Chief Washakie and President Grant

 Wyoming Fact & Fiction

January 10, 2022

Last weekend I was part of a discussion about listening to books. I don't do a lot of books on audible platforms, but when traveling, we always take one or two along. I enjoy listening and am contemplating putting some of my books on one of the listening programs. That is quite an intro to Chief Washakie – I haven't got around to him yet. Here is the tie-in. My daughter mentioned she was listening to a book and laughing about their pronunciation of Washakie. I have heard the same when listening to some books set in Wyoming. Before moving to Wyoming (1983), I taught in Nebraska and remember butchering the name myself. Guess if you are not from around here, it is difficult to say. But, not as tricky as the Popo Agie.

The first tribes that settled in today's Wyoming in the late 1600s were the Staitans, Comanches, and Shoshones. Like many other plains and foothills tribes, they were bison hunters. It is interesting to note that Shoshone legend and spoken history talked of once living in a land where alligators inhabited the rivers.

Chief Washakie early on realized that friendship with the expanding population would be better than fighting the inevitable. Washakie was instrumental in the success of General Crook (Crook County Wyoming named after him)  fighting the Sioux in Wyoming and Montana.

Because of his help to Crook and the U.S. Army, President Grant sent a silver-trimmed saddle to the Shoshone Chief in appreciation for his service. Some history books have stated that he was given a "fine horse and saddle," but most list the gift as only a saddle. My guess, Washakie, would likely have preferred using one of his fine horses to anything offered up as a gift – he did use the saddle.

According to Virginia Cole Trenholm and Maurine Carley in their 1946 textbook, Wyoming Pageant - Washakie was told he should send some sort of a thank you to the president. Chief Washakie replied, "Do a favor to a white man; he feels it in his head, and the tongue speaks. Do a kindness to an Indian; he feels it in his heart. The heart has no tongue."

Wyoming Trivia – two questions today

1.  Of the four Shoshone branches, which did Chief Washakie and his Wyoming tribe belong to?

2. Washakie was only half Shoshone. What other tribe was he?

 

Answers for Today's Trivia

1. Wyoming hosted the Eastern Shoshone. Other branches were the Northern, Western, and Goshute. 

2. Chief Washakie was born in 1804 with a Flathead father and Shoshone mother.

See you next week!

 

 

Hey, Don't Do That - Not Here!

Often, when doing research, for a new book I run across stories that are just too good to not pass on.

The Trader

Such is the tale of early Wyoming, would be trader, H. E. Palmer. Shortly after the Civil War, Palmer came west intending to set up a post to trade with both Indians and whites. The war in the east may have been over in 1866, but in the west, it was only beginning. Palmer hired three interpreters, all part Native Indian, brought along four wagon loads of goods and built a store.  The store on Clear Creek, near present-day Buffalo, he built with the best available material – sod.

Nice Soddy south of Scottsbluff,  Nebraska

His Grand Opening

His first customers, a group of Cheyenne warriors arrived and Palmer was ready to trade. He offered his pipe, well packed with tobacco, and all smoked. Palmer was sure this, a sign of peace would be great for his trading business. Instead of buying they tossed aside everything but their weapons and told Palmer to leave.  The chief told Palmer they would let him and his men go if they would get off this Buffalo land immediately.

Well – That Didn’t Last Long

After leaving with nothing but their wagons and the clothes on their backs the Cheyenne took the sod trading post apart and relayed the sod where it had been pulled from the earth. Like many hunting and wandering people, the Cheyenne did not farm and could see no reason to destroy mother earth by taking up the sod, even if it were to build a trading post that would soon be lost in history.

It is interesting to note that Indians on the Plains to the East had been building with sod for generations, but not out here. Wyoming was teepee country.

The Buffalo in History

“Historically the Buffalo had more influence on man than all other Plains animals combined. It was life, food, raiment, and shelter to the Indians. He buffalo and the Plains Indians lived together, and together passed away.”

