse about 1700 some people say we we acquired horse about 1730 but it um it's much earlier I believe because the trade route between tribes was very fast now that could be substantiated by the epidemics that we had suffered we had suffered at least two epidemics prior to Lewis and Clark and there's stories of villages disappearing along the Snake River because of these epidemics so it had already suffered some losses and to substantiate that we call the Eastern tribes those east of the Mississippi with sores people because they suffered small poox before we did so people had suffered small pox at least twice before 180 five then that means we would have traveled or traded that kind of distance 22500 miles away and a very practical way to look at this is if you even if you walk or ride a horse or even by a canoe you can average about 20 mil per day so in 100 days you're 2,000 miles away so traveling wasn't that big a deal with us now you hear these stories of tribal conflicts between tribes well yes there is we had difficulty with the Shashi people and ab banic people with the uh cheyen and the black feet and we usually had difficulties with these people when we came out this direction but not all the time one of the things that has occurred is that we needed to negotiate our way through other tribal territories and how do you do that well you form alliances you form alliances with these other people whoever they are sometimes it lasts quite a while sometimes it doesn't one of these is one of the things that's at the Louis and Clark time is that we were very closely affiliated with the Salish people here in this Valley and the the affiliation was that one of our leaders called hak IL pil and that's interpreted as red bear red bear one of his wives was a Salish wife and the other wife was an NP wife and so out of this Union then we became uh this became an alliance mechanism between the Salish people and the npers and the descendants of that Union then became the mechanism for this Alliance so that's why we were able to do these things and set up these alliances by the descendants of these unions and even uh so so we set up these lines now we didn't now with the black feet we had a lot of difficulty also but then within the black feet we set up an alliance with the little black feet so we could get through their territory now probably depended on the people that set up these alliances that were able to do this a different group of nesp may not be able to do the same thing but we did that and one of the illustrations of this is that LE and Clark when they came to weip and uh along the clear water and a little further down we already had six muzzle ERS but we didn't have powder and ball for those weapons well where did we acquire these weapons Russians were coming down from the north from Alaska in that area the Spanish were coming north of California coast but the Canadians were in Canada and then the other fur Traders were around the Great Lakes so we could acquire these weapons in all four directions but more than likely where we acquired these weapons were at the Great Lakes area because this is one of the trading centers for both the Canadians and also American we uh one of the first people that came out to our country we call them Bostons because that's where they came from and referred to him as Boston so those are the kinds of things that occurred and so there was a big Network already in existence when Louis and Clark came here we were coming out on the plane we're going as far as the great lakes and even further there was another story that probably occurred about 1820 maybe a little bit earlier 1810 maybe and we we had horses at this time there was a first man he says I want to go see where the uh the sun comes up so he gathers the people he tells the people I want to go see where the sun comes up he loads these uh horses with whatever he thinks he needs and away he goes he comes across the trail here through Lo goes out on the plains goes down to Missouri sees all kinds of strange Indian people along the way he meets them all he goes through their territory stays in the dtas for uh year or two and he learns about these new kinds of people and so he says well I want to go see where these people are so he goes to a place called Cincinnati now Cincinnati was established about 1795 so Cincinnati had already been established when he went there and he spent three or four years in Cincinnati just to find out what's going on then he decides I'm going to go down the Great River so he goes south along the Mississippi he doesn't find too much along the Mississippi because those tribes had been inundated by smallpox about this time he doesn't find too much then he says well I think I'll go west so he goes west to a country that's hot all year long this is the way he described it so was had to be in uh Southern Arizona maybe southern California maybe well into Mexico he stays there several years then he decides I'm going to go north so he comes North he sees the mountains on a Columbia Plateau the Columbia River the Snake River he comes up those Rivers goes to the Clearwater River and he's home that Journey took him 20 years so we're traveling people other tribes traveled as well so it's not just nesp other tribal people did this also West Coast Indians went to the east coast East Coast Indians came to the West Coast way before Lu and Clark show up so there's already this network of trade and an exploration and getting acquainted setting up alliances with other tribes and we're finding out what's going on what's occurring Eastern tribes are suffing suffering from the small Pop there's new kinds of people to the east now prior to Louis and Clark prior 1805 300 years prior to that how could we not know about another kind of human being on this continent we had to find out way before 1805 because we had been there we went there we learned about these people the earth when you have predictions or prophecies coming out of these contacts one of the prophecies is one day there will be a white-faced creature behind a white-faced animal about the size of a deer that will come through laway Valley and that occurred when these new kinds of strange people come they're going to draw lines across the Earth and they're going to say this is yours this is mine your name will go into a book but you will not know when your name goes into this book what does that mean an allotment book a census book a Bible these are our predictions we do not know when our name goes into a book and so these are the kinds of predictions that we were making way before Len Clark came and the only way we could have come up with these kinds of predictions or prophecies is that we had to have gone somewhere to learn a little bit about what is really going on on this island we call this whole continent an island because we knew that this W Island there was water to the West water to the east there's a great lake to the north and there's water to the South it's an island this whole continent is an island how did we know that more than likely we went there we went so far south that we seen an animal we never seen before we seen this animal and we called it pitet pitet in ners means imitator and imitator is the monkey so that's how far south we went so these are the kinds of things that I think we need to put things in perspective of 200 years ago and that perspective is that we knew more about Lewis and Clark than they knew about us because we said they're coming weo weapo means the white man is coming so these are always things we already knew and we also knew that the early description of these strange people were they're going to speak a language we never heard before they're going to bring good things and bad things to us some of them will have their faces on upside down and they'll have eyes like fish eyes like fish is a gray blue or green eyes the face upside down is beards and mustaches and bald on top and you know who you are so so these are the things that we already knew so and uh there's so many things here there you know I've been doing some research among my own people I've talked to some of our elders and and some of my peers I'm not an elder I'm just a guy that has gray hair just like some of you so and and I've talked with that and also I heard some stories from my father my father died in 1975 his name was Alex bham and he was born in 1895 and when he was a young boy he would listen to Three Old Men the names of these three old men were p p and these are the names of these three old men they were up in their 60s and 70s and he would listen to them this would be about the year 1903 1904 he was about seven or eight years old and he got so engrossed listening to these old men tale of about a 100 years prior to 1903 that he would listen and this much of what I'm telling you comes from my father through these three old men otherwise if if my father had not told me I would probably not have known a great deal of this so these is what my father would tell me you know the the predictions you know of of the lines across the Earth and uh also there's another one our uh world will be turned over the Earth will be turned over what that means is the white man will bring the plow and he'll turn the Earth over so he's turning our Earth over as well as our culture and our society and our way of lives that's what this really means is our lives are being turned over at the same time that the white man is plowing the ground that's what that really means so that's a kind of prediction that uh he would hear from these three old men and they would also talk about other things they would talk about not only present one of the present things that these three old men would talk about they would say the prophecies are coming true and what they would talk about they would tell when these people come they will make things that go through the air they will make things that crawl upon a ground that's the automobile in the airplane so they already knew some of these things this is what they were saying because of the Ingenuity and the technology that these people were bring they will also do these other things making the airplane and an automobile so it these these I guess in 1903 there the automobiles were already made and some of the airplanes were starting to be developed but then that these three old men were saying it's coming true of what they are doing and the three old men would talk about these people have something that we don't have and that's the ability to make things from metal and glass and one of the early things that we try do is that when we learned about this metal and glass you know remember that the six muzzle oders that we possessed in 1905 but no leaden ball that's the technology of the day so how do we acquire these things how do we get a hold of this metal and glass how do we trade for these now Lis and Clark my understanding is that they had the latest technology Firearms the rifled muzzle loader the the glass the beads and metal axes so we knew about these things as well and so he said well how do we things we could kill them we all we have to do is kill 33 people well the argument was well look what they have look what they can bring to us if we kill them maybe we will not be able to get those things but if we treat them well maybe we can get these things more readily so there's a big debate what should we do when these people come among us we know