Walter Prescott Webb from, The Great Plains, published 1931, Ginn and Company

President Grant’s bad Buffalo Decision

President Grant’s bad Buffalo Decision

As President of the United States, in 1874, U.S. Grant had a chance to save the American Buffalo (Bison) but he passed. At the time, there were still thousands of bison roaming the west. His decision or non-decision almost wiped out the entire species. How sad it would be if Grant’s action would have caused the American Buffalo to become extinct, and it almost did.

In 1750, Daniel Boone hunted bison in the Carolinas. Eighty years later there were no buffalo left east of the Mississippi River. Despite this, there were still an amazing number of bison roaming the western ranges of America, as many as 30 million lived on the western plains and foothills making up the great southern and northern herds.

The fur trade years, when mountain men trapped the beaver for its skin, were nearly over by 1840. Now a new fur, the buffalo robe came into fashion. Hunters and skinners came west by the dozens, slaughtering buffalo for their skins. Tails of these hunts encouraged, so called, sportsmen to come west to kill buffalo. The hunters were encouraged by both the railroad and the army each with their own personal reasons for wanting the buffalo destroyed. This brought even more pressure on the dwindling western herd as trainloads of buffalo shooters came west.

By 1870, buffalo robes were not as saleable as before and some of the pressure went away. United States Representative, R. C. McCormick of Arizona, explaining to anyone who would listen that the southern herd was gone, introduced a bill in 1871 to stop or at least curtail the wanton destruction of the buffalo in the west, now only the northern herd. The bill fell on deaf ears in Washington, never getting out of committee. He tried it again the next year and this time people started to listen. At last congress passed a similar bill to McCormick’s in 1874.

President Grant, still worried about an Indian uprising in the west, listened to his advisors and pocket vetoed the law. For anyone that has forgotten their high school history lessons this simply means congress was about to adjourn and Grant did nothing. When the congressional session ended so did all bills that were not signed.

Grant had been told privately, by his Secretary of Interior, that if the bison were gone the Indians of the west would have no choice but to adapt to a white, agricultural lifestyle. His military advisors, Generals, Phil Sheridan and William T. Sherman were very outspoken urging the killing the buffalo to end the lifestyle of the western Indians.

Ten years later most of the buffalo were gone. The few remaining were protected in Wyoming’s northwest corner by the formation of Yellowstone Park in 1872. But even here the poachers arrived attempting to kill off the last of the western herd. Finally, the government came to the aid of the buffalo (in 1886) sending soldiers to the park to run the hunters out and become the parks first police force.

At long last in 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law outlawing all hunting, timber cutting and mining in Yellowstone, finally protecting the last two hundred animals.

If this post has any good news it is that the bison has become an American success story, with 300,000 to 500,000 now in North America.

“When the Buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened. There was little singing anywhere.” 

Crow Chief Plenty Coups

The Spring Buffalo Hunt

For the Indians of the central plains extending to the Rocky Mountains spring was an important time. Two big buffalo hunts happened each year one in September when the bison were fat and the tribes were beginning their preparation for winter. The other was about now, when the weather warmed around the first of April.

Unlike the movies where Buffalo were always over the next hill, tribes often traveled for great distances for these hunts. Traveling 300 miles for a hunt was not unusual and sometimes many more miles were traveled.

The hunt was so important that scouts were sent far ahead and when the herd was spotted camps were set up 10 to 20 miles away so as not to frighten the herd. Great care was taken to make sure that no hunter got in a hurry and went out before the main hunt. Hunters who did were punished and sent packing.

Hunts were often on horseback but Indians also used nature sometimes driving herds into box canyons or over cliffs, anything that worked to provide for the tribe. The hunter who made the kill was given the tongue and hide the rest was shared with the tribe after the butchers took their share.

How much of the animal was taken or used depended on the hunt. When a large supply of buffalo were taken only the best cuts were used: tongue, hump, ribs and hide and often organ meat. If times were tough nearly everything was taken and used, including hoofs and some entrails.

Meat was eaten in great feasts when the hunters arrived back home in their tribal camps. Camp activities, for the next few weeks, centered on preserving meat for a time when it might be needed for travel or in poor hunting times.  Native peoples made the first jerky and pemmican.

Pemmican was tried as a traveling food for American troops in WWI but it never caught on, at least here. German solders used pemmican in both WWI and WWII, and reportedly found it quite good.