what they're bringing they're bringing good things and bad things but the good things will be more beneficial to us than the bad things there was a great argument what should we do wat kuiz an elderly woman of the time of 1805 says don't do them any harm because these people helped me when I was a captive on the Great Plains around the Great Lakes area I met these kinds of people these strange people they treated me kindly so don't do them any harm and it's true what kis was tra uh captured and taken away by her captures to the Great Lakes area she finally uh secured her U Freedom by sneaking away or you know somehow she had gotten away from her captor she had been traded also to other tribes probably around the Great Lakes area and she escaped and she came upon some white people that treated her kindly took her in took care of her she had a young child with her at this time and there was one white man among these people that said I will take you across the Eastern bitter water come with me and she said no I want to go back to my people so she comes West along the way her baby dies she buries it along the way but she finally gets home to the Clearwater Country and so when Louis and Clark came and this great argument was going on she convinced everyone you know don't do them any any harm because look at the things that they that we could acquire so so the the the mood shifted we said how do we bring about a good relationship with these people we know what they're bringing but they have good things also so how do we do this well you treat them well feed them provide guides for them you know where they want to go we'll provide guides and we'll help them build Cano which we did and we also took care of their horses so we did all these things for them so they went on down the river actually they they went down in five canoes but actually there were six canoes made one canoe came back up River and it was because the first canoe that they made wasn't very well made and so some of the guys came back with that six or the first canoe but the other five canoes were a little bit better made even though L and Clark wrecked quite a bit going down to clear water in this Snake River in Rapids now I've often wondered how could they get a wreck you know a boat wreck along the clearw waterer because if you ever seen that River today it's almost smooth well 200 years ago it wasn't that way there is rocks and uh Rapids and edes and and a lot of that was changed because the engineers when the steamboats came into the area blasted out a lot of these rocks and the railroad took out a lot of rocks too so that happened on the clear water as well as the salon or the Snake River the middle Snake River not on the Salmon River but it did occur on a snake and a clear water because Steamboat traffic was starting to come up the river in about 18 oh 1865 or 1870 I believe forget which year but but one of the things that I um a little uh concerned about is that some of these canoes over here they don't look like nesters canoes of course they weren't made by nesp either but one of the things that you'll notice they're almost blunt on one end you know they're of course the chainsaw did a lot of the work but we didn't make them that way the front end and the half didn't look that way there was more of a very smooth and long curve on both ends now the reason for that was because when you went down Rapids the upper portion of the the front end of that canoe would hit the rapid first and you'd be lifted up over the rapid and these is I I think they would go into the rapid more readily and I think that's why Lo and Clark had so many wrecks and and by the way we found out that about half of the core Discovery didn't know how to swim so we we went out and rescued quite a few of them when they got into bokit so so besides you know this misunderstanding you know there's a lot of these things that went on and in 18 particularly in um losen car when they came through our country they they started buying our dogs and uh they ate our dogs that we traded or sold to them well there one one a return trip in 1806 they just below Spalding Idaho it's it's this side of Leon Idaho about oh eight or nine miles in our language we call this place suta sua and it's my mother's place along the clearw river and that's where Le and Clark and particularly Lewis one young Nest purse threw a puppy in his plate or nearly in his plate and Louis got up and threw the puppy back and hit the young man in the chest and picked up a Tommy Hawk and threatened to uh Tommy Hawk this young nesper well of course the young man he backed off and says well you can't make jokes with these people but his his his he was taking up the cause of a young girl that played with a dog that was Lewis was eating so she was upset then the mother got upset so this young man took up their cause threw the puppy in Lewis's plate to make a little joke with him and fun with him because we never ate dog we never ate dog at all even in very hard times we never ate dogs we occasionally would eat horses but we never ate dogs other tribal people did eat dogs but we never I guess one of the things that we viewed the dog as is why eat your best buddy you know he shows us where the game is at you know he takes care of Camp you know he's the Watchdog he helps hunt you know so why do this to your little little friend so that's why we didn't eat dog but Louis and Clark and the other members very readily did and they purchased all most of the dogs in the neighborhood when they came through so so there's there's this this kind of thing that was going on but then when you read the journals it just describes this impertinent Nest person threw a puppy in my plate and I threatened to killing so this is the anglo-american view of native peoples of the time and probably other members of the core also did maybe Julia or juler may have had a different view because juler was on my understanding he was half shaune Indian and and half French so he knew the sign language and we knew the sign language and and so there was a better communication between drer and other nesters than most others in the core Discovery so how and this is the good relationship that that I'm talking about is that it did occur and juler was one of these that that perpetuated this good relationship because juler we gave him one of the best horses that we had available of course we gave Lewis a good horse too and and Clark uh but we also recognize that drer was of the with sores people of the Eastern tribes and he knew the sign language so we could probably communicate with him a little bit more a little bit better and then the U when they came back up they were at the mouth of poo River or rather the Potlatch River just above uh laway Creek and east of Le about 10 mil miles or so there they this is where the cut noose was at one of our leaders NNU now one of the three men that my father listened to was also named nushu kutn cutos is my father's Uncle so this is how I'm tied into this Lo and Clark thing so at the uh cut noes Village which is at the mouth of potlatch River they they had uh there was a shishoni boy there that spoke shashona he could speak with sakaia so there was communication between in Shoni then it probably went to Hada because shano could speak Hada then sharbono was French so it probably went to French then it went to English so he went through about four or five different languages you know is also in it so there's probably five different languages that if you wanted to try to communicate something to someone you know whatever Louis and Clark you know were uh proposing you know relationships or or agreements that it had to go through five uh languages so it's very complicated this is where I think a lot of misunderstanding occur you know there's there's so many names that L and Clark wrote down in the journals that I can't even recognize them because the way you pronounce it the way they heard it is completely different from what we would say it one of those is Tito hary this is the way it's actually written in a journal Tito hary that's toen ASA toen that's what that is we finally figured it out that's what it is tanasa and what that means is uh looks like brothers so like you see somebody coming in a distance you can just see little specs and you don't recognize them and they get closer and closer and then you see who they are is oh they look like brothers that's the name of one of of this man that they were trying to describe so these are the kinds of things that there were so many things that were Mis misunderstood or misinterpret and also that um one of the things that leis and Clark talked about is peace and friendship among all people well we knew that because we knew that we were at Fort Mandan the year before in 1804 there are three Nest Pur there and so those three men came back and said well this is what they're talking about peace and friendship well there's another big long story I can't get into that cuz only got about another 3 or 4 minutes but this is one of what they Lewis and Clark is bringing they're bringing this concept of peace and friendship and they're bringing kitso medal that says this kitso that's what we call coins and on it it says peace and friendship so this is the message that they're carrying so when Lo and Clark talked about these medals and gave them out cut noose received one red bear received one twisted hair received one tumu received one there was about seven or eight medals given to nesper leaders of that time and so he said if you want peace and friendship then you treat us the same way this is the first treaty we made with United States government and we took it to heart because we thought so much of what they were saying that this is what we wanted to set up with them as peaceful and friendship and trade and getting and acquiring the technology of the day this is why we did it and we Carri that out all the way until 1877 until we went to war with the United States government in 1877 um I guess before I go any further is there any questions we got a few minutes here questions go ahead and raise your hand if there are questions go ahead and raise your hand I have a microphone so we can share the questions could have been that thorough uh one thing leis and Clark actually actually William Clark left a son among the npers we gave that young person the name hak he is the son of William Clark and he went through all the trials and tribulations up until the war of 1877 he actually went on war trail with Joseph and the other leaders he survived all the battles he was about 70 years old at the time 71 and 77 he went through all the battles from whitebird to Clearwater River to uh Fort fizzle to big hole to Canyon Creek and then to bearspaw he was captured in at Bears paaw went an exile into Oklahoma and there the son of Clark died we call him halak halak in NP means daytime smoker so this is part of this relationship that we're trying to set up and maintain with United States halak it was the alliance building mechanism but it didn't work in 1877 because we are fighting United States government so there's other descendants from the core Discovery York is also another he has a descendants among the tribal people so there's all kinds of stories but I guess I'm out of time so thank you very much and thank you Mr alen Pinkham for presenting here in our tent of many voices and our next program here in the tent